Towards Decentralized, Energy- and Privacy-Aware Device-to-Device Content Delivery

Abstract. Device-to-Device (D2D) content delivery is a new approach to directly exchange content between mobile devices, which allows to offload traffic from infrastructure-based networks and thus reduces the risk of congestion. While centralized D2D approaches rely on the mobile operator to discover nearby devices and initiate a content transfer, in decentralized D2D the devices autonomously and opportunistically or-ganize themselves to deliver content to each other. The latter approach is more flexible as it does not depend on a single operator, however, it typically requires more energy for scanning other devices. Another issue is privacy, since the decentralized approach reveals a user’s interest for content to all devices in proximity. Therefore, this paper sketches an new approach towards decentralized energy- and privacy-aware D2D content delivery. The proposed approach addresses the energy loss that occurs when constantly and spontaneously scanning multiple unknown devices for content. Furthermore, the paper identifies privacy requirements and proposes first steps towards a privacy-aware D2D solution