Data Dissemination in Opportunistic Networks

Data dissemination is the main research and implementation challenge in opportunistic networks. It addresses the question of how to forward data in a resource-efficient but also fast way. The main concept is called store-carry-forward, which means that nodes forward the data to other nodes, which carry it around until finding a better forwarder or the destination itself. This process can be very fast when the network is dense (faster than with infrastructure) but can also be very slow when the network is very sparse and contacts between nodes are rare. In this chapter, we will introduce different families of data dissemination protocols, starting from very simple ones and progressing to more complex and efficient ones.