Disruption-tolerant content-driven information dissemination in partially connected military tactical radio networks

In this paper we address the problem of supporting communication in partially connected military tactical radio networks. In such networks traditional multi-hop forwarding techniques cannot guarantee end-to-end communication. Alternative techniques must therefore be designed to compensate for connectivity disruption. We propose a communication model that relies on opportunistic disruption-tolerant networking techniques to support information dissemination in highly fragmented military tactical radio networks. This model we designed is specifically devoted to content-driven information dissemination: pieces of information can be published on a terminal, disseminate in the network by being stored, carried, and forwarded by mobile terminals, and be received ultimately by terminals that have subscribed to receive this kind of information. This model was implemented in a middleware platform we developed, and tested on an experimental testbed composed of the French VHF battlefield radios PR4G.