Socially-aware congestion control in ad-hoc networks: Current status and the way forward

Liaqat, Hannan Bin, Ali, Amjad, Qadir, Junaid, Bashir, Ali Kashif, Bilal, Muhammad and Majeed, Fiaz (2019) Socially-aware congestion control in ad-hoc networks: Current status and the way forward. Future Generation Computer Systems, 97. pp. 634-660. ISSN 0167-739X

Preview

Accepted Version Available under License Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial No Derivatives. Download (1MB) | Preview

Abstract

Ad-hoc social networks (ASNETs) represent a special type of traditional ad-hoc network in whicha user’s social properties (such as the social connections and communications metadata as wellas application data) are leveraged for offering enhanced services in a distributed infrastructurelessenvironments. However, the wireless medium, due to limited bandwidth, can easily suffer from theproblem of congestion when social metadata and application data are exchanged among nodes—a problem that is compounded by the fact that some nodes may act selfishly and not share itsresources. While a number of congestion control schemes have been proposed for the traditional ad-hoc networks, there has been limited focus on incorporating social awareness into congestion controlschemes. We revisit the existing traditional ad-hoc congestion control and data distribution protocolsand motivate the need for embedding social awareness into these protocols to improve performance.We report that although some work is available in opportunistic network that uses socially-awaretechniques to control the congestion issue, this area is largely unexplored and warrants more researchattention. In this regards, we highlight the current research progress and identify multiple futuredirections of research.