Toward heterogeneity-aware device-to-device data dissemination over Wi-Fi networks

In the last few years, there has been an explosive growth of the number of mobile devices. This has come with a plethora of new applications and usages. Among these new usages, there are many occasions for which a content has to be disseminated to a large number of mobile devices (e.g.,large-scale events providing a multi-media support, video streaming, ... ). To cope with network bandwidth limitations, new approaches, leveraging device-to-device (D2D) communications have emerged. Obviously, one of the main problem that D2D-based approaches have to face is the energy consumption. Furthermore, there is usually a huge heterogeneity among the devices: some may benefit of a good, fully charged battery while others may have only a couple of hours left before a power failure; the network bandwidth can also differ a lot. In this paper, based on a previous work, we propose an approach to take into account devices heterogeneity while disseminating data using D2D communications. Our simulations show that it is possible to spare the weakest batteries without wearing too much the good ones nor degrading too much the performance. Furthermore, taking into account the devices bandwidth capabilities can help to increase the dissemination speed.