Energy efficient cache invalidation in a disconnected mobile environment

Abstract

Caching at mobile host is a prominent technique for improving the performance of wireless data dissemination. It can reduce number of uplink requests, server load, query latency and can increase data availability. A cache invalidation strategy ensures that cached data in a host has same value as on the origin server. Due to battery energy constraints of mobile host and unreliable limited bandwidth over the wireless channel, the host may disconnect from the server. Frequent disconnections of a host add many challenges to the cache invalidation process. In this paper, we present a Synchronous Stateful (SS) cache maintenance strategy with the objectives to minimize the overheads for mobile hosts to validate their cache on reconnection, reduce the use of wireless channel and conserve the host energy. Simulation experiments are performed to evaluate the proposed strategy and compare it with Asynchronous Stateful (AS) scheme. Results show that our strategy performs better in terms of reconnection overheads, bandwidth utilization and host energy consumption. © Springer-Verlag 2004.