MOSDEN: A Scalable Mobile Collaborative Platform for Opportunistic Sensing Applications

Mobile smartphones along with embedded sensors have become an efficient enabler for various mobile applications including opportunistic sensing. The hi-tech advances in smartphones are opening up a world of possibilities. This paper proposes a mobile collaborative platform called MOSDEN that enables and supports opportunistic sensing at run time. MOSDEN captures and shares sensor data across multiple apps, smartphones and users. MOSDEN supports the emerging trend of separating sensors from application-specific processing, storing and sharing. MOSDEN promotes reuse and re-purposing of sensor data hence reducing the efforts in developing novel opportunistic sensing applications. MOSDEN has been implemented on Android-based smartphones and tablets. Experimental evaluations validate the scalability and energy efficiency of MOSDEN and its suitability towards real world applications. The results of evaluation and lessons learned are presented and discussed in this paper.Comment: Accepted to be published in Transactions on Collaborative Computing, 2014. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1310.405

Three applications for mobile epidemic algorithms

This paper presents a framework for the pervasive sharing of data using wireless networks. 'FarCry' uses the mobility of users to carry files between separated networks. Through a mix of ad-hoc and infrastructure-based wireless networking, files are transferred between users without their direct involvement. As users move to different locations, files are then transmitted on to other users, spreading and sharing information. We examine three applications of this framework. Each of these exploits the physically proximate nature of social gatherings. As people group together in, for example, business meetings and cafés, this can be taken as an indication of similar interests, e.g. in the same presentation or in a type of music. MediaNet affords sharing of media files between strangers or friends, MeetingNet shares business documents in meetings, and NewsNet shares RSS feeds between mobile users. NewsNet also develops the use of pre-emptive caching: collecting information from others not for oneself, but for the predicted later sharing with others. We offer observations on developing this system for a mobile, multi-user, multi-device environment

The Quest for a Killer App for Opportunistic and Delay Tolerant Networks (Invited Paper)

Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) has attracted a lot of attention from the research community in recent years. Much work have been done regarding network architectures and algorithms for routing and forwarding in such networks. At the same time as many show enthusiasm for this exciting new research area there are also many sceptics, who question the usefulness of research in this area. In the past, we have seen other research areas become over-hyped and later die out as there was no killer app for them that made them useful in real scenarios. Real deployments of DTN systems have so far mostly been limited to a few niche scenarios, where they have been done as proof-of-concept field tests in research projects. In this paper, we embark upon a quest to find out what characterizes a potential killer applications for DTNs. Are there applications and situations where DTNs provide services that could not be achieved otherwise, or have potential to do it in a better way than other techniques? Further, we highlight some of the main challenges that needs to be solved to realize these applications and make DTNs a part of the mainstream network landscape

Delay Tolerant Networking over the Metropolitan Public Transportation

We discuss MDTN: a delay tolerant application platform built on top of the Public Transportation System (PTS) and able to provide service access while exploiting opportunistic connectivity. Our solution adopts a carrier-based approach where buses act as data collectors for user requests requiring Internet access. Simulations based on real maps and PTS routes with state-of-the-art routing protocols demonstrate that MDTN represents a viable solution for elastic nonreal-time service delivery. Nevertheless, performance indexes of the considered routing policies show that there is no golden rule for optimal performance and a tailored routing strategy is required for each specific case