20,345 research outputs found
Applications of Temporal Graph Metrics to Real-World Networks
Real world networks exhibit rich temporal information: friends are added and
removed over time in online social networks; the seasons dictate the
predator-prey relationship in food webs; and the propagation of a virus depends
on the network of human contacts throughout the day. Recent studies have
demonstrated that static network analysis is perhaps unsuitable in the study of
real world network since static paths ignore time order, which, in turn,
results in static shortest paths overestimating available links and
underestimating their true corresponding lengths. Temporal extensions to
centrality and efficiency metrics based on temporal shortest paths have also
been proposed. Firstly, we analyse the roles of key individuals of a corporate
network ranked according to temporal centrality within the context of a
bankruptcy scandal; secondly, we present how such temporal metrics can be used
to study the robustness of temporal networks in presence of random errors and
intelligent attacks; thirdly, we study containment schemes for mobile phone
malware which can spread via short range radio, similar to biological viruses;
finally, we study how the temporal network structure of human interactions can
be exploited to effectively immunise human populations. Through these
applications we demonstrate that temporal metrics provide a more accurate and
effective analysis of real-world networks compared to their static
counterparts.Comment: 25 page
Citizens and Institutions as Information Prosumers. The Case Study of Italian Municipalities on Twitter
The aim of this paper is to address changes in public communication following the advent of Internet social networking tools and the emerging web 2.0 technologies which are providing new ways of sharing information and knowledge. In particular public administrations are called upon to reinvent the governance of public affairs and to update the means for interacting with their communities. The paper develops an analysis of the distribution, diffusion and performance of the official profiles on Twitter adopted by the Italian municipalities (comuni) up to November 2013. It aims to identify the patterns of spatial distribution and the drivers of the diffusion of Twitter profiles; the performance of the profiles through an aggregated index, called the Twitter performance index (Twiperindex), which evaluates the profiles' activity with reference to the gravitational areas of the municipalities in order to enable comparisons of the activity of municipalities with different demographic sizes and functional roles. The results show that only a small portion of innovative municipalities have adopted Twitter to enhance e-participation and e-governance and that the drivers of the diffusion seem to be related either to past experiences and existing conditions (i.e. civic networks, digital infrastructures) developed over time or to strong local community awareness. The better performances are achieved mainly by small and medium-sized municipalities. Of course, the phenomenon is very new and fluid, therefore this analysis should be considered as a first step in ongoing research which aims to grasp the dynamics of these new means of public communication
Living on the Edge: The Role of Proactive Caching in 5G Wireless Networks
This article explores one of the key enablers of beyond G wireless
networks leveraging small cell network deployments, namely proactive caching.
Endowed with predictive capabilities and harnessing recent developments in
storage, context-awareness and social networks, peak traffic demands can be
substantially reduced by proactively serving predictable user demands, via
caching at base stations and users' devices. In order to show the effectiveness
of proactive caching, we examine two case studies which exploit the spatial and
social structure of the network, where proactive caching plays a crucial role.
Firstly, in order to alleviate backhaul congestion, we propose a mechanism
whereby files are proactively cached during off-peak demands based on file
popularity and correlations among users and files patterns. Secondly,
leveraging social networks and device-to-device (D2D) communications, we
propose a procedure that exploits the social structure of the network by
predicting the set of influential users to (proactively) cache strategic
contents and disseminate them to their social ties via D2D communications.
Exploiting this proactive caching paradigm, numerical results show that
important gains can be obtained for each case study, with backhaul savings and
a higher ratio of satisfied users of up to and , respectively.
Higher gains can be further obtained by increasing the storage capability at
the network edge.Comment: accepted for publication in IEEE Communications Magazin
The Dynamics of Vehicular Networks in Urban Environments
Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) have emerged as a platform to support
intelligent inter-vehicle communication and improve traffic safety and
performance. The road-constrained, high mobility of vehicles, their unbounded
power source, and the emergence of roadside wireless infrastructures make
VANETs a challenging research topic. A key to the development of protocols for
inter-vehicle communication and services lies in the knowledge of the
topological characteristics of the VANET communication graph. This paper
explores the dynamics of VANETs in urban environments and investigates the
impact of these findings in the design of VANET routing protocols. Using both
real and realistic mobility traces, we study the networking shape of VANETs
under different transmission and market penetration ranges. Given that a number
of RSUs have to be deployed for disseminating information to vehicles in an
urban area, we also study their impact on vehicular connectivity. Through
extensive simulations we investigate the performance of VANET routing protocols
by exploiting the knowledge of VANET graphs analysis.Comment: Revised our testbed with even more realistic mobility traces. Used
the location of real Wi-Fi hotspots to simulate RSUs in our study. Used a
larger, real mobility trace set, from taxis in Shanghai. Examine the
implications of our findings in the design of VANET routing protocols by
implementing in ns-3 two routing protocols (GPCR & VADD). Updated the
bibliography section with new research work
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