The quality of spatial-temporal information from mobile peer-to-peer interactions

Situated environments are becoming increasingly populated by objects containing embedded devices that have the ability to produce, store and forward information. This information may be spatial-temporal in nature, giving the status of a resource or facility from a particular location at a particular point in time. This paper examines the prospects for unleashing and maintaining the temporal quality of information in a physical space using mobile peer-to-peer (MP2P) interactions between wireless-enabled devices. These constitute transient data exchange between pairs of peers. Using a fully opportunistic data exchange protocol, the effects of device density and mobility patterns are examined and shown to be highly important. Adopting a range of metrics, the results show the type of performance, in terms of information quality, that may be attained. This is valuable as it enables determination of the types of services and scenarios for which MP2P networking may be useful. Observations and comment on this are provided.