Exploiting socio-physical network interactions via a utility-based framework for resource management in mobile social networks

Mobile social networks have the lion's share in modern mobile telecommunications, and their interaction with the underlying infrastructure networks has attracted significant attention due to its impact on resource management. In this article, we present and demonstrate a framework for addressing such interplay between online social networks and wireless communications by exploiting principles from the theory of utility-based engineering and elements from social network analysis. We aim at a holistic design framework that allows the joint development of improved resource management mechanisms for future mobile wireless infrastructures and their social counterparts. We demonstrate the proposed methodology and reveal the key aspects of designing and exploiting convenient utility functions within the framework of network science in order to better manage the available resources, improve infrastructures, and eventually obtain from them the maximum possible benefit. We establish the above principles and emerging design potentials in future complex networks by presenting two tangible examples where personalized advertising and topology control in MSNs are used to exploit and validate different network and individual socio-utility maximization features, respectively.