Spontaneous interaction network architecture

Abstract

Extrapolating from the phenomenal success of social network services, it is not unrealistic to anticipate that $\It{mobile social networking}$ would be prevalent in the near future. Geolocation of user devices provides an additional dimension making the corresponding applications more interesting. However, social activity is inherently transient due to user mobility and so is user’s interaction. Challenges are to discover interaction opportunities spontaneously and to support interactions while taking the limited resource of mobile devices and the scarce wireless bandwidth into consideration. To address these challenges, this dissertation proposes $\It{spontaneous interaction network architecture}$ (SINA). To discover an interaction opportunity, it defines and uses $\It{contexts}$ such as application requirements, user preferences, the availability of services and resources, and topology of nodes. Once one is found, SINA launches the corresponding application and instantiates a network according to the application’s requirements and maintains as long as the application persists. SINA is designed to use a minimal set of resources because a network instance is created only when an interaction persists and it is organized and maintained in an application-aware manner. According to our evaluation study, SINA achieves a comparable throughput with far less overhead than conventional mechanisms.