Efficient opportunistic network creation in the context of future internet

Abstract

In the future internet era, mechanisms for extending the coverage of the wireless access infrastructure and service provisioning to locations that cannot be served otherwise or for engineering traffic whenever the infrastructure network is already congested will be required. Opportunistic networks are a promising solution towards this direction. Opportunistic networks are dynamically created, managed and terminated. During the creation phase, nodes that will constitute the opportunistic network needs, are selected and assigned with the proper spectrum and routing patterns. Accordingly, this paper focuses on the opportunistic network creation problem and particularly on the efficient selection of nodes to participate therein. A first step towards the formulation and solution of the opportunistic network creation problem is made, whereas indicative results are also presented in order to obtain some proof of concept for the proposed solution. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.