“On the Ability of Mobile Sensor Networks to Diffuse Information” by Chen Gu, Ian Downes, Omprakash Gnawali, and Leonidas Guibas. In Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN 2018), Apr. 2018.
We examine the ability of networks formed by mobile sensor nodes to diffuse information in the case when communication is only possible during opportunistic encounters. Our setting assumes that mobile nodes are continuously sensing the world and acquiring new information. We form an abstract model of this situation and show by theoretical analysis, simulation, and real mobility data that the diffusion of information in this setting cannot be as efficient as when we allow arbitrary contact patterns between the nodes with the same overall contact statistics. This establishes a fundamental asymptotic limitation on the information diffusion capacity of such op- portunistic mobile sensor networks - the encounter patterns arising out of physical motions in a geometric space are not ideal for information diffusion.
BibTeX entry:
@inproceedings{mobidiffuse-ipsn2018,
author = {Chen Gu and Ian Downes and Omprakash Gnawali and Leonidas Guibas},
title = {On the Ability of Mobile Sensor Networks to Diffuse Information},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the ACM/IEEE International Conference on
Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN 2018)},
month = apr,
year = {2018}
}