Interest spaces: A unified interest-based dissemination framework for opportunistic networks

Embedded ubiquitous computing systems (EUCS) promise to grow remarkably in the near future. For such systems, new communication technologies are constructed to cope with the increasing functional and temporal demans. Because of the ubiquitousness of mobile devices nowadays, for example, traditional publish/subscribe is no longer an adequate model for data dissemination in mobile networks. Since any node can publish content at any time, the network can get congested easily, so a dissemination paradigm where mobile nodes contribute with a fraction of their resources is needed, through the use of opportunistic networks. Furthermore, a suitable organization for data dissemination in mobile networks should be centered around interests. Thus, we propose a unified interest-based dissemination framework for opportunistic networks entitled Interest Spaces, which simplifies dissemination by just allowing applications to mark data items with certain tags, letting the framework handle the caching, routing, forwarding, and disseminating. Similarly, applications that need to subscribe to channels simply have to specify the tags they are interested in, and the framework does the rest. However, the Interest Spaces framework also allows applications to have more control over the dissemination process if they wish, by specifying various criteria and dissemination rules. In this article, we present the architecture and components of Interest Spaces. We focus on data aggregation at the context layer, showing through simulations the benefits it brings in opportunistic dissemination. We also present a real-life use case for Interest Spaces through Chatty, an opportunistic chat application.