HYChat: A Hybrid Interactive Chat System for Mobile Social Networking in Proximity

Recently, mobile social networks in proximity (MSNP) has gained tremendous attentions, which explicitly explores the physical proximity of individuals, and greatly facilitates their face-to-face interactions through direct communications. Generally, Proximity awareness can be enabled with two methodologies: Over-The-Top (OTT), in which the centralized server determines the proximity based on users´ location updates and interests, and intermediate the interactions between proximal users, Device-to-Device (D2D), which allows two devices in radio range to discovery and communicate directly. This paper designs and implements a novel hybrid interactive chatting system, HYChat, which integrates the merits of both methodologies: simultaneously support direct interaction through WiFi Direct when individuals are within each other´s radio range, when detecting two devices are out of range of WiFi Direct (e.g., due to individual´s movement), it will switch to online OTT mode automatically to continue the interactive chat. Specifically, two key challenges in HYChat are preliminarily solved in this paper: profile matching prior to establishing connection among devices (i.e., layer 2 profile matching), and the smooth switching between D2D and OTT modes. The prototype of HYChat on Android phones illustrates its effectiveness. In brief, the hybrid system HYChat could greatly facilitate individuals´ social interaction in physical proximity.