Understanding the role of mobility in real mobile ad-hoc networks connectivity

Abstract

The recent exponential growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) and its mobile devices asks for the advancement of mobile networks technology. In such direction, current and next generations of cellular and vehicular networks foresees adhoc communication. In such paradigm, as entities are constantly moving, connections between them are intermittent and of little, if none, reliability. Recent studies have explored entities connections and how to design efficient ad-hoc communication algorithms for them. In this paper, using real mobility data, we study how and to what extent the entities mobility affects the network (global) and the entities (local) connectivity. We propose and leverage existing mobility metrics to capture both the depth and the spread of entities trajectories. Furthermore, we show how global connectivity is related to the depth of the trajectories, while local connectivity is related to the spread of the trajectories. Finally, as we use both human and vehicular mobility data, we discuss how their mobility nature can affect their mobility characteristics and connectivity.