Performance analysis of using frequent visitors as information carriers for delay tolerant contents

We analyze the performance of a low-cost transmission system for delay tolerant digital contents to be deployed at a school in some remote area. In the system under consideration, data packets containing educational materials are carried by mobile devices of frequent school visitors who randomly commute between the school and the city. By modeling the behavior of each frequent visitor using a continuous-time Markov chain (CTMC), we derive the transmission throughput as well as the stability condition for contents not to eventually take up all the memory buffer on a mobile device. Intuitive explanations to the analytical results are given together with a numerical case study example to illustrate the potential usefulness of the results in designing practical systems.