Context-based opportunistic forwarding in multi-hop cellular networks using mobile relays

Abstract

Multi-hop Cellular Networks can help address the increasing data demand and expected capacity constraints of cellular systems through the integration of cellular and relaying technologies. Multi-hop Cellular Networks using Mobile Relays (MCN-MR) are characterized by a decentralized and cooperative operation that provides new networking opportunities but also significant management challenges. In this context, this work investigates the use of opportunistic store-carry and forward schemes in MCN-MR networks to increase energy efficiency in the provision of delay tolerant services. In particular, the paper identifies for a two-hop MCN-MR scenario the optimum mobile relay location and the location from which the relay should start forwarding the information to the cellular base station in order to minimize the overall energy consumption. Taking this optimum configuration as a reference benchmark, the paper proposes then a scheme that relaxes the requirement to operate under the identified optimum configuration, and exploits context information provided by the cellular infrastructure. The proposed scheme is compared against other forwarding approaches, and the obtained results demonstrate the capacity of opportunistic forwarding in MCN-MR to reduce energy consumption for delay tolerant services.

Social‐aware content dissemination through opportunistic D2D communications

“…The concept of multihop D2D was firstly introduced in the context of delay tolerant networks, and many applicable scenarios of D2D networks have been proposed as well. Multihop D2D communication has drawn many researchers' attention in routing protocol and data dissemination …”

“…The previous works most related to ours are the works of Liu et al, Xu et al, and Coll‐Perales et al Liu et al studied the problem of multicopy multipath data dissemination based on a desired probability of satisfying delay constraint in mobile opportunistic D2D networks. Since the node participating in a D2D network are all social‐aware, however, the proposed algorithm did not make use of the nodes social dimension to optimize the efficiency of D2D communication.…”

“…Multihop D2D communication has drawn many researchers' attention in routing protocol and data dissemination. 7,9,[13][14][15][16] Recent studies have shown that the integration of opportunistic networking with multihop D2D network can provide significant benefits for mobile delay tolerant services. 9,14,15,[17][18][19] On one hand, the existing works on multihop D2D network mainly focused on developing various types of opportunistic routing algorithms and evaluating their performance gain through a number of simulations and empirical measurements.…”

“…Our scheme also investigates on multihop data dissemination within a delay probability constraint, but we lay the fundament on nodes social contact patterns to predict transmission delay. Coll‐Perales et al investigated the opportunistic forwarding to offload cellular traffic in multihop cellular networks using mobile relay. Their idea is similar to our work in exploiting the integration of opportunistic store‐carry and forward mechanisms in cellular networks at the expense of some possible end‐to‐end transmission delays.…”