Popularity-Aided Routing Protocol for Mobile Social Networks

A novel Popularity-assisted Routing Protocol (PRP) is proposed for Mobile Social Networks (MSNs). The PRP is designed by exploiting the social characteristics of mobile nodes, which are reflected by the friendship derived from regular node meetings. Moreover, the strength of a node´s friendship is specified by its popularity. In detail, four novel metrics are introduced to reflect the social characteristics of mobile nodes, which include friendship, popularity, popularity rank and relationship. Based on these metrics, the PRP is proposed, which makes use of these metrics for message delivery. The performance of the PRP is investigated and compared with that of some existing routing protocols for MSNs under a Random Waypoint Mobility (RWM) model. Our studies and results show that the metrics for social behaviors are efficient for route discovery. The proposed PRP is capable of achieving the total message reception with considerably low average delay. Additionally, the PRP requires significantly less resource, such as, bandwidth, buffer space and energy, than the other routing protocols considered.