ELIAS: Every Location Is A Storage

Abstract

Our physical environment is a natural storage where we are used to store and share information. A stop sign, for instance, is such a piece of information that is stored on a particular location. In this paper, we assume a fully distributed mobile networking system and investigate the challenges of enabling the system to treat its underlying geographic environment as a virtual storage disk. Specifically, our research aims at developing a platform that allows one to conceptually save/retrieve a data item to/from a location. Since this capability can be used in a broad range of applications, the proposed platform can serve as a common underlay for developing and running these applications. We propose a cost-effective implementation of this platform. For the purpose of performance evaluation, we develop a detailed analytical model and verify its accuracy using simulation.