Data Modeling for Socially Based Routing in Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic networks are the next step in the evolution of mobile networks, especially, since the number of human-carried mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets has greatly increased in the past few years. They assume unselfish communication between devices based on a store-carry-and-forward paradigm, where mobile nodes carry each other’s data through the network, which is exchanged opportunistically. In this chapter, we present opportunistic networks in detail and show various real-life scenarios where such networks have been successfully deployed or are about to be, such as disaster management, smart cities, wildlife tracking, context-aware platforms, etc. We highlight the challenges in designing successful data routing and dissemination algorithms for opportunistic networks, and present some of the most important techniques and algorithms that have been proposed in the past few years. We show the most important issues for each of them, and attempt to propose solutions for improving opportunistic routing and dissemination. Finally, we present what the future trends in this area of research might be, from information-centric networks to the Internet of Things.