Data Replication in Mobile Tactical Networks

In tactical networks, nodes move according to tactical maneuvers and network partitions occur frequently. To mitigate this problem, data replication is commonly used to increase data availability and reduce data access delay. However, different tactical maneuvers lead to different node mobility models, which affect the performance of data replication schemes. In this paper, we comprehensively study the data replication problem in mobile tactical networks. We propose a new intra-group data replication scheme and extensively quantify the effects of mobility on different inter-group data replication schemes from various perspectives. The study is based on several metrics, which include the average access delay and data availability, and the temporal and spatial analysis of these values. Through extensive experiments, we study the effects of three typical mobility models in tactical networks on data replication, and identify the most suitable data replication schemes under various mobility models.