Mobile devices integrating wireless short-range communication technologies make possible new applications for spontaneous communication, interaction and collaboration. An interesting approach is to use collaboration to facilitate communication when mobile devices are not able to establish direct communication paths. Opportunistic networks, formed when mobile devices communicate with each other while users are in close proximity, can help applications still exchange data in such cases. In opportunistic networks routes are built dynamically, as each mobile device acts according to the store-carry-and-forward paradigm. Thus, contacts between mobile devices are seen as opportunities to move data towards destination. In such networks data dissemination is done using forwarding and is usually based on a publish subscribe model. Opportunistic data dissemination also raises questions concerning user privacy and incentives. Such problems are addressed dierently by various opportunistic data dissemination techniques. In this we analyze existing relevant work in the area of data dissemination in opportunistic networks. We present the categories of a proposed taxonomy that capture the capabilities of data dissemination techniques used in such networks. Moreover, we survey relevant data dissemination techniques and analyze them using the proposed taxonomy. In this we analyze existing work in the area of data dissemination in opportunistic networks. We analyze dif- ferent collaboration-based communication solutions, em- phasizing their capabilities to opportunistically dissemi- nate data. We present the advantages and disadvantages of the analyzed solutions. Furthermore, we propose the categories of a taxonomy that captures the capabilities of data dissemination techniques used in opportunistic net- works. Using the categories of the proposed taxonomy, we also present a critical analysis of four opportunistic data dissemination solutions. To our knowledge, a classication of data dissemination techniques has never been previously proposed.
The opportunistic networking idea stems from the critical review of the research field on Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET). After more than ten years of research in the MANET field, this promising technology still has not massively entered the mass market. One of the main reasons of this is nowadays seen in the lack of a practical approach to the design of infrastructure-less multi-hop ad hoc networks [186, 185]. One of the main approaches of conventional MANET research is to design protocols that mask the features of mobile networks via the routing (and transport) layer, so as to expose to higher layers an Internet-like network abstraction. Wireless networks’ peculiarities, such as mobility of users, disconnection of nodes, network partitions, links’ instability, are seen—as in the legacy Internet—as exceptions. This often results in the design of MANET network stacks that are significantly complex and unstable [107].