A Protocol for Content-Based Communication in Disconnected Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In content-based communication, information flows towards interested hosts rather than towards specifically set destinations. This new style of communication perfectly fits the needs of applications dedicated to information sharing, news distribution, service advertisement and discovery, etc. In this paper we address the problem of supporting content-based communication in partially or intermittently connected mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The protocol we designed leverages on the concepts of opportunistic networking and delay-tolerant networking in order to account for the absence of end-to-end connectivity in disconnected MANETs. The paper provides an overview of the protocol, as well as simulation results that show how this protocol can perform in realistic conditions.