Utility-Based Exploration for Performance Enhancement in Opportunistic Mobile Networks

Opportunistic mobile networks (OMNs), which are formed by mobile devices carried by human users, present an interesting communication paradigm in the absence of access to global network connectivity or any form of network infrastructure. In this work, we combine the
natural
mobility of the human users—which has been shown to resemble Levy Walk—in OMNs, together with intentional
explorations
. We consider the case where the human users in an OMN undergo explorations, i.e., occasionally visit a set of fixed point of interests (PoI), for example, shopping malls. The objective of this work is two-fold-1) Establishing that limited explorations of the users can help in enhancing the performance of OMNs, and 2) Formulating a method to decide whether or not a user should undergo exploration. In this regard, we propose two schemes based on prospect theory (PT) and expected utility theory (EUT). The results of extensive simulation-based performance evaluation indicate that limited exploration can promote the delivery ratio of messages by large levels—about
$7$
-
$33$
percent depending on the number of randomly placed PoI, and about
$36$
percent depending upon the terrain size. Moreover, the time spent in exploration, on an average, is negligibly small—a typical value is about
$0.55$
percent of the simulation duration, which indicates its feasibility in real life.