Content and host-centric information dissemination in delay-tolerant smartphone MANETs: An architecture and demonstration

Abstract

Usage of mobile commercial communication devices is continually increasing. However, these devices require a fixed infrastructure and do not function in mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) characterized by large delays or disruptions. Furthermore, these devices do not support the emerging communications needed when the location of information publishers and consumers is unknown (e.g., content centric communication models). To provide these capabilities, the paper presents an architecture that overlays content-centric and host-centric delay tolerant algorithms over a MANET. For validating the architecture, we provide a proof-of-concept implementation on Android phones as the illustrative mobile device and WiFi as the illustrative protocol, and we test the architecture in two field demonstrations.