MELOC: Memory and Location Optimized Caching Model for Small Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Caching is a common technique to improve efficiency of data access in MANETs (Mobile Ad hoc Networks), where users communicate using small portable devices connected by resource constraint wireless networks. In some MANET applications, controlling/reducing the cache locations are desirable due to security issues, restricted shared memory and maintenance cost. However, reducing the number of caches should be done by finding optimized cache locations (at highly connected and centrally located nodes) so that it does not affect the performance efficacy of data access in terms of response time. Existing cooperative caching approaches are deficient in finding such optimized cache locations as they do not focus on reducing the number of copies by finding their optimized locations to be shared among nodes. In this paper, we design and evaluate such a caching scheme using a single broker based MANET architecture to improve data access latency. Our scheme reduces the number of caches by efficiently placing them at locations which brings distant data closer to the source. The performance comparison of our scheme with one such recent caching scheme showcases improvement in data access efficiency by 30% along with reduction in number of cache locations by 72%. We evaluated data access efficiency using average hops and average roundtrip delay.