The objective of this project is to investigate a number of challenging problems that play critical roles in enhancing the performance of social applications by taking advantage of the benefits brought by integrating cognitive radio networking (CRN) and mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). This research is motivated by the observations of (i) the lack of successful and practical applications of CRN and MANETs, though both have been extensively studied in recent years; and (ii) the benefits of integrating CRN and MANET to launch new and to enhance the performance of existing mobile social applications. In this project, graph theoretical approaches are employed to enable scalable HD video chat, to improve the performance of time-bounded information dissemination, and to enhance the privacy of information sharing among the CR-enabled devices. Moreover, network formation games are exploited to construct social-application-aware network topologies for capacity and performance enhancement; and statistical approaches are adopted to investigate the impact of topology control on social behaviors and vice version.
The expected results of this project include novel methodologies and theories to enhance the performance of existing and to enable new mobile social applications. The success of this project will have strong impact on both the theoretical and the practical aspects of social applications in the foreseen hybrid environment of CRN and MANETs. The research findings will be disseminated through high-quality publications as well as presentations in focused workshops and conferences. The project outcomes will provide guidance to and may be adopted by industry for enhancing service availability and integrity.
