On Nodal Encounter Patterns in Wireless LAN Traces

—In this paper we analyze multiple wireless LAN (WLAN) traces from university and corporate campuses. In particular, we consider an important event between mobile nodes in wireless networks – encounters. We seek to understand encounter patterns in the mobile network from a holistic view by a graph analysis approach. Such an analysis sheds light on the diverse, nonhomogeneous nature of users in the given environments in terms of their encounter events with other nodes. Furthermore, we evaluate the feasibility of forming an infrastructure-less network to reach most of the nodes utilizing time-varying inter-node connectivity through encounters, and the robustness of such an ad hoc communication network. Our analysis shows that while the encounter events are “sparse” (i.e., any given node does not encounter with many other nodes), the connectivity of the whole network is well-maintained, and a Small World pattern of nodal encounter emerges for the observation periods longer than on...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2010
• Where: TMC
• Authors: Wei-jen Hsu, Ahmed Helmy
• Keywords: Communication Network, Encounter Events, Multiple Wireless Lan, TMC 2010