Replication in Intermittently Connected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

Data replication is a widely used redundancy scheme for improving data availability and performance in distributed systems. However, currently existing replication schemes do not take into account that the mobile ad hoc network is often partitioned in smaller portions, enjoying only intermittent connectivity thanks to mobile nodes traveling across partitions. A novel replication scheme, RICMAN (Replication in Intermittently Connected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks), is proposed to address this problem. Desired data items are replicated to the nodes with rather stable neighboring topology and with enough resources such as energy and storage space. A semi-probabilistic data disseminating protocol is employed to distribute the replicas and propagate the updates, which can identify the potential mobile nodes traveling across partitions to maximize data delivery despite network partitions and intermittent connectivity. Simulation results demonstrate that RICMAN scheme leads to good successful data access ratios and latencies with small overheads.