A zero-dimensional mobility model for opportunistic networking

The demands for ubiquitous connectivity and high data rates have led to a proliferation of mobile devices such as smartphones, media tablets and netbooks. These devices, equipped with powerful communication and storage resources, are carried by humans during their daily activities and, thus, possess a high potential for opportunistic networking. In this networking mode, encounters between users define the “topology” of the network and can be exploited for content sharing. A large portion of user encounters occur in densely populated public urban areas such as city squares, subway stations, shopping malls, etc. In this paper, we propose an analytic model to study content dissemination characteristics inside smaller areas where the mobility of nodes does not affect their connectivity. Subsequently, we argue that this model is suitable for modeling larger areas as interconnections of these basic blocks.