Opportunistic Network Algorithms for Internet Traffic Offloading in Music Festival Scenarios

• Published in: Sensors (Basel, Switzerland) Vol. 21; no. 10; p. 3315
• Main Authors: Manole, Aida-Ștefania, Ciobanu, Radu-Ioan, Dobre, Ciprian, Purnichescu-Purtan, Raluca
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Basel MDPI AG 11.05.2021; MDPI
• Subjects: Algorithms; Communication; Connectivity; festival; Infrastructure; Internet; mobility model; Music festivals; opportunistic networks; Smartphones; social; Wireless access points; Belgium
• ISSN: 1424-8220; 1424-8220
• DOI: 10.3390/s21103315

Constant Internet connectivity has become a necessity in our lives. Hence, music festival organizers allocate part of their budget for temporary Wi-Fi equipment in order to sustain the high network traffic generated in such a small geographical area, but this naturally leads to high costs that need to be decreased. Thus, in this paper, we propose a solution that can help offload some of that traffic to an opportunistic network created with the attendees’ smartphones, therefore minimizing the costs of the temporary network infrastructure. Using a music festival-based mobility model that we propose and analyze, we introduce two routing algorithms which can enable end-to-end message delivery between participants. The key factors for high performance are social metrics and limiting the number of message copies at any given time. We show that the proposed solutions are able to offer high delivery rates and low delivery delays for various scenarios at a music festival.