Hybrid information retrieval policies based on cooperative cache in mobile P2P networks

The concept of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) has been introduced into mobile networks, which has led to the emergence of mobile P2P networks, and originated potential applications in many fields. However,mobile P2P networks are subject to the limitations of transmission range, and highly dynamic and unpredictable network topology, giving rise to many new challenges for efficient information retrieval. In this paper, we propose an automatic and economical hybrid information retrieval approach based on cooperative cache. In this method, the region covered by a mobile P2P network is partitioned into subregions, each of which is identified by a unique ID and known to all peers. All the subregions then constitute a mobile Kademlia (MKad) network. The proposed hybrid retrieval approach aims to utilize the floodingbased and Distributed Hash Table (DHT)-based schemes in MKad for indexing and searching according to the designed utility functions. To further facilitate information retrieval, we present an effective cache update method by considering all relevant factors. At the same time, the combination of two different methods for cache update is also introduced. One of them is pull based on time stamp including two different pulls: an on-demand pull and a periodical pull, and the other is a push strategy using update records. Furthermore, we provide detailed mathematical analysis on the cache hit ratio of our approach. Simulation experiments in NS-2 showed that the proposed approach is more accurate and efficient than the existing methods.