Viral Dispersal in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks: A Stochastic Approach

Advances in wireless communications along with improvements in hardware have allowed smart phones to interact with computers in an open environment where virus can diffuse. While many studies have modeled the spread of malware, little has been done to take into account different types of devices that may exist in an ad hoc wireless network. In this paper, we develop a stochastic model that incorporates diversity of entity as well as interactions between different classes of network items understand to their impacts on the spread of a virus propagation. These models describe nodes in a network through states from susceptible to infected and recovered. The proposed model is able to depict the variations and dynamics of malware in a heterogeneous wireless ad hoc network. We have also conducted numerical simulations to understand changes and the equilibrium of a network under malware dissemination.