Mobility Models for Next Generation Wireless Networks

Part Six

Mobility Models for Opportunistic Networks

In this part of the book, we will focus our attention on an emerging class of next generation wireless networks, called opportunistic networks, which are attracting increasing interest among the research community. This class of networks is characterized by radically different topological properties with respect to the other classes of networks considered so far in this book, and by the fact that mobility of nodes is the prominent communication means within the network. Given this, mobility analysis and modeling has been and still is a very active research field in opportunistic networks, since a deep understanding of how network nodes move is a prerequisite for the effective design of opportunistic networking protocols.

After describing the features, state of the art, and perspectives of opportunistic networks, we will introduce the basics of how message routing is performed in opportunistic networks, introducing the well-known store, carry, and forward mechanism and some relevant routing protocols. We will then present the most relevant results concerning the analysis of mobility patterns observed in real-world opportunistic networks, which allow researchers to make important observations about the way people move and meet each other in daily life. We will then conclude this part of the book by describing representative mobility models proposed for opportunistic networks, whose goal is to resemble features of human mobility ...