Mobility of Opportunistic Networks

In this chapter, we explore how the mobility of nodes influences the performance of opportunistic networks. First, we start with a general discussion of how scale and density are defined and how those impact the dissemination of data in opportunistic networks. Then, we dive deeper into how to gather realistic mobility data from real-world scenarios and how to characterize it. We introduce three types of mobility metrics: spatial metrics, such as radius of gyration or travel distance; temporal metrics, such as visit time; and social metrics, such as contact duration or inter-contact time. Last but not least, we explore how those metrics correlate with performance metrics for data dissemination in opportunistic networks.