ML-MaxProp: Bridging Machine Learning and Delay-Tolerant Routing for Resilient Post-Disaster Communication

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xiuyuan, Tao, Radenkovic, Milena
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Xiuyuan, Tao
Radenkovic, Milena
author_facet Xiuyuan, Tao
Radenkovic, Milena
contents In disaster-stricken and large-scale urban emergency scenarios, ensuring reliable communication remains a formidable challenge, as collapsed infrastructure, unpredictable mobility, and severely constrained resources disrupt conventional networks. Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs), though resilient through their store-carry-forward paradigm, reveal the fundamental weaknesses of classical protocols - Epidemic, Spray-and-Wait, and MaxProp - when confronted with sparse encounters, buffer shortages, and volatile connectivity. To address these obstacles, this study proposes ML-MaxProp, a hybrid routing protocol that strengthens MaxProp with supervised machine learning. By leveraging contextual features such as encounter frequency, hop count, buffer occupancy, message age, and time-to-live (TTL), ML-MaxProp predicts relay suitability in real time, transforming rigid heuristics into adaptive intelligence. Extensive simulations in the ONE environment using the Helsinki SPMBM mobility model show that ML-MaxProp consistently surpasses baseline protocols, achieving higher delivery probability, lower latency, and reduced overhead. Statistical validation further shows that these improvements are both significant and robust, even under highly resource-constrained and unstable conditions. Overall, this work shows that ML-MaxProp is not just an incremental refinement but a lightweight, adaptive, and practical solution to one of the hardest challenges in DTNs: sustaining mission-critical communication when infrastructure collapses and every forwarding decision becomes critical.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2508_20077
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle ML-MaxProp: Bridging Machine Learning and Delay-Tolerant Routing for Resilient Post-Disaster Communication
Xiuyuan, Tao
Radenkovic, Milena
Networking and Internet Architecture
In disaster-stricken and large-scale urban emergency scenarios, ensuring reliable communication remains a formidable challenge, as collapsed infrastructure, unpredictable mobility, and severely constrained resources disrupt conventional networks. Delay-Tolerant Networks (DTNs), though resilient through their store-carry-forward paradigm, reveal the fundamental weaknesses of classical protocols - Epidemic, Spray-and-Wait, and MaxProp - when confronted with sparse encounters, buffer shortages, and volatile connectivity. To address these obstacles, this study proposes ML-MaxProp, a hybrid routing protocol that strengthens MaxProp with supervised machine learning. By leveraging contextual features such as encounter frequency, hop count, buffer occupancy, message age, and time-to-live (TTL), ML-MaxProp predicts relay suitability in real time, transforming rigid heuristics into adaptive intelligence. Extensive simulations in the ONE environment using the Helsinki SPMBM mobility model show that ML-MaxProp consistently surpasses baseline protocols, achieving higher delivery probability, lower latency, and reduced overhead. Statistical validation further shows that these improvements are both significant and robust, even under highly resource-constrained and unstable conditions. Overall, this work shows that ML-MaxProp is not just an incremental refinement but a lightweight, adaptive, and practical solution to one of the hardest challenges in DTNs: sustaining mission-critical communication when infrastructure collapses and every forwarding decision becomes critical.
title ML-MaxProp: Bridging Machine Learning and Delay-Tolerant Routing for Resilient Post-Disaster Communication
topic Networking and Internet Architecture
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.20077