Stop and Forward: Opportunistic Local Information Sharing Under Walking Mobility

In this paper we study an opportunistic geographically constrained information sharing paradigm known under the name Floating Content (FC), considering two different mobility models that describe the behavior of pedestrians. We assume that users carrying their smartphones walk from one location to another and then stop for a while. Information transfers take place in the periods when users pause between movements. We develop analytical models to compute the performance metrics that characterize FC in this case and we validate analytical results with data collected during an experiment performed in a university campus. The comparison proves the accuracy of our analytical models. Moreover, results unveil the key relevance for FC performance of group dynamics in user movements.