Social Networks over Wireless Networks

E. Stai, J. S. Baras and S. Papavassiliou

To appear in the proceedings of the 51st IEEE Conference on Decision and Control, pp. no. 2696-270, Maui, Hawaii, USA, December 10-13, 2012.

Abstract

We consider the formation, operation and maintenance of dynamic social networks (among human users) supported by technological communication networks such as wireless networks, or hybrid wireline-wireless networks. The technological (physical) networks of interest display dynamic behavior in several dimensions, including variable connectivity, variable congestion, variable link characteristics. As broadband wireless devices and networks are becoming ubiquitous these human-machine systems, that combine the social aspects and behavioral activities of humans with the technological characteristics of the underlying physical networks, provide several important challenges in efforts to model them, evaluate their performance and dynamically control them so certain performance requirements are met. These include combinations of performance, trust, privacy, energy efficiency. In this paper we develop novel models for these complex human-machine systems that incorporate social network behavioral models and wireless network models that are inspired from statistical physics (hyperbolic graphs). We investigate the performance of wireless network protocols that support and respond to the constraints implied by the social network they support.