August 22-26, 2005 | Pan Hui#, Augustin Chaintreau#, James Scott#, Richard Gass#, Jon Crowcroft* and Christophe Diot#
Pocket Switched Networks (PSN) leverage human mobility and local/global connectivity to transfer data between mobile users' devices, falling under Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN). This paper presents an experiment measuring forty-one humans' mobility at the Infocom 2005 conference, revealing a power-law distribution for the time between node contacts, similar to previous experiments in corporate and academic environments. These results have implications for the design of PSN forwarding algorithms.
Human mobility is crucial for PSN, as it creates local connection opportunities when access infrastructure is unavailable. The experiment used Intel iMotes to measure mobility patterns, finding that contact durations follow a power law. Inter-contact times also exhibit a heavy-tailed distribution, indicating that forwarding algorithms must account for this variability.
The study shows that nodes have different levels of activity and visibility, with some nodes being more frequently seen than others. This variability suggests that forwarding algorithms should prioritize nodes with higher visibility. Additionally, the time of day influences contact patterns, with daytime periods showing a higher power law coefficient than nighttime periods.
The results confirm that human mobility patterns are similar across different environments, and that PSN forwarding algorithms must be designed to handle these patterns. The paper concludes that future work should focus on collecting and analyzing human mobility data in various networking environments, and on developing forwarding algorithms that can adapt to these patterns. The findings also highlight the importance of considering user communities in forwarding algorithms, as shared communities can significantly improve data forwarding between members.Pocket Switched Networks (PSN) leverage human mobility and local/global connectivity to transfer data between mobile users' devices, falling under Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN). This paper presents an experiment measuring forty-one humans' mobility at the Infocom 2005 conference, revealing a power-law distribution for the time between node contacts, similar to previous experiments in corporate and academic environments. These results have implications for the design of PSN forwarding algorithms.
Human mobility is crucial for PSN, as it creates local connection opportunities when access infrastructure is unavailable. The experiment used Intel iMotes to measure mobility patterns, finding that contact durations follow a power law. Inter-contact times also exhibit a heavy-tailed distribution, indicating that forwarding algorithms must account for this variability.
The study shows that nodes have different levels of activity and visibility, with some nodes being more frequently seen than others. This variability suggests that forwarding algorithms should prioritize nodes with higher visibility. Additionally, the time of day influences contact patterns, with daytime periods showing a higher power law coefficient than nighttime periods.
The results confirm that human mobility patterns are similar across different environments, and that PSN forwarding algorithms must be designed to handle these patterns. The paper concludes that future work should focus on collecting and analyzing human mobility data in various networking environments, and on developing forwarding algorithms that can adapt to these patterns. The findings also highlight the importance of considering user communities in forwarding algorithms, as shared communities can significantly improve data forwarding between members.