Demo: Proximity-based information propagation

Abstract

Copyright is held by the author/owner(s). In this paper, we propose and implement a proximity-based information propagation framework based on Android devices. With the ubiquity of the smartphones and a drastic increase in demands of cellular traffic, the information propagation mechanism proposed and implemented in this paper entirely relies on the mobile-to-mobile (i.e., ad-hoc) communications. In contrast to the WiFi Direct technology (i.e., single-hop ad hoc communications), the pure ad-hoc communications enabled in our proposed framework allows multi-hop message propagation. In addition, a mitigation technique is also implemented to prevent the broadcast storm problems caused by redundant rebroadcasts. The implementation of the pure ad-hoc and multi-hop communications have been tested in several Android phone models and in a few tests scenarios which were conducted to determine the feasibility as well as the limitation of using mobile devices for the proximity-based information propagation.