MobiCom 2011 Poster: Investigating Mobility Heterogeneity for Relay Node Selection in Opportunistic Networks

Opportunistic networking is a mobile communication paradigm utilizing spontaneously arising networking options for data forwarding. Although node movement affects the forwarding capabilities of these nodes, the utilization of this knowledge for local forwarding decisions is still not sufficiently exploited and a major aim of our approach. We describe node heterogeneity along movement features capturing urban user movement and how to derive movement activities from these features. Hereby, we summarize main results of an experimental study based on real-world GPS data of 252 daily trips. In a second step, we explain how movement characteristics of mobile nodes may influence data dissemination and present first simulation results indicating that the heterogeneity in movement activities indeed influences the performance of opportunistic data dissemination.