The Potential of Mobile Opportunistic Networks for Data Disseminations

Abstract

Mobile opportunistic networks make use of node mobility to provide occasional contact opportunities for mobile devices to deliver data. In this paper, we investigate the inherent properties of data disseminations in mobile opportunistic networks by answering the question regarding how far and how fast a packet can be disseminated in mobile opportunistic networks. This problem has been overlooked by recent research, but it is very important because it reveals the potential for mobile opportunistic networks to support emerging applications such as mobile commerce and emergency services that may involve time and location sensitive information dissemination. Our investigations are taken from the perspectives of small and large scales. From the perspective of small scale, the probability distributions of the minimum time needed by the data to spread to a given region, namely, T, are deduced for both the one-copy case and the multiple-copy case. From the perspective of large scale, by using the large deviation theory, the probability distributions of T are deduced for both the one-copy case and the multiple-copy case when the destination region is far enough from the data origin.