Replication of location-dependent data in mobile ad hoc networks

Replication aims to improve accessibility, shorter response time and fault tolerance. When data is associated with geographical location in the network and valid only within a region around that location, the benefits from replication will apply only within this region. In mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs), nodes move in and out of a region and can even leave the network completely, which leads to frequent changing of replica-holders. As mobile nodes have usually constrained processing power and memory, replica holders need to be selected carefully in such networks, to reduce communication overhead. This paper proposes a solution for replication of location dependent data in mobile ad hoc networks. It will be shown that an improvement of 20% in hit ratio is achieved in accessing data items with only a moderate increase in total traffic generated. The scalability of the solution with regards to the increase in the number of nodes or data items in the network will also be shown to be good