Group formation and communication in mobile wi-fi networks

Use of Wi-Fi-capable mobile handheld devices is gaining momentum in university campuses. In addition, students often work as a group to perform collaborative tasks on campus. Consequently, there is a demand for group communication applications in mobile devices and a need to provide middleware support for such group communication over mobile wireless networks. This paper presents three common grouping scenarios as observed in university campuses. We then present data dissemination strategies for these grouping scenarios. We concentrate on update based applications such as file repositories, version controlling systems and calendar. Hence, we present protocols for short message dissemination such as control messages and updates. We evaluate the effectiveness of the protocols through an Android based middleware implementation as well as simulations. Our experiments demonstrate the effectiveness of the protocols in real life scenarios