Neighbour Selection Protocol for Information Dissemination through P2P Interactions in Opportunistic Network

In Opportunistic Networks, information forwarding is involved when nodes are in range. Absence of network topology knowledge of Opportunistic Network makes information forwarding the most compelling challenge. Endto-end communication in Opportunistic Networks is supported naturally through nodes’ mobility. Disconnected peers are opportunistically connected to each other dynamically as information is disseminated to the intended destination. Flooding is data dissemination-based technique which diffuses the information to all nodes in range in the network which eventually reach the destination. This form of dissemination congests the network and create considerable amount of network overheads. In this paper, a social-based neighbor selection protocol is proposed to enhance the homogeneous information dissemination through peer-to-peer interaction in Opportunistic Networks. Selection mechanism is introduced, which enables peers to select its neighbour based on Frequency in Range and Frequency of Interaction metrics. Connected pair of nodes exchange homogeneous information during opportunistic encounters with the aim of disseminating information across the network. A potential neighbour with larger metrics values is selected among all neighboring nodes in communication range to disseminate information. The impact of our protocol to information dissemination was studied and has been analyzed in simulation tool developed in Java. Experimental results obtained showed that the proposed neighbor selection protocol is efficient and useful for homogeneous information dissemination through peer-to-peer interaction in Opportunistic networks. Keywords— context information, frequency in range, frequency of interaction, homogeneous information, information dissemination, neighbor selection, opportunistic network, peer-to-peer interaction.