Peer-to-Peer Group k-Nearest Neighbours in Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

The increasing use of location-based services has raised many issues of decision support and resource allocation. A crucial problem is how to solve queries of Group k-Nearest Neighbour (GkNN). A typical example of a GkNN query is finding one or many nearest meeting places for a group of people. Existing methods mostly rely on a centralised base station. However, mobile P2P systems offer many benefits, including self-organization, fault-tolerance and load-balancing. In this study, we propose and evaluate a novel P2P algorithm focusing on GkNN queries, in which mobile query objects and static objects of interest are of two different categories. The algorithm is evaluated in the MiXiM simulation framework with both real and synthetic datasets. The results show the practical feasibility of the P2P approach for solving GkNN queries for mobile networks.