Aung, CYHo, IW-HChong, PHJ2019-10-032019-10-0320172017IEEE Access, 5, 6608-6625.2169-3536https://hdl.handle.net/10292/12875Data delivery in opportunistic networks requires robustness and resiliency due to the mobility and probabilistic propagation channels caused by fading. Besides the 100% data delivery, delivery with minimum delay, overhead, buffer consumption, and controlling unnecessary transmissions/replications are equally important. In this paper, we propose a data delivery solution for opportunistic networks. The solution comprises two main algorithms: store-carry-cooperative forward routing and information epidemic control. In the data forwarding, nodes proactively monitor and exploit the direct/two-hop cooperative forwarding opportunities and adaptively switch between the cooperative forwarding and reactive store-carry-forward routing. An information epidemics control algorithm, which provides earlier control signal distribution time and faster recovery rate, is also proposed. The susceptible-infected-recovered model is used to study the effectiveness of the proposed mechanism. Extensive network performance evaluation is conducted under a wide range of scenarios, which include fading environments, obstacle-constrained environments, and mobile social network environments. We show that: 1) the information epidemics control mechanism provides higher vaccination rate and recovery rate; 2) proactive replication incurs a number of unnecessary transmissions; 3) monitoring the vicinity and exploiting the opportunity shorten the data delivery delay; and 4) with the integrated solution, a robust data delivery is achieved and a substantial amount of unnecessary transmissions are well deterred.IEEE Access® is a multidisciplinary, open access (OA), applications-oriented, all-electronic archival journal that continuously presents the results of original research or development across all of IEEE's fields of interest.Opportunistic networksCooperative forwardingBroadcastStore-carry-forwardInformation epidemics controlJournal ArticleOpenAccess10.1109/ACCESS.2017.2690341