Profile-Based Ad Hoc Social Networking Using Wi-Fi Direct on the Top of Android

Ad-hoc Social Networks have become popular to support novel applications related to location-based mobile services that are of great importance to users and businesses. Unlike traditional social services using a centralized server to fetch location, ad-hoc social network services support infrastructure less real-time social networking. It allows users to collaborate and share views anytime anywhere. However, current ad-hoc social network applications are either not available without rooting the mobile phones or don't filter the nearby users based on common interests without a centralized server. This paper presents an architecture and implementation of social networks on commercially available mobile devices that allow broadcasting name and a limited number of keywords representing users' interests without any connection in a nearby region to facilitate matching of interests. The broadcasting region creates a digital aura and is limited by WiFi region that is around 200 meters. The application connects users to form a group based on their profile or interests using peer-to-peer communication mode without using any centralized networking or profile matching infrastructure. The peer-to-peer group can be used for private communication when the network is not available

The Dark Side(-Channel) of Mobile Devices: A Survey on Network Traffic Analysis

In recent years, mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and tablets) have met an increasing commercial success and have become a fundamental element of the everyday life for billions of people all around the world. Mobile devices are used not only for traditional communication activities (e.g., voice calls and messages) but also for more advanced tasks made possible by an enormous amount of multi-purpose applications (e.g., finance, gaming, and shopping). As a result, those devices generate a significant network traffic (a consistent part of the overall Internet traffic). For this reason, the research community has been investigating security and privacy issues that are related to the network traffic generated by mobile devices, which could be analyzed to obtain information useful for a variety of goals (ranging from device security and network optimization, to fine-grained user profiling). In this paper, we review the works that contributed to the state of the art of network traffic analysis targeting mobile devices. In particular, we present a systematic classification of the works in the literature according to three criteria: (i) the goal of the analysis; (ii) the point where the network traffic is captured; and (iii) the targeted mobile platforms. In this survey, we consider points of capturing such as Wi-Fi Access Points, software simulation, and inside real mobile devices or emulators. For the surveyed works, we review and compare analysis techniques, validation methods, and achieved results. We also discuss possible countermeasures, challenges and possible directions for future research on mobile traffic analysis and other emerging domains (e.g., Internet of Things). We believe our survey will be a reference work for researchers and practitioners in this research field.Comment: 55 page

A Comparative Study of Bluetooth SPP, PAN and GOEP for Efficient Exchange of Healthcare Data

Objectives: Current research aims to address the challenges of exchanging healthcare information, since when this information has to be shared, this happens by specifically designed medical applications or even by the patients themselves. Among the problems that the Health Information Exchange (HIE) initiative is facing are that (i) third party health data cannot be accessed without internet, (ii) there exist crucial delays in accessing citizens’ data, (iii) the direct HIE can only happen among Healthcare Institutions. Methods: Towards the solution of these issues, a Device-to-Device (D2D) protocol has been specified, running on top of the Bluetooth protocol for efficient data exchange. This research is focused on this D2D protocol, by comparing the different Bluetooth profiles that can be used for transmitting this data, based on specific metrics considering the probabilities of transferring erroneous data. Findings: An evaluation of three Bluetooth profiles takes place, concluding that two of the three profiles must be used to respect the D2D protocol nature and be fully supported by the main market vendors’ operating systems. Novelty:Based on this evaluation, the specified D2D protocol has been built on top of state-of-the-art short-range distance communication technologies, fully supporting the healthcare ecosystem towards the HIE paradigm. Doi: 10.28991/esj-2021-01276 Full Text: PD

Android real-time audio communications over local wireless

This paper describes an Android mobile application that allows voice communications through short-range wireless networks, mainly Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. The application is able to replicate as close as possible the behavior of a two-way radio device. The application is designed to receive audio streams from multiple devices simultaneously and to send them. The main design considerations of the application, such as audio recording and playing, audio coding or data transmission, are explained through the paper.Belda Ortega, R.; Arce Vila, P.; De Fez Lava, I.; Fraile Gil, F.; Guerri Cebollada, JC. (2012). Android real-time audio communications over local wireless. Waves. (4):35-42. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/57677S3542

A Multi-Carrier Collaborative Solution to Minimize Connectivity-loss

Nearly two-thirds of Americans own a smart phone, and 19% of Americans rely on their smartphone for either accessing valuable information or staying connected with their friends and family across the globe [15]. Staying always-on and always-connected to the Internet is one of the most important and useful features of a smartphone. This connection is used by almost every single application on the device including web browsers, email clients, messaging applications, etc. Unfortunately, the cellular networks on our smartphones are not perfect and do not always have cellular signal. Our devices often lose Internet connection when users are on the go and traveling. This thesis presents a novel in-depth implementation and evaluation of what we can achieve when a user loses network connectivity. BleHttp, a library for Android, was developed that uses Bluetooth Low Energy to connect to other devices using a different carrier within close proximity of each other and make HTTP requests. In our results, we saw 100% success rates on HTTP requests with connected devices on a good connection. Average round trip times were tested to be as low as 1.5 seconds

An Empirical Study on Android for Saving Non-shared Data on Public Storage

With millions of apps that can be downloaded from official or third-party market, Android has become one of the most popular mobile platforms today. These apps help people in all kinds of ways and thus have access to lots of user's data that in general fall into three categories: sensitive data, data to be shared with other apps, and non-sensitive data not to be shared with others. For the first and second type of data, Android has provided very good storage models: an app's private sensitive data are saved to its private folder that can only be access by the app itself, and the data to be shared are saved to public storage (either the external SD card or the emulated SD card area on internal FLASH memory). But for the last type, i.e., an app's non-sensitive and non-shared data, there is a big problem in Android's current storage model which essentially encourages an app to save its non-sensitive data to shared public storage that can be accessed by other apps. At first glance, it seems no problem to do so, as those data are non-sensitive after all, but it implicitly assumes that app developers could correctly identify all sensitive data and prevent all possible information leakage from private-but-non-sensitive data. In this paper, we will demonstrate that this is an invalid assumption with a thorough survey on information leaks of those apps that had followed Android's recommended storage model for non-sensitive data. Our studies showed that highly sensitive information from billions of users can be easily hacked by exploiting the mentioned problematic storage model. Although our empirical studies are based on a limited set of apps, the identified problems are never isolated or accidental bugs of those apps being investigated. On the contrary, the problem is rooted from the vulnerable storage model recommended by Android. To mitigate the threat, we also propose a defense framework

Effective and Efficient Communication and Collaboration in Participatory Environments

Participatory environments pose significant challenges to deploying real applications. This dissertation investigates exploitation of opportunistic contacts to enable effective and efficient data transfers in challenged participatory environments. There are three main contributions in this dissertation: 1. A novel scheme for predicting contact volume during an opportunistic contact (PCV); 2. A method for computing paths with combined optimal stability and capacity (COSC) in opportunistic networks; and 3. An algorithm for mobility and orientation estimation in mobile environments (MOEME). The proposed novel scheme called PCV predicts contact volume in soft real-time. The scheme employs initial position and velocity vectors of nodes along with the data rate profile of the environment. PCV enables efficient and reliable data transfers between opportunistically meeting nodes. The scheme that exploits capacity and path stability of opportunistic networks is based on PCV for estimating individual link costs on a path. The total path cost is merged with a stability cost to strike a tradeoff for maximizing data transfers in the entire participatory environment. A polynomial time dynamic programming algorithm is proposed to compute paths of optimum cost. We propose another novel scheme for Real-time Mobility and Orientation Estimation for Mobile Environments (MOEME), as prediction of user movement paves way for efficient data transfers, resource allocation and event scheduling in participatory environments. MOEME employs the concept of temporal distances and uses logistic regression to make real time estimations about user movement. MOEME relies only on opportunistic message exchange and is fully distributed, scalable, and requires neither a central infrastructure nor Global Positioning System. Indeed, accurate prediction of contact volume, path capacity and stability and user movement can improve performance of deployments. However, existing schemes for such estimations make use of preconceived patterns or contact time distributions that may not be applicable in uncertain environments. Such patterns may not exist, or are difficult to recognize in soft-real time, in open environments such as parks, malls, or streets

Advanced Protocols for Peer-to-Peer Data Transmission in Wireless Gigabit Networks

This thesis tackles problems on IEEE 802.11 MAC layer, network layer and application layer, to further push the performance of wireless P2P applications in a holistic way. It contributes to the better understanding and utilization of two major IEEE 802.11 MAC features, frame aggregation and block acknowledgement, to the design and implementation of opportunistic networks on off-the-shelf hardware and proposes a document exchange protocol, including document recommendation. First, this thesis contributes a measurement study of the A-MPDU frame aggregation behavior of IEEE 802.11n in a real-world, multi-hop, indoor mesh testbed. Furthermore, this thesis presents MPDU payload adaptation (MPA) to utilize A-MPDU subframes to increase the overall throughput under bad channel conditions. MPA adapts the size of MAC protocol data units to channel conditions, to increase the throughput and lower the delay in error-prone channels. The results suggest that under erroneous conditions throughput can be maximized by limiting the MPDU size. As second major contribution, this thesis introduces Neighborhood-aware OPPortunistic networking on Smartphones (NOPPoS). NOPPoS creates an opportunistic, pocket-switched network using current generation, off-the-shelf mobile devices. As main novel feature, NOPPoS is highly responsive to node mobility due to periodic, low-energy scans of its environment, using Bluetooth Low Energy advertisements. The last major contribution is the Neighborhood Document Sharing (NDS) protocol. NDS enables users to discover and retrieve arbitrary documents shared by other users in their proximity, i.e. in the communication range of their IEEE 802.11 interface. However, IEEE 802.11 connections are only used on-demand during file transfers and indexing of files in the proximity of the user. Simulations show that NDS interconnects over 90 \% of all devices in communication range. Finally, NDS is extended by the content recommendation system User Preference-based Probability Spreading (UPPS), a graph-based approach. It integrates user-item scoring into a graph-based tag-aware item recommender system. UPPS utilizes novel formulas for affinity and similarity scoring, taking into account user-item preference in the mass diffusion of the recommender system. The presented results show that UPPS is a significant improvement to previous approaches

A location-based communication platform: integrating file sharing with interpersonal contact

Gemstone Team FLIP (File Lending in Proximity)Sharing on the Internet, even among computing devices in close proximity, is both inefficient and inconvenient. Online services and websites do not take advantage of easily obtainable geo-locational data that can improve sharing. We at Team FLIP have extended an existing mapping system called TerpNav with functionality that allows proximate users to interact and collaborate while sharing digital information. This study demonstrates both the feasibility of and demand for a more efficient and interactive method to exchange information among proximate networks of people