  We investigate the fundamental capacity limits of space-time journeys of
information in mobile and Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs), where information is
either transmitted or carried by mobile nodes, using store-carry-forward
routing. We define the capacity of a journey (i.e., a path in space and time,
from a source to a destination) as the maximum amount of data that can be
transferred from the source to the destination in the given journey. Combining
a stochastic model (conveying all possible journeys) and an analysis of the
durations of the nodes' encounters, we study the properties of journeys that
maximize the space-time information propagation capacity, in bit-meters per
second. More specifically, we provide theoretical lower and upper bounds on the
information propagation speed, as a function of the journey capacity. In the
particular case of random way-point-like models (i.e., when nodes move for a
distance of the order of the network domain size before changing direction), we
show that, for relatively large journey capacities, the information propagation
speed is of the same order as the mobile node speed. This implies that,
surprisingly, in sparse but large-scale mobile DTNs, the space-time information
propagation capacity in bit-meters per second remains proportional to the
mobile node speed and to the size of the transported data bundles, when the
bundles are relatively large. We also verify that all our analytical bounds are
accurate in several simulation scenarios.
