Content-Based Routing in Highly Dynamic Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The decoupling and asynchrony properties of the content-based publish-subscribe paradigm makes it very appealing for dynamic wireless networks, like those that often occur in pervasive computing scenarios. Unfortunately, most of the currently available content-based publish-subscribe middleware do not fit the requirements of such extreme scenarios, in which the network is subject to very frequent topological reconfigurations due to mobility of nodes. In this paper we propose a protocol for content-based message dissemination tailored to Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) showing frequent topological changes. Message routing occurs without the support of any network-wide dispatching infrastructure thus eliminating the need of maintaining such infrastructure on top of a physical network continuously changing its topology. The paper reports an extensive simulation study that confirms the suitability of the proposed approach along with a stochastic analysis of the central mechanism adopted by the protocol.