A Social-Aware Framework for Efficient Information Dissemination in Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Abstract

In wireless ad hoc networks, each node participates in routing by forwarding data to other nodes without a pre-existing infrastructure. Particularly, with the wide adoption of smart devices, the concept of smartphone ad hoc networks (SPANs) has evolved to enable alternate means for information sharing. Using unlicensed frequency spectrum and short-range wireless technologies, a SPAN enables a new paradigm of applications and thus is seen as an attractive component in future wireless networks. In a SPAN, smartphones form local peer-to-peer networks to cooperate and share information efficiently. Recent studies have shown that if the users’ social relations are considered while designing cooperation schemes and protocols in SPANs, the cooperation initialization and content dissemination can be notably improved to increase the overall network efficiency and communications reliability. In this article, we present a social-aware framework for optimizing SPANs by exploiting two layers: users’ relationships in the online social network layer and users’ offline connections and interactions in the physical wireless network layer. The online content popularity distribution is also studied as a result of the users’ online interaction profiles. In the end, we integrate both online and offline layers, and discuss possible applications to further enhance the network performance.