Evaluation of the efficiency of delay tolerant network routing protocols for smart environment development in Makassar

Abstract

Delay tolerant network (DTN) has become a promising communication paradigm for internet of things (IoT)-based smart environments, where intermittent connectivity and heterogeneous node mobility challenge reliable data delivery. However, selecting an appropriate DTN routing protocol remains difficult because existing protocols offer different trade-offs among delivery ratio, latency, communication overhead, hop count, and energy consumption. Although many studies have evaluated DTN routing protocols, few have examined their performance under heterogeneous urban mobility conditions representing emerging smart cities such as Makassar. This study compares four DTN routing protocols Epidemic, probabilistic routing protocol using history of encounters and transitivity version 2 (PRoPHETv2), spray and wait, and MaxProp using The ONE Simulator with a Makassar-inspired mobility scenario involving 50–125 nodes over a 12-hour simulation. Performance was evaluated using delivery ratio, average latency, overhead ratio, average hop count, and estimated energy consumption. The results show that MaxProp achieved the highest delivery ratio (0.69 at 125 nodes), whereas spray and wait consistently produced the lowest latency (≈118 s), overhead ratio (< 45,000), and average hop count (≈2). In contrast, epidemic generated excessive overhead and energy consumption because of uncontrolled message replication. These findings indicate that spray and wait is the most resource-efficient protocol, while MaxProp is preferable for applications prioritizing delivery reliability.