Deriving Policies Based on the Evaluation of the Suitability of Integrating Opportunistic Networks with Wireless Infrastructures

It is expected that the wireless world will need to encompass more local/temporary structures which can be created for exploiting dynamically appearing opportunities. Such structures, which can be called Opportunistic Networks (ONs), may comprise various terminals/devices, potentially organized in an infrastructure-less (ad-hoc) network mode, and be terminated at a set of access points of the infrastructure-based network. In this context, an operator owning a wireless network infrastructure, can exploit ONs for complementing the infrastructure, e.g., in order to resolve coverage expansions or for achieving green targets. Given the existence of opportunities in terms of available nodes and spectrum, the suitability of creating an ON can be determined by the type of involved applications and mobility levels. In this respect this paper aims to evaluate the suitability of establishing an ON as an extension to the wireless infrastructure by considering the anticipated benefits that such integration will bring about. The evaluation is based on extensive simulations so as to increase validity of results and recommendations with respect to the investigated ON suitability conditions. Finally, the simulation results and recommendations extracted from this evaluation study are used to derive policies that can be used by the operator of the wireless infrastructure to control the decision upon creating the ONs.