Co-evolving Wireless Social Networks

As communication networks become pervasive, it will become increasingly important to study them within the larger social and spatial context. Wireless social networks will evolve jointly to meet this emergent need; VT is developing the science and engineering principles to support this vision.

Need for Research

We are witnessing a silent revolution in the world of technology, wherein digital devices are touching all aspects of our societies. From smart phones that are as powerful computers just a few years back, to miniature sensors that are as small as speck of dust that can be used to measure interesting real world and societal phenomenon. Digital devices, by meaningful measurements and interaction with the end users, will provide context rich information and services. The context includes the "what", "where", "when", "how" and "why" as it relates to end users and their interactions with other users and with the environment. The social and spatial context that the devices will sense, learn and exploit to provide users context-based services. Wireless networks will become more connected to the social networks of users to whom they provide services.

Technical Approach

Our technical approach for studying co-evolving wireless social networks comprises of the following inter-related components:

• A first principles modeling approach for user and device mobility in large urban regions, which produces realistic activity based traffic patterns. This kind of mobility model naturally incorporates user behavior at a very detailed level;
• A first principles modeling approach for generating user demand,
• Combining the above with data driven approaches and theories of social behaviors for generation, and dynamical analysis of synthetic co-evolving wireless social networks --- note that these networks cannot be constructed by simple measurements. Our approach can enable approximations of the real system state with varying levels of accuracy.
• A mathematical and computational theory of co-evolving graphical discrete dynamical systems for formal specification, design and analysis of co-evolving wireless social networks.

The approach requires the use of relevant social theories, high performance computing and graphical discrete dynamical systems, algorithmics, statistical analysis and network science.

Areas of Research

• Realistic models of mobility models, device ownership and digital traffic in large urban regions
• Simulation based modeling of large, realistic wireless social networks
• Heterogeneous communication networks, comprising of sensors, cognitive radios, etc. organized using mesh, peer-to-peer and cellular form
• Fundamental performance limits of wireless social networks
• Diffusion and other dynamical processes on wireless social networks
• Cross-layer context aware protocols for information dissemination and aggregation