Human Mobility Model and DTN Group

Human Mobility Model and DTN Group Overview

Our Mobility Models and Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) research team consists of graduate students and faculties at North Carolina State University and KAIST (Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology) conducting research on Human mobility modeling, routing, content search and distribution in DTN and Ad Hoc (MANET) environment. We are developing mobility models that describe super-diffusive characteristics and clustering nature of human mobility. We are also working on routing algorithms that utilize those characteristics of human mobility. We are also gathering real human traces in various sites such as university, parks and metropolitan area.

Key words Human movement Pattern, Human Mobility model, Power law, Levy Walk, Self-similarity, Delay Tolerant Network, DTN routing algorithm, Inter contact time, Inter meeting time, routing performance, Human trace, Mobility trace, GPS trace

Latest News

• Press release in NCSU news, newspapers in US and newspapers in Korea. Our mobility model could be used by civil engineers to plan roads, by public health officials to study virus outbreak spread, or by telecommunication companies for planning where to locate cell-phone towers.
• Our paper has been accepted to INFOCOM 2009.
• Our paper has been accepted to ACM MobiCom Workshop on Challenged Networks (CHANTS) 2008.
• Our paper has been accepted to ACM MobiHoc Workshop on Mobility Models 2008.
• Our papers have been accepted to ACM HotNets IV (2007) and INFOCOM 2008.

Current Projects

TLW (Truncated Levy Walk) Mobility Model

In this project, we show that human walks performed in outdoor settings of tens of kilometers resemble a truncated form of Levy walks commonly observed in animals such as monkeys, birds and jackals. The following figures show sample traces, flight length and pause time distributions in one of our data set, respectively. For more details, please visit here.

SLAW (Self-similar Least Action Walk) Mobility Model

In this project, we report that self-simillar/bursty hot spots are a key factor in causing the heavy-tail distribution of flights in human walks. The following figures show clusters of visit points (hotspots) viewed in different scales (4800x4800, 1200x1200, 300x300 meters, respectively). For more details, please visit here.

Human Mobility Trace Data

For mobility data, please feel free to email to rhee@ncsu.edu / shong@ncsu.edu.

• general description
• NCSU
• KAIST
• NYC
• Disney World
• NC State Fair

To analyze our trace/Inter Contact Time (ICT) data, we use MLE (Maximum Likelihood Estimation) and Akaike test.

• Data Analysis (MLE and Akaike test)

Human Mobility Model (TLW, SLAW) Download

To download MATLAB, ns-2 or GLOMOSIM code for TLW and SLAW, please visit our Human Mobility Model (TLW, SLAW) Download page.

Publications

Conferences & Workshops

• Kyunghan Lee, Seongik Hong, Seong Joon Kim, Injong Rhee and Song Chong, SLAW: A Mobility Model for Human Walks, INFOCOM, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 2009, PDF
• Minsu Shin, Seongik Hong and Injong Rhee, DTN Routing Strategies using Optimal Search Patterns, ACM MobiCom Workshop on Challenged Networks (CHANTS), 2008, PDF
• Seongik Hong, Injong Rhee, Seong Joon Kim, Kyunghan Lee and Song Chong, Routing Performance Analysis of Human-Driven Delay Tolerant Networks using the Truncated Levy Walk Model, ACM SIGMOBILE International Workshop on Mobility Models for Networking Research (Colocated with MobiHoc 08), Hong Kong, 2008 PDF
• Injong Rhee, Minsu Shin, Seongik Hong, Kyunghan Lee and Song Chong, On the Levy-walk Nature of Human Mobility, INFOCOM, Arizona, USA, 2008 PDF PPT
• Injong Rhee, Minsu Shin, Seongik Hong, Kyunghan Lee and Song Chong, Human Mobility Patterns and Their Impact on Delay Tolerant Networks, ACM HotNets IV, 2007 PDF

Technical Reports

• Kyunghan Lee, Seongik Hong, Seong Joon Kim, Injong Rhee and Song Chong, Demystifying Levy Walk Patterns in Human Walks, Technical Report, 2008, PDF
• K. Lee, B. C. Jung, I. Rhee, S. Chong, and D. K. Sung. Revisiting the transmission range model in mobile networks based on ieee 802.11a/g, Technical Report, 2008 PDF
• Injong Rhee, Minsu Shin, Seongik Hong, Kyunghan Lee and Song Chong, On the Levy-walk Nature of Human Mobility: Do Humans Walk like Monkeys?, Technical Report, Computer Science Department, North Carolina State University, 2007 . PDF
• Diffusion Regimes of Levy Walk, Technical Memo, Computer Science Department, North Carolina State University, 2007 . PDF

Members

Faculty

• Injong Rhee (NCSU), Song Chong (KAIST)

Ph.D Students

• Seongik Hong (NCSU), Kyunghan Lee (KAIST)

Former Members

• Seong Joon Kim (Postdoctoral Fellow, currently at Samsung electronics, Korea)
• Minsu Shin (Postdoctoral Fellow, currently at SK Broadband, Korea)

References

• [Mobility Models] T. Camp, J. Boleng, and V. Davies, A survey of mobility models for ad hoc network research, Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (WCMC): Special issue on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking: Research, Trends and Applications, 2(5):482-502, March 2002
• [Levy walk] Ralf Metzler and Joseph Klafter, The restaurant at the end of the random walk: recent developments in the description of anomalous transport by fractional dynamics, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. Vol. 37 2004
• [Optimal search patterns] G. M. Viswanathan, Sergey V. Buldyrev, Shlomo Havlin, M. G. E. da Luz, E. P. Raposo and H. Eugene Stanley, Optimizing the success of random searches, Nature Vol. 401, pp 911-914, 1999
• [Human movement patterns] D. Brockmann, L. Hufnagel, and T. Geisel, The scaling laws of human travel, Nature Vol. 439, pp. 462-465, January 2006
• [DTN] K. Fall, A delay-tolerant network architecture for challenged internets, ACM SIGCOMM, 2003
• [DTN routing] Z. Zhang, Routing in intermittently connected mobile ad hoc networks and delay tolerant networks: overview and challenges, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 8(1):24-37.
• [Inter-contact times] A. Chaintreau, P. Hui, J. Crowcroft, C. Diot, R. Gass, and J. Scott, Impact of human mobility on the design of opportunistic forwarding algorithms, IEEE INFOCOM, Barcelona, Spain, 2006

Members only

• Meeting
• Reference