Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks (OMSNs), formed by people moving around carrying mobile devices, enhance spontaneous communication among users that opportunistically encounter each other without additional infrastructure. The OMSNs we discuss here are special kind of delay tolerant networks (DTNs) that help enhance spontaneous interaction and communication among the users that opportunistically encounter each other, without additional infrastructure. Most of the existing routing algorithms proposed for the general-purpose DTNs do not consider social characteristics of nodes. A few papers consider static social feature. In this paper, we introduce the concepts of dynamic social feature and its enhancement enhanced dynamic social feature to capture nodes’ dynamic contact behavior. Also, we introduce an online social feature which catches nodes’ online behavior with other nodes. We propose three novel routing algorithms based on these features. The first one called EDSF uses enhanced dynamic social features for routing. The second one named FC adopts online social features for routing. And the third one FCSF utilizes the combination of both enhanced social features and online social features. The analysis of the algorithms is given by running simulations on real traces on an OMSN to show that our new algorithms outperform in the terms of delivery rate, time latency and number of forwardings.

The widespread availability of mobile devices along with recent advancements in networking capabilities make opportunistic mobile social networks (MSNs) one of the most promising technologies for next-generation mobile applications. Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks supplies a new perspective of these networks that can help you enhance spontaneous interaction and communication among users that opportunistically encounter each other, without additional infrastructure support. The book explores recent developments in the theoretical, algorithmic, and application-based aspects of opportunistic MSNs. It presents the motivation behind opportunistic MSNs, describes their underpinning and key concepts, and also explores ongoing research. Supplies a systematic study of the constrained information flow problem Reviews the recent literature on social influence in complex social networks Presents a complete overview of the fundamental characteristics of link-level connectivity in opportunistic networks Explains how mobility and dynamic network structure impact the processing capacity of opportunistic MSNs for cloud applications Provides a comprehensive overview of the routing schemes proposed in opportunistic MSNs Taking an in-depth look at multicast protocols, the book explains how to provide pervasive data access to mobile users without the support of cellular or Internet infrastructures. Considering privacy and security issues, it surveys a collection of cutting-edge approaches for minimizing privacy leakage during opportunistic user profile exchange. The book concludes by introducing a framework for mobile peer rating using a multi-dimensional metric scheme based on encounter and location testing. It also explains how to develop a network emulation test bed for validating the efficient operation of opportunistic network applications and protocols in scenarios that involve both node mobility and wireless communication.

The widespread availability of mobile devices coupled with recent advancements in networking capabilities make opportunistic networks one of the most promising technologies for next-generation mobile applications. This book covers recent developments in the theoretical and algorithmic aspects of opportunistic mobile social networks. It presents a new perspective of mobile social networks, the opportunistic MSNs, which aim to enhance spontaneous interaction/communication among people that opportunistically encounter each other, without infrastructure support.

Routing in Opportunistic Networks focuses on the basics of opportunistic networks, modeling and communication in opportunistic networks, routing in opportunistic networks, and collaboration and cooperation in opportunistic networks. The editors will cover such topics as mobility characterization and discovery in opportunistic networks, scheduling and medium access control in opportunistic networks as well as testbed, tools, and measurements for opportunistic networks.

Mobile Social Networks (MSNs) where people contact each other through mobile devices have become increasingly popular. In this thesis, we study a special kind of MSNs formed impromptu (IMSNs) when people gather together at conferences, social events, etc. Multicast is an important routing service which supports the dissemination of messages to a group of users. Most of the existing related multicast algorithms are designed for general Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) where social factors are neglected. Recently, a social-profile-based multicast (SPM) routing protocol that utilizes the static social features in user profiles has been proposed. We believe that in a dynamic environment such as the IMSN, static social features may not reflect people's dynamic behavior. Therefore, in this work, we propose the concept of dynamic social features and enhanced dynamic social features to capture people's contact behavior. Based on them, we design a novel social-similarity-based multicast algorithm (Multi-Sosim) and its enhancement (E-Multi-Sosim). Simulation results using a real conference trace representing an IMSN show that the E-Multi-Sosim algorithm performs better than the Multi-Sosim algorithm, which outperforms its variations and the existing one using static social features.

Opportunistic networks provide an ad hoc communication medium without the need for an infrastructure network, by leveraging human encounters and mobile devices. Routing protocols in opportunistic networks frequently rely upon encounter histories to build up meaningful data to use for informed routing decisions. This thesis shows that it is possible to use pre-existing social-network information to improve existing opportunistic routing protocols, and that these self-reported social networks have a particular benefit when used to bootstrap an opportunistic routing protocol. Frequently, opportunistic routing protocols require users to relay messages on behalf of one another: an act that incurs a cost to the relaying node. Nodes may wish to avoid this forwarding cost by not relaying messages. Opportunistic networks need to incentivise participation and discourage the selfish behaviour. This thesis further presents an incentive mechanism that uses self-reported social networks to construct and maintain reputation and trust relationships between participants, and demonstrates its superior performance over existing incentive mechanisms.

This textbook reviews the theory, applications, and latest breakthroughs in Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs). Presenting a specific focus on Opportunistic Mobile Networks (OMNs), the text considers the influence of human aspects, and examines emerging forms of inter-node cooperation. Features: contains review terms and exercises in each chapter, with the solutions and source code available at an associated website; introduces the fundamentals of DTNs, covering OMNs, PSNs, and MOONs; describes the ONE simulator, explaining how to set up a simulation project; provides detailed insights into the development and testing of protocols, together with a set of best practices for increased productivity and optimized performance; examines human aspects in the context of communication networks, from human-centric applications to the impact of emotion on human-network interplay; proposes various schemes for inter-node cooperation in DTNs/OMNs; presents a detailed discussion on aspects of heterogeneity in DTNs.