2017 IEEE 22nd Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing
Erasure-Code-Based DTN Multi-Path Routing for Contact Avoidance
Hironori Arai†
†Graduate School of Industrial Technology
Nihon University, Chiba, Japan
E-mail: arai.masayuki@nihon-u.ac.jp
Abstract— Delay (or disruption) tolerant networks (DTNs) have
widely studied as promising technology for providing
communications in environments where all nodes are not
connected with each other. Assuming the existence of adversary
nodes, in this study we evaluate effectiveness of erasure-code-
based DTN routing in terms of secure transmission. We combine
secret-sharing-based multi-path routing with several routing
strategies, and evaluate the ratio of successful transmission by
simulation.
Keywords-Delay Tolerant Network, contact avoidance, multi-
path routing, erasure code
I. INTRODUCTION
Delay (or disruption) tolerant networks (DTNs) have
widely studied as promising technology for providing
communications in environments where all nodes are not
connected with each other [1,2]. Since DTNs utilize wireless
transmissions between nodes and store-and-forward routing in
disconnected environments, nodes might suffer from sniffing
and other attacks, and thus the systems have to provide secure
communications even under existence of adversaries,
especially for critical applications such as military and so on.
In this study we investigate effectiveness of erasure-code-
based multi-path routing for DTN in terms of secure
transmissions under existence of adversary nodes. In the
proposed routing protocol, encoded fragments are transmitted
via different routes from each other. Then, not only the target
receiver but also the set of adversary nodes cannot reconstruct
original data unless they receive at least k out of n fragments.
Assuming the locations of adversary nodes are known, we
establish several routing strategies, and evaluate data
reachability without being stolen by simulations.
II. PRELIMINARIES
A. Delay tolerant networks
Figure 1 illustrates data transmission under DTNs. If two
nodes are in the range of wireless transmission, they can
communicate directly with each other. A node which can
communicate with two or more nodes can relay the
communication between connecting nodes, and thus a node
can communicate with a subset of nodes in the system,
directly or indirectly, at a given instant. In the figure the dotted
line represents the link that is currently unavailable.
If a sender finds that the receiver is not in the subset of
directly or indirectly connecting nodes, it then requests to any
978-1-5090-5652-1/17 $31.00 © 2017 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/PRDC.2017.37
Masayuki Arai†,‡
‡College of Industrial Technology
of the connecting nodes which is expected to communicate
with the receiver or closer-to-receiver nodes to store the data
to relay the communication. Which and how many nodes are
selected are depending on the routing protocol applied. In the
figure, the sender requests to two nodes painted with dark
color to relay the data. After the upper node leaves from the
sender, it connects to another relaying node, and when the
second relaying node connects to the receiver, transmission
between the sender and receiver completes.
sender
receiver
sender
sender
receiver receiver
Figure 1. Example of data transmission in DTN.
B. Erasure-code-based DTN routing for delay reduction
In DTN environment, end-to-end transmission delay is
strongly affected by contact interval of two relaying nodes.
Wang et al. proposed application of erasure coding to DTNs,
aiming at reducing average transmission delay [3]. Figure 2
illustrates the basic idea of erasure-code-based transmission.
First, a sender divides the original data into k fragments, and
then generates (n – k) redundant fragments generated based on
(n, k) erasure coding. After that, total n fragments are
transmitted in the network via different routes from each other.
Even if some fragments suffer from large transmission delay,
the receiver can reconstruct the original data when it receives
any combination of k out of n fragments, due to characteristics
of erasure coding.
divide into k fragments
add (n - k) redundant fragments
send total n fragments via different paths
original data can be reconstructed by k or more fragments
Figure 2. Data fragmentation and reconstruction by erasure-code-based
DTN transmission
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C. Attack model and contact avoidance routing longcut avoidance, regardless of application of adversary and
Sakai et al. suggested existence of adversaries in mobile adjacent avoidance.
A+D
ad-hoc networks (MANETs) and proposed avoidance routing 1 C+L+A+D
C+L+A
[4]. In Ref. [5], the protocol was then extended to contact C+L
C+A+D
avoidance, targeting DTN. Adversaries are assumed to have 0.8
C+A

Success Ratio
infinite computational ability, thus existing data encryption 0.6
C

strategies are not valid, once the data is transmitted through

0.4
adversaries' wireless communication area. Assuming that
adversaries' locations are known to all nodes, avoidance and 0.2
contact avoidance routings try to avoid selecting relaying node
0
that are adjacent to adversaries. 0 2 4 6 8 10
# adversaries

III. EVALUATION OF ERASURE-CODE-BASED DTN Figure 3. Simulation results of ratio of successful transmission for
ROUTING FOR CONTACT AVOIDANCE different number of adversaries. (100 nodes, (4, 8) secret sharing)

We evaluate the effectiveness of erasure-code-based Figure 4 compares the transmission delay for successful
routing in terms of not only delay reduction but also secure transmission, in the same setup as Fig. 3. In exchange of
transmission under existence of adversary nodes. We assume improved reachability, delay is increased.
to apply (k, n) secret sharing which is information- 50 A+D
theoretically secure, that is, even the set of adversaries with C+L+A+D
C+L+A
infinite computational ability cannot reconstruct the original 40 C+L

Average of Success_time
C+A+D
data unless they acquire at least k out of n fragments. C+A
30 C
In addition to erasure coding (C), we applied the
combination of the following three strategies to routing 20
protocol:
10
Longcut avoidance (L): avoids to select nodes which are not
0
closer to the receiver 0 2 4 6 8 10
Advsersary avoidance (A): avoids to select adversary nodes # adversaries

as relay Figure 4. Simulation results of delay for succesfull transmission different

Advsersary's adjacent avoidance (D): avoids to select nodes
which might connect to adversaries
We performed Monte-Carlo simulations, where
connections of the nodes are simply represented by a contact
graph, without considering physical locations of the nodes and
wireless transmission ranges. When a sender initiates a
transmission, the transmission is determined as successful if
at least k fragments are delivered to the receiver until the
specified deadline while the set of adversaries fails to collect
k or more fragments, or as failed otherwise. According to the
routing strategies applied, the sender or relaying nodes might
sometimes find that there are no safe routes and give up
relaying. In this case the transmission is also determined as
failed.
Figure 3 shows the simulation results for different
numbers of adversary nodes. Total number of nodes in the
network is 100, and (4, 8) secret sharing is applied as erasure
coding, that is, receiver and adversaries can reconstruct
original data if 4 out of 8 fragments are delivered. The label
"A+D" stands for the protocol where adversaries and
adversary's adjacent nodes are not select as relaying node but
erasure coding is not applied, which corresponds to the
conventional contact avoidance routing. The figure indicates
that the ratio of successful transmission can be improved by
applying erasure coding, when there are three or more
adversaries. The figure also indicates the effectiveness of
number of adversaries. (100 nodes, (4, 8) secret sharing)
IV. CONCLUSIONS
In this study we investigate effectiveness of erasure-code-
based multi-path routing for DTN in terms of secure
transmissions under existence of adversary nodes. We applied
(k, n) secret sharing-based erasure coding and several routing
strategies to DTN. Simulation results indicated that the
combination of erasure coding, longcut avoidance, and
adversary and adversary's adjacent avoidances significantly
improved the ratio of successful transmissions.
Further tuning of the protocol considering the trade-offs
between transmission delay and delivery ratio is one of the
open issues.
REFERENCES
[1] T. Spyropoulos, K. Psounis and C. S Raghavendra, "Spray and Wait:
An Efficient Routing Scheme for Intermittently Connected Mobile
Networks," SIGCOMM Workshop on Delay-tolerant Networking, pp.
252-259, 2005.
[2] A. Balasubramanian, B. Levine and A. Venkataramani, "DTN Routing
as a Resource Allocation Problem," SIGCOMM, pp. 373-384, 2007.
[3] Y. Wang, S. Jain, M. Martonosi, K. Fall, “Erasure-Coding Based
Routing for Opportunistic Networks”, ACM SIGCOMM workshop on
Delay-tolerant networking, pp.229-236, 2005.
[4] K. Sakai, M.-T. Sun, W.-S. Ku, J. Wu and T. H Lai, Multi-Path-Based
Avoidance Routing in Wire-less Networks," International Conference
on Distributed Computing Systems, pp. 706-715, 2015.
[5] T. Osuki, K. Sakai, S. Fukumoto, and M. Arai, "Contact Avoidance
Routing for Delay Tolerant Networks," IEICE Technical Report, No.
IN2015-13, pp. 25-28, 2015 (in Japanese).

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