EPICS: Fair Opportunistic Multi-Content Dissemination

Abstract

Achieving efficient content dissemination in mobile opportunistic networks becomes a big challenge when content sizes are large and require more capacity than what contact opportunities between nodes may offer. Content fragmentation solves only part of the problem, as nodes still need to decide which fragment to send when a contact happens. To address this problem, we propose EPICS, a protocol designed to quickly exchange large contents in opportunistic networks. Using grey relational analysis, EPICS is able to balance the distribution of contents that have different sizes and creation times, providing fairer delay distribution and faster dissemination. We implemented and evaluated EPICS through real experimentation using Android devices. Results show that EPICS significantly reduces content dissemination delays when compared to classic approaches.