Analyzing Metropolitan-Area Networking within Public Transportation Systems for Smart City Applications

In the scope of smart cities, mobile participatory sensing and metropolitan area networking on top of public transportation systems for communication offers widespread dissemination of information in both time and spatial domains. Specifically, the transportation network naturally reflects urban human mobility patterns between places of interest and interconnects hotspots where information is created and consumed by city- wide applications. Previous work has targeted communication exclusively between users of the public transportation system. In this paper, we provide an analysis of metropolitan networking within the transportation system itself. Instead of relying on user-generated contact traces purely between mobile entities, i.e., busses, we build on a comprehensive data set that contains the schedules and location data of busses as well as the location of infrastructure elements, such as bus stops. Our analysis shows the general feasibility of such a network as well as the, previously not considered, impact of infrastructure elements for information dissemination. The latter motivates delay-tolerant and location- driven communication, as well as participatory sensing using the transport system as a communication infrastructure.