Abstract
Floating content is a promising communication paradigm based on pure ad hoc communications. It has a huge usage potential for various context-aware applications. In this paper, recent research related to floating content communication paradigm is presented. This paper focuses on some of the vital experiences ranging from analytical models to simulations to the real-world implementations. Some important results on the performance of floating content based on analytical models, simulations, and real-world implementations are presented. These results not only show the usefulness of the existing analytical models but also explain the ways of extending these existing models for incorporating new communication technologies and mobility models. This paper also highlights the energy consumption of smartphone applications based on floating content and explains how new communication technologies impact the feasibility of using floating content as a communication service for different applications. Based on the experiences, new future directions are highlighted that can prove to be very beneficial for researchers investigating this area.