Hybrid content forwarding technique for Bluetooth communication environment

In opportunistic networks, content forwarding is an exciting challenge due to no direct knowledge of routes to intended destinations. Forwarding decision is often based on node's local information or information provided by the encountering nodes to reduce the communication cost. This paper presents an orthodox yet unexplored approach for efficient content forwarding in Bluetooth communication environment. The new approach combines the characteristics of two different routing techniques, 1) social centrality based forwarding techniques used in opportunistic networks where nodes are sparsely exists, 2) traditional mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) protocols where proximity of nodes are close enough to form ad-hoc networks; hence named as Hybrid Content Forwarding Technique (HCF). The experimental results have shown that HCF not only improves the overall delivery ratio and delay but also reduces communication cost. Moreover, HCF efficiently adapts its forwarding technique according to network conditions.