On exploiting priority relation graph for reliable multi-path communication in mobile social networks

© 2018 Elsevier Inc. A mobile social network (MSN) consists of certain amount of mobile users with social characteristics, and it provides data delivery concerning social relationships between mobile users. In MSN, ordinary people contact each other more frequently if they have more social features in common. In this paper, we apply a new topology structure–priority relation graph (PRG) to evaluate the data delivery routing in MSN on the system-level. By using the natural order of nodes’ representation, the diameter, the regular degree and the multi-path technology, we determine the priority relation graph-based social feature routing (PRG-SFR) algorithm to find disjointed multi-paths in MSN. Here, the multi-path technology can be exploited for ensuring that, between each pair of sender and receiver, the important information can be delivered through a highly reliable path. Then we calculate the tolerant ability of ‘faults’ and estimate the availability of MSN on the theoretical level. Finally, we analyze the efficiency of PRG-SFR algorithm from the numerical standpoint in terms of fault tolerance, forwarding number, transmission time and delivery rate. Moreover, we make comparisons between PRG-SFR algorithm and certain state-of-the-art technologies

Social Data Offloading in D2D-Enhanced Cellular Networks by Network Formation Games

Recently, cellular networks are severely overloaded by social-based services, such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, in which thousands of clients subscribe a common content provider (e.g., a popular singer) and download his/her content updates all the time. Offloading such traffic through complementary networks, such as a delay tolerant network formed by device-to-device (D2D) communications between mobile subscribers, is a promising solution to reduce the cellular burdens. In the existing solutions, mobile users are assumed to be volunteers who selfishlessly deliver the content to every other user in proximity while moving. However, practical users are selfish and they will evaluate their individual payoffs in the D2D sharing process, which may highly influence the network performance compared to the case of selfishless users. In this paper, we take user selfishness into consideration and propose a network formation game to capture the dynamic characteristics of selfish behaviors. In the proposed game, we provide the utility function of each user and specify the conditions under which the subscribers are guaranteed to converge to a stable network. Then, we propose a practical network formation algorithm in which the users can decide their D2D sharing strategies based on their historical records. Simulation results show that user selfishness can highly degrade the efficiency of data offloading, compared with ideal volunteer users. Also, the decrease caused by user selfishness can be highly affected by the cost ratio between the cellular transmission and D2D transmission, the access delays, and mobility patterns

Vehicular Networks for Combating a Worldwide Pandemic: Preventing the Spread of COVID-19

As a worldwide pandemic, the coronavirus disease-19 (COVID-19) has caused serious restrictions in people's social life, along with the loss of lives, the collapse of economies and the disruption of humanitarian aids. Despite the advance of technological developments, we, as researchers, have witnessed that several issues need further investigation for a better response to a pandemic outbreak. With this motivation, researchers recently started developing ideas to stop or at least reduce the spread of the pandemic. While there have been some prior works on wireless networks for combating a pandemic scenario, vehicular networks and their potential bottlenecks have not yet been fully examined. This article provides an extensive discussion on vehicular networking for combating a pandemic. We provide the major applications of vehicular networking for combating COVID-19 in public transportation, in-vehicle diagnosis, border patrol and social distance monitoring. Next, we identify the unique characteristics of the collected data in terms of privacy, flexibility and coverage, then highlight corresponding future directions in privacy preservation, resource allocation, data caching and data routing. We believe that this work paves the way for the development of new products and algorithms that can facilitate the social life and help controlling the spread of the pandemic.Comment: 8pages5figure

Methodological evaluation of architectural alternatives for an aeronautical delay tolerant network

In this paper, we use graph analysis to evaluate the network architecture of a large scale delay tolerant network (DTN) of transoceanic aircraft. At LCN (Local Computer Networks) 2014 we analyzed information propagation inside a pure opportunistic version of this network, a scenario constructed from more than 2,500 traces of transatlantic flights in which communications relied only on the sporadic contacts between airplanes. As only a small percentage of the nodes were capable of performing efficient air-to-ground communications we concluded the need to devise a more suitable network architecture by combining opportunistic and satellite communication systems. We propose a generic methodology based on graph analysis (both static and dynamic temporal) to evaluate the different ways to create this new architecture. We show the architectural combination that most improves the network delivery performance while minimizing its deployment costs