Opportunistic Networks: A Taxonomy of Data Dissemination Techniques

When mobile devices are unable to establish direct communication, or when communication should be offloaded to cope with large throughputs, mobile collaboration can be used to facilitate communication through opportunistic networks. These types of networks, formed when mobile devices communicate only using short-range transmission protocols, usually when users are close, can help applications still exchange data. Routes are built dynamically, since each mobile device is acting according to the store-carry-and-forward paradigm. Thus, contacts are seen as opportunities to move data towards the destination. In such networks data dissemination is usually based on a publish/subscribe model. Opportunistic data dissemination also raises questions concerning user privacy and incentives. In this the authors present a motivation of using opportunistic networks in various real life use cases, and then analyze existing relevant work in the area of data dissemination. The authors present the categories of a proposed taxonomy that captures the capabilities of data dissemination techniques used in opportunistic networks. Moreover, the authors survey relevant techniques and analyze them using the proposed taxonomy.