Characterization of a delay and disruption tolerant network in the Amazon basin

Most cities in the Amazon have no data communication infrastructure, and rivers are most of the time the only access mode to connect small cities to urban centers. In this paper, we investigate the deployment of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) formed by boats along the rivers of the Amazon as an alternative to interconnect the small cities to the capital Manaus. Given that boats will opportunistically connect to each other, we have the scenario of a delay and disruption tolerant network (DTN). In a nutshell, the idea is to take advantage of the contacts between the boats that travel daily transporting passengers and products to small cities, communities, villages, as well as to other states. We evaluate the capacity of a DTN formed by boats, using simulations with real boat traffic and mobility traces captured in the Amazon Basin as input. Results show that potential of raw data transfer in this large-scale DTN can achieve 1.38 TB over a week for some 45 hours of contact time between boats.