ABSTRACT

The project deals with the design and development of Delay Tolerant Network
(DTN) Node on a stand alone Power PC based Single board computer. A delay
tolerant network is a new protocol that extends internet protocols to space by
simple store and forward mechanism. The applications tolerate high and variable
delay, intermittence connectivity, high BER, and asymmetrical data rate on the
channel to provide reliable data transfer. This is achieved by introducing a layer
called bundling layer between application and transport layer in the protocol stack.
One of the applications of DTN is Interplanetary Networking in addition to many
other terrestrial applications like web caching application, tracking animals,
meteorological data transfer application.

The two broadly supported transport layer protocol options offered by the IP are
TCP and UDP are ill suited for the operation over a path characterised by very
long signal propagation delay, particularly if the path contains intermittent links.
These models always assume a very low BER, symmetric data rate and real time
end to end connectivity from source node to the destination node in the network.
When these assumptions fail due to the characteristic of network DTN operates
satisfactorily.

The implementation scheme includes the hardware and software modules. The
hardware is the ATS-VME SBC -750CX is based on IBM’s power pc series of
processor . ELDK(embedded linux development kit) is used as the software
development tool for implementation .It provides cross development tools such as
compilers,gdb,etc.It offers local debugging and remote debugging.

The UML is used as a modelling tool in the designing and development phase.
Using this specific design patterns and automatic code generation may be explored
in this project.

Reference implementation can be used for the testing and validation of DTN node.