Content-centric Wireless Networking

Mobile devices, such as smartphones, provide a readily available basis for mobile offloading [2] and mobile applications [3]. Given the density of devices in urban scenarios, the key challenge is to discover and connect to devices participating in the same application, i.e., that provide or request content of interest. However, the network-centric design of 802.11 requires instantiation of and association to a network prior to communication, requiring iterative network associations and subsequent discovery. This is because, device and network discovery can not indicate content or application availability; conversely, content discovery requires a shared network. The associated time and communication overhead of trial-and-error associations thereby renders discovery of the right devices within an application impractical.