Coupons: Wide Scale Information Distribution for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks


Anargyros Garyfalos          Kevin C. Almeroth      
British Telecomm             Dept of Computer Science
Intelligent Systems Lab      UC-Santa Barbara      
Adastral Park                Santa Barbara, CA 93106
Ipswich IP5 3RE, UK
anargyros.garyfalos@bt.com   almeroth@cs.ucsb.edu 


Integrating ad hoc networks into the Internet requires overcoming 
a number of difficult technical challenges.  In particular, ad hoc 
networks must not only overcome intermittent connectivity, but they 
also need a strong incentive mechanism to encourage users to 
participate in the cooperative relay of data traffic.  We believe 
that inherent in solving these problems is the development of new 
applications that might, in fact, be more easily deployed in an 
ad hoc environment than in a traditional fixed network infrastructure.  
To this end, we develop and evaluate the idea of "coupons" for 
wide-scale information distribution in ad hoc networks. "Coupons" 
provides a simple incentive to nodes for relaying a piece of 
information. By using mechanisms on top of basic flooding to 
efficiently control distribution, it provides an elegant solution 
for scalable data dissemination with reduced network costs.