Better mobile client's cache reusability and data access time in a wireless broadcast environment

Data broadcasting is an efficient data dissemination method in a wireless client-server system. A data server broadcasts data items periodically, and mobile clients cache data items to save communication bandwidth, resource usage, and data access time. The server also broadcasts invalidation reports (IRs) to maintain the consistency between server data and the clients' cached data. Most existing cache invalidation policies in a wireless environment based on IRs simply purge the entire cache after a client has been disconnected long enough to miss a certain number (window size) of IRs. We present a cache invalidation scheme that provides better cache reusability and better data access time after a long disconnection. Our scheme attempts to increase cache reusability by respecting update rates at a server, broadcast intervals, the communication bandwidth, and data sizes, as well as disconnection time. Simulation results show that the increased cache reusability of our scheme can improve the data access time after a long disconnection. (c) 2007 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.