Consistency Management Strategies for Data Replication in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In a mobile ad hoc network, data replication drastically improves data availability. However, since mobile hosts' mobility causes frequent network partitioning, consistency management of data operations on replicas becomes a crucial issue. In such an environment, the global consistency of data operations on replicas is not desirable by many applications. Thus, new consistency maintenance based on local conditions such as location and time need to be investigated. This paper attempts to classify different consistency levels according to requirements from applications and provides protocols to realize them. We report simulation results to investigate the characteristics of these consistency protocols in a mobile ad hoc network.