WiFiUS: Social Structure for Cooperative Mobile Networking

为了满足快速增长的移动数据流量需求，世界各地的监管机构正在积极制定动态频谱接入的政策和法规，这些政策和法规对认知设备和未充分利用频谱的授权频谱用户来说是互惠互利的。移动流量爆炸性增长的主要原因之一是移动社交应用的快速激增。一个关键的观察是，由于移动网络的设计和部署是为了满足人类的社交需求，社交领域中人们的联系和行为决定了他们访问移动服务的方式。基于这一见解，该项目倡导一种社交感知方法，通过利用移动用户之间的社交结构，实现共享频谱接入、协作频谱感知和智能设备到设备(D2D)通信。移动设备之间的这种基于社会信任的合作实现了自组织网络，并有可能在频谱效率方面实现显著提高，并导致网络容量的显著增加。通过理论研究和实际应用相结合，本项目旨在将社会因素融入到协作移动网络的设计中，从而加速未来移动网络的演进。在开发协作移动网络的社会结构的共同主题下，本项目被组织为四个协调良好的推力：1)推力I专注于社交推荐辅助的动态频谱接入，通过探索二次用户的集体智慧进行分布式频谱共享；2)推力II研究社交增强型D2D通信；3)推力III设计和分析二次用户之间的协作协议；4)推力IV研究移动网络中的社交辅助信息传播。这项拟议的研究有望实现从传统方法到社交感知方法的范式转变，通过利用移动用户的社交结构，实现共享频谱接入、协作频谱感知和智能设备到设备(D2D)通信。更广泛的影响还包括教育因素，例如通过向女性和代表性不足的学生提供研究机会来促进多样性。

To meet the rapidly growing demand of mobile data traffic, regulatory agencies around the world are actively working on policies and regulations for dynamic spectrum access that are mutually beneficial to the cognitive devices and the licensed spectrum users of the under-utilized spectrum. One of the primary contributors to the explosive mobile traffic growth is the rapid proliferation of mobile social applications. One key observation is that, since mobile networks are designed and deployed to meet the social needs of humans, connections and behaviors of people in the social domain shape the ways in which they access mobile services. With this insight, this project advocates a social-aware approach to enable shared spectrum access, cooperative spectrum sensing and intelligent device-to-device (D2D) communications, by leveraging the social structure among mobile users. Such social trust-based cooperation among mobile devices enables self-organizing networking, and has the potential to achieve substantial gains in spectral efficiency and lead to significant increases in network capacity. By combining theoretical studies with practical applications, this project aims to integrate social elements into the design of cooperative mobile networks, thereby accelerating the evolution of future mobile networks.Under the common theme of exploiting the social structure for cooperative mobile networking, this project is organized into four well-coordinated thrusts: 1) Thrust I focuses on social recommendation-aided dynamic spectrum access by exploring the collective wisdom of secondary users for distributed spectrum sharing; 2) Thrust II investigates social-enhanced D2D communications; 3) Thrust III designs and analyzes collaboration protocols among secondary users; 4) Thrust IV studies social assisted information dissemination in mobile networks. The proposed research is expected to enable a paradigm shift from traditional approaches to social-aware approaches to enable shared spectrum access, cooperative spectrum sensing and intelligent device-to-device (D2D) communications, via exploiting the social structure among mobile users. The broader impacts also include educational elements, such as promoting diversity by providing research opportunities to woman and underrepresented students.