Decentralized content sharing in mobile ad-hoc networks: A survey

The evolution of smart mobile devices has significantly impacted the way we generate and share contents and introduced a huge volume of Internet traffic. To address this issue and take advantage of the short-range communication capabilities of smart mobile devices, the decentralized content sharing approach has emerged as a suitable and promising alternative. Decentralized content sharing uses a peer-to-peer network among colocated smart mobile device users to fulfil content requests. Several articles have been published to date to address its different aspects including group management, interest extraction, message forwarding, participation incentive, and content replication. This survey paper summarizes and critically analyzes recent advancements in decentralized content sharing and highlights potential research issues that need further consideration.