MoViTo: a Generic Visualization Tool for Mobility Analysis

This paper describes the design and implementation of MoViTo (mobility visualization tool) a generic visualization tool developed mainly to facilitate the observation and the understanding of mobility patterns in wireless networks. As an example, a WiFi environment has been chosen to display the usage of this tool but other context (such as ad-hoc networks) can be studied by adapting its generic entities (nodes, links, and graphics) and input data trace (e.g. signal strength instead of event log) to each situation. The starting point of our study is an overview of the literature on the field of mobility analysis in mobile telecommunication systems. These researches show the importance of understanding wireless usage and provide some related measurements. However, the interpretation of the results of purely statistical nature still remains difficult. For this reason we think that a visualization tool may be a fast and efficient way for characterizing the usage in such environment. Among our goals, we wish to develop an open tool, capable to be adapted to several contexts and to produce an easy interpretable dashboard. The monitoring can be focused on several parameters. For example it is possible to examine nodes moves over a given period and/or a specific geographical area. The preliminary analysis given at the end of this article relate to 21 week trace of a WiFi corporate network used by more than 240 employees carrying various kinds of wireless devices (laptops, PDA...) and communicating (Mail, Internet, IM, etc) via 17 WiFi access points