Opportunistic Networks: Current Scenario and Future Scope

Opportunistic Networks are considered as a subclass of Mobile Adhoc Networks in which packet can be delivered with a reasonable amount of delay. Initial Node or source node allows distinct nodes to join the network to accomplish message delivery. Opportunistic Networks follow the Store-Carry-Forward principle in order to deliver the packet. The intermediate node stores the packet in memory unless a suitable forwarder node is selected. Further Opportunistic Network imposes various challenges like maintain routes, energy optimization for mobile devices, congestion control, or buffer storage policies and security and privacy in the network. Various tools/simulators are available to simulate Opportunistic Networks protocols and analyze their results. The aim of this paper is to provide overview of Opportunistic Networks and major routing protocols available. Also this paper discusses applications of these kinds of networks and future scope of Opportunistic Network. Opportunistic Networks is an open-ended topic for researchers and imposes great challenges for future work. In future routing protocols can be optimized for lowering overhead and delay in the network, thus providing efficient environment for communication.