Demand Based Data Replication in MANETs

Abstract

Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) is an emerging research area as it utilizes a diversity of applications. MANET is a self configuring network with dynamic topology. The network does not have any permanent infrastructure and the network can be formed on the fly. The mobile nodes in the network move frequently and the topology changes dynamically. So there is a chance of frequent network partitions. The node in one partition cannot access data items from a node in another partition. To improve data availability the data in the nodes should be replicated at various nodes. There are various data replication techniques available in MANETs. This paper focuses on the data replication by reserving storage space for the most demanded data item. This also includes the selection of a node and selection of a data item for replication. Thus the data availability can be improved since there are multiple replicas in the network and the possibility of finding one copy of data item is higher.