Using self-reported social networks to improve opportunistic networking

Abstract

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.