Configuration of an opportunistic network that incorporates traveling mobile nodes to achieve network delay-insensitive content delivery and location-dependent forwarding knowledge

Abstract

Recently, it has become common to use digital means to deliver content that is targeted at a restricted area or time (e.g., local newspapers, road construction information, and advertisement leaflets). It is efficient to centralize such content in a server and deliver it over a wide-area network if content is to be transmitted over a wide area and over a long distance. However, this method incurs a high ratio of overhead if the target is limited to a small area. This paper proposes a method of delivering content to a specific area via traveling mobile nodes using forwarding knowledge that is based on location information of receiving terminals. Specifically, a covered area is defined for each traveling mobile node as its forwarding knowledge, and traveling mobile nodes forward content towards the destination by selecting a node whose covered area is closer to the destination than their covered areas. We have developed an opportunistic network emulator, implemented the proposed method in it, and evaluated the proposed method by comparing it with epidemic routing in terms of arrival rate and delay time.