Applicability of eigenvector centrality principle to data replication in MANETs

Abstract

An efficient data replication service is crucial for improving data accessability and resource utilization as well as providing consistency in mobile ad hoc systems. In this study, we investigate the applicability of eigenvector centrality (EVC) principle as an aid to determine replica nodes for data items in mobile ad hoc networks. There exist several studies for mathematical modeling of networks and defining roles to nodes based on EVC analysis in static networks. For MANETs, utilization of EVC to determine dissemination power of nodes has been also recently explored. In contrast to prior work, we focus on the question of whether EVC analysis can be helpful in locating nodes with replica roles. We present our approaches for connectivity matrix construction that is significant for precise EVC analysis. Comparative simulation results and analysis are described for both data replication and dissemination as a function of system scalability. Simulation results show that connectivity matrix construction techniques do not result in too much disparity for the performance of data replication and identifying one of the replicas to be the eigenvector central node does not lead to an improvement in data accessability for large networks.