User-Centric Utility-Based Data Replication in Heterogeneous Networks

Information overload and convergence of devices aggravate the difficulties of accessing data distributed among various user devices especially when this is performed by mobile users and over heterogeneous wireless networks. Existing data replication systems help increase the performance of the distributed data system, but they do not consider users' different levels of interest in various pieces of data and neither heterogeneous wireless connectivity issues. This paper presents the Smart Personal Information Network (Smart PIN), a performance and cost-aware personal information network which uses a novel user- centric utility-based data replication scheme to exchange content automatically, based on both network performance and user interests. The proposed user-centric data replication scheme's evaluation, through simulation, shows improved results in comparison with existing solutions.