Modelling mobile opportunistic networks – From mobility to structural and behavioural analysis

In this work, we propose a modelling framework which captures the most fundamental behavioural and structural properties of mobile opportunistic networks from mobility to structural level. First, we introduce Spatio-TEmporal Parametric Stepping (STEPS) – a simple parametric mobility model which can cover a large spectrum of human mobility patterns. STEPS abstracts the fundamental spatio-temporal behaviours of human mobility, i.e., preferential attachment and attractors, by using a power law to drive nodes’ movement. We show that the model makes it possible to express key peer-to-peer properties of opportunistic networks such as inter-contact/contact time distributions. Leveraging on the expressive and modelling power of STEPS, we analyse how fundamental structural properties can emerge from the combination of elementary node’s mobility behaviour. Specifically, we bring out one sufficient condition of the emergence of the famous small-world structure in opportunistic networks. We also show that this special dynamic network structure improves significantly the communication capacity of opportunistic networks.