Caching strategies in opportunistic networks

In this paper we examine content distribution in opportunistic networks. We design and evaluate strategies by which a node fetches and shares contents on behalf of other nodes, even when the contents are not of its own interest. We propose four relaying/caching options for improving the use of network resources: relay request on demand, hop-limit, greedy relay request, and weighted relay request with allocated caching positions. We also compare our strategies with a strategy from the literature. The proposed strategies are implemented in the OMNeT++ simulator, and evaluated on mobility traces with different churn levels. The results show that the performance of opportunistic caching is strongly dependent on the level of churn in the network. However, we find a strategy that outperforms the rest in all of the explored network settings.