Pocket switched networks and human mobility in conference environments

TLDR

Pocket Switched Networks use human mobility and local/global connectivity to transfer data, and are a form of Delay‑Tolerant Networking that relies on opportunistic contacts. The study aims to design forwarding algorithms that cope with human mobility patterns and to explore how observed contact dynamics influence PSN routing. The authors conducted an experiment tracking the mobility of 41 participants at the Infocom 2005 conference. The experiment confirmed that inter‑contact times follow a power‑law distribution, consistent with prior studies in corporate and academic settings.

Abstract

Pocket Switched Networks (PSN) make use of both human mobility and local/global connectivity in order to transfer data between mobile users' devices. This falls under the Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) space, focusing on the use of opportunistic networking. One key problem in PSN is in designing forwarding algorithms which cope with human mobility patterns. We present an experiment measuring forty-one humans' mobility at the Infocom 2005 conference. The results of this experiment are similar to our previous experiments in corporate and academic working environments, in exhibiting a power-law distrbution for the time between node contacts. We then discuss the implications of these results on the design of forwarding algorithms for PSN.