Efficient Cooperative Caching Schemes for Data Access in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks.

We study cooperative caching technique for supporting data access in ad hoc networks. Two protocols that are based on the notion of zone are proposed. The IXP protocol is push-based in the sense that a mobile node would broadcast an index message to the nodes in its zone to advertise a caching event. A data requester can fetch a needed item from a nearby node if it knows that it has cached the data. The second protocol, called DPIP, is explicitly pull-based with implicit index pushing property. A data requester may broadcast a special request message to the nodes in its zone asking them to help satisfy its demand. However, this is done only if its own caching information does not result in a successful fetch. Performance study shows that the proposed protocols can significantly improve system performance when compared to existing caching schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]