AutoCast: A general-purpose data dissemination protocol and its application in vehicular networks

For today’s mobile applications in ubiquitous/pervasive environments, the classical client-server approach with tightly-coupled components does not suit anymore. Instead, new ways of information passing between such mobile components have to be searched: components will often have no dedicated communication partner, but rather send data into a certain direction in order to inform all participants in a specific area about an event or a status. This process is called data dissemination. In this paper we introduce a new data dissemination protocol named AutoCast. Unlike other approaches, AutoCast is flexible enough to support a broad variety of different types of mobile applications. The paper presents the major design decisions taken forAutoCast and the protocol features in detail.Athorough evaluation shows the effectiveness and efficiency of the new protocol.