Mobile Clouds: Exploiting Distributed Resources in Wireless, Mobile and Social Networks

8

Social Mobile Clouds

Real egoistic behavior is to cooperate!

Kurt Edwin

This chapter introduces the social component of the mobile clouds, exploring different ways to foster cooperation among selfish users. Different forms of cooperation are introduced and compared with each other. One of the key elements of this chapter is the introduction of social rewards for being cooperative. This chapter also discusses the evolutive development of social and mobile networks, highlighting in particular how these networks are becoming increasingly dependent on each other.

8.1 Introduction

Mobile clouds are dependent on the willingness of mobile users to cooperate. Without cooperation there is no way to build mobile clouds and each user would be independently acting on his own. User cooperation is the underlying principle of mobile clouds. Therefore it is critical to understand the reasoning behind cooperation to ensure users’ willingness to participate. This helps to develop effective cooperative strategies and to create attractive situations motivating users to cooperate. In general, there are fundamental differences in the design and operation of mobile clouds, depending on whether users are forced to cooperate, or they are willing to invest into cooperation for whatever reason, or if the users see a clear benefit in cooperating with others. Cooperation rules in Nature, discussed in Chapter 7, are helpful, but here we investigate potential cooperation cases and how we can stimulate ...