When Mobile Services Go Local

We propose a framework, called LINGER, for the support of cooperative creation and distribution of information contents in vehicular networks. The goal of LINGER is to dispatch and confine information in localized areas of a mobile network with no infrastructure availability and minimal protocol overhead. LINGER selects mobile nodes in a distributed, cooperative way and lets them act as "information bearers", ensuring uninterrupted information availability to as many nodes as possible in a desired region. Simulation results in vehicular scenarios with realistic node mobility prove that LINGER successfully drives information toward a target area from a far away source and keeps it local with negligible overhead. Further tests with a beaconing application leveraging the LINGER framework show that a mobile information bearer may be as reliable as an infrastructure-based access point in providing service to users. Finally, in a large-scale scenario, LINGER is proven to be effective for delay-tolerant broadcast applications.