A Survey of Opportunistic Data Gathering and Dissemination Techniques

Opportunistic Networking (ON) is an emerging networking paradigm exploiting contact opportunities and node mobility to move data between nodes. Differently from infrastructure networks, where conventional information like network topology could be used to route messages, ON demands for new techniques able to cope with a dynamic evolving network topology and scenarios with limited or no information. Further, the heterogeneity of the autonomous actors involved in the network processes translates into different network protocol constraints which, if not considered carefully could lead to scalability problems of the devised solutions. In this context, in this article, we provide a survey of relevant opportunistic solutions and their motivation, with emphasis on the data gathering and dissemination processes. Despite the major research effort, it emerges there is no one silver bullet.