GROUPS-NET: Group meetings aware routing in multi-hop D2D networks

Device-to-device (D2D) communication will allow direct transmission between nearby mobile devices in the next generation cellular networks. A fundamental problem in multi-hop D2D networks is the design of forwarding algorithms that achieve, at the same time, high delivery ratio and low network overhead. In this work, we study group meetings' properties by looking at their structure and regularity with the goal of applying such knowledge in the design of a forwarding algorithm for D2D multi-hop networks. We introduce a forwarding protocol, namely GROUPS-NET, which is aware of social group meetings and their evolution over time. Our algorithm is parameter-calibration free and does not require any knowledge about the social network structure of the system. In particular, different from the state of the art algorithms, GROUPS-NET does not need communities' detection, which is a complex and expensive task. We validate our algorithm by using different publicly available data sources. In real-world large scale scenarios, our algorithm achieves approximately the same delivery ratio of the state-of-the-art solution with 40% less network overhead.