An Information-Theoretic Model for Knowledge Sharing in Opportunistic Social Networks

In this paper we establish fundamental limits on the performance of knowledge sharing in opportunistic social networks. In particular, we introduce a novel information-theoretic model to characterize the performance limits of knowledge sharing policies. Towards this objective, we first introduce the notions of knowledge gain and its upper bound, knowledge gain limit, per user. Second, we characterize these quantities for a number of network topologies and sharing policies. This work constitutes a first step towards defining and characterizing the performance limits and tradeoffs associated with knowledge sharing in opportunistic social networks. Finally, we present numerical results characterizing the cumulative knowledge gain over time and its upper bound, using publicly available smartphone data. The results confirm the key role of the proposed model to motivate future research in this ripe area of research as well as new knowledge sharing policies.