LTE Ns3 Ottimo

317959
Mobile Opportunistic Traffic Offloading

D3.1 Initial results on
offloading foundations and enablers
(public)

D3.1 Initial results on offloading foundations and enablers
WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

Grant Agreement No.
317959
Project acronym
MOTO
Project title
Mobile Opportunistic Traffic Offloading
Advantage

Deliverable number
D3.1
Deliverable name
Initial results on offloading foundations and enablers
Version
V 1.0

Work package
WP 3 Offloading foundations and enablers
Lead beneficiary
CNR
Authors
Vania Conan (TCS), Filippo Rebecchi (TCS), Raffaele Bruno (CNR),

Chiara Boldrini (CNR), Gianni Mainetto (CNR), Andrea Passarella
(CNR), Marcelo Dias De Amorin (UPMC), Filippo Rebecchi (UPMC),
Engin Zeydan (AVEA)

Nature
R Report
Dissemination level
PU Public
Delivery date
02/10/2013
MOTO Consortium 2013


Table of Contents

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................................................ 5
LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................................... 6
ACRONYMS ............................................................................................................................................... 7
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .............................................................................................................................. 8
1 INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................................... 9
2 INVESTIGATIONS ON THE CAPACITY LIMITS OF LTE ............................................................................ 12
2.1 LTE MODULE IN NS3 .............................................................................................................................. 12
2.1.1 Air interface ................................................................................................................................ 13
2.1.2 CQI feedback .............................................................................................................................. 13
2.1.3 Propagation model ..................................................................................................................... 13
2.1.4 Fading model .............................................................................................................................. 14
2.1.5 Data PHY Error Model ................................................................................................................ 14
2.1.6 Adaptive Modulation and Coding .............................................................................................. 14
2.1.7 Resource Allocation model ........................................................................................................ 14
2.1.7.1 Round Robin (RR) ................................................................................................................ 15
2.1.7.2 Proportional Fair (PF) .......................................................................................................... 15
2.1.7.3 Maximum Throughput (MT) ............................................................................................... 15
2.1.7.4 Throughput to Average (TTA) ............................................................................................. 16
2.1.7.5 Blind Average Throughput (BAT) ........................................................................................ 16
2.1.7.6 Priority Set (PS) ................................................................................................................... 16
2.2 CAPACITY LIMITS IN LTE NETWORKS .......................................................................................................... 17
2.2.1 Results in pedestrian environments ........................................................................................... 17
2.2.2 Results in vehicular environments ............................................................................................. 20
3 THE PUSH&TRACK SYSTEM AS A TECHNIQUE FOR OPPORTUNISTIC OFFLOADING .............................. 23
3.1 HIGH LEVEL OPERATION OF PUSH&TRACK .................................................................................................. 23
3.2 SUBSET SELECTION ................................................................................................................................. 24
3.3 WHEN TO PUSH ..................................................................................................................................... 24
3.3.1 Fixed Objective Function ............................................................................................................ 24
3.3.2 Derivative-based Re-injection (DROiD) ...................................................................................... 25
3.3.2.1 Motivation .......................................................................................................................... 26
3.3.2.2 Re-injection strategy ........................................................................................................... 26
3.4 RESULTS ............................................................................................................................................... 27
3.4.1 Evaluation Setup ........................................................................................................................ 27
3.4.2 Fixed Objective Function ............................................................................................................ 28
3.4.3 Derivative-based Re-injection (DROiD) ...................................................................................... 29
4 THROUGHPUT ANALYSIS OF OPPORTUNISTIC NETWORK PROTOCOLS ............................................... 31
4.1 CONVERGENCE OF FORWARDING PROTOCOLS IN OPPORTUNISTIC NETWORKS .................................................... 32


4.2 MODELLING THE DELAY OF OPPORTUNISTIC ROUTING PROTOCOLS .................................................................. 35

4.2.1 General framework for modelling the delay .............................................................................. 36
4.2.2 Using the general framework: concrete examples .................................................................... 37
5 NEXT STEPS ....................................................................................................................................... 40
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................ 41
DISCLAIMER ............................................................................................................................................. 44



List of Figures
Figure 1. Reference MOTO networking environment. ...................................................................................... 9
Figure 2. Example of a space-time path. ........................................................................................................... 9
Figure 3: Total throughput of a single LTE cell as a function of the distance of the tagged UE from the eNB. A
variable number N of UEs is uniformly distributed in the cell. Downlink traffic flows are saturated. ... 18
Figure 4: Throughput fairness of a single LTE cell as a function of the distance of the tagged UE from the
eNB. A variable number N of UEs is uniformly distributed in the cell. Downlink traffic flows are
saturated. ............................................................................................................................................... 19
Figure 5: Throughput perceived by the a tagged UE as a function of the distance of the tagged UE from the
eNB. A variable number N of UEs is uniformly distributed in the cell. Downlink traffic flows are
saturated. ............................................................................................................................................... 20
Figure 7: LTE link capacity measured by a single mobile UE for different speeds .......................................... 21
Figure 8: Spatial distribution of per-UE throughput for a node density of 2 UEs per km ............................... 21
Figure 9: Spatial distribution of per-UE throughput for a node density of 10 UEs per km ............................. 22
Figure 10: Scatter plot of average values and coefficients of variation of the throughputs obtained by each
mobile UE for two node densities. ......................................................................................................... 22
Figure 11: High level operation of Push&Track ............................................................................................... 22
Figure 12: Infection rate objective functions. x is the fraction of time elapsed between a messages creation
and expiration dates. x = 1 is the deadline for achieving 100% infection. ............................................. 24
Figure 13: Discrete time slope detection performed by Push&Track. For clarity we consider the content
creation time t0 = 0. ................................................................................................................................ 25
Figure 14: 1-minute delay: average offload ratio for different combinations of whom and when strategies,
three different participation rates are considered. The rows correspond, from top to bottom, to the
following whom strategies: Random, Connected Components, Entry-Oldest, Entry-Average, Entry-
Newest, GPS-Density, and GPS-Potential. The columns represent the following when strategies, from
left to right: Single Copy, Ten Copies, Quadratic, Slow Linear, Linear, Fast Linear, and Square Root. ... 28
Figure 15: Offloading efficiency for different re-injection schema. Different maximum reception delays for
messages are considered. ...................................................................................................................... 29
Figure 16: Infrastructure vs. ad hoc load per message sent using the Infra, the Oracle, and the DROiD
strategies. Different maximum reception delays for messages are considered. ................................... 30
Figure 17. Example of delays with different forwarding strategies. ............................................................... 34
Figure 18. Semi-Markov chain for the general delay modelling framework. .................................................. 36
Figure 19. Scenario 1 (left) and 2 (right). ........................................................................................................ 37
Figure 20. Distribution of the delay in Scenario 1 (exponential mobility). ...................................................... 38
Figure 21. Distribution of the delay in Scenario 2 (exponential mobility). ...................................................... 39



List of Tables
Table 1: Acronyms ............................................................................................................................................. 7
Table II: Main simulation parameters ............................................................................................................. 17
Table 3. Summary of forwarding strategies. ................................................................................................... 33
Table 4. Convergence conditions. ................................................................................................................... 33


Acronyms
Table 1: Acronyms
Acronym
Meaning
AAA
Authentication, Authorization and Accounting
AMC
Adaptive Modulation and Coding
CQI
Channel Quality Indicator
eNB
Evolved Node B or eNodeB
HARQ
Hybrid Automatic Retransmission Request
MAC
Medium Access Control
MCS
Modulation and Coding Scheme
MIMO
Multiple input multiple output
OFDM
Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing
PDCP
Packet Data Convergence Protocol
RB
Resource Block
RBG
Resource Block Group
RLC
Radio Link Control
RRC
Radio Resource Control
RRM
Radio Resource Management
TTI
Transmission Time Interval
UE
User Equipment


Executive summary
This deliverable provides a first set of enabling concepts, techniques and models for capacity improvements
of wireless infrastructures through mobile data traffic offloading. Specifically, we present initial results
obtained in the first 7 months of WP3 activities (M4 to M11), along three main lines. The first one is an
investigation into the capacity limits of the LTE technology. This clearly shows that there are common cases
where LTE users will experience a throughput likely unsuitable to support modern forms of data-oriented
multimedia applications. Besides providing initial yet numerical evidence about capacity limitations of LTE,
this also provides a clear case for the overall MOTO concept of offloading through opportunistic networking
techniques. In the second part we present an initial solution for exploiting the capacity available in
opportunistic networks in presence of an LTE infrastructure, i.e. the Push&Track system. Push&Track
provides a practical technique to improve capacity through offloading. Therefore, it shows a concrete
example of the aspects that need to be analysed and modelled to correctly design an offloading system.
Modelling one of those aspects is the main objective of the third line reported in this document.
Specifically, we describe a stochastic model to describe the expected delay and number of hops of a set of
reference forwarding protocols used in opportunistic networks. As explained in the following of the
deliverable, the expected delay is the main parameter determining the throughput perceived by users.
Thus, it allows us to characterise the capacity available (in terms of throughput) to users when data is
disseminated through an opportunistic network.
Overall, none of these three lines has provided final results, yet. This was anticipated, and appropriate
considering the time span of the activities described in this deliverable. However, all of them provide
significant initial results that both (further) motivate the investigation of the MOTO offloading concept, and
provide initial tools for the design of effective offloading protocols.


1 Introduction
In this deliverable we start analysing key concepts to characterise foundational aspects of offloading in the
reference MOTO networking environments. In particular, this deliverable reports activities related to
characterising the capacity properties of the reference MOTO network. For the readers convenience,
Figure 1 shows a conceptual representation of the environment we consider.

Figure 1. Reference MOTO networking environment.
Among the various challenges of this environment, one of the most interesting is characterising the
capacity gain that can be achieved when traffic is offloaded from a wireless infrastructure (and in particular
from LTE) to an opportunistic network, i.e. a network where communication happens due to direct
encounter between user devices. Opportunistic networks [32] are mobile self-organizing networks where
the existence of a continuous multihop path formed by simultaneously connected hops is not taken for
granted. To deliver a message from a source to a destination, in opportunistic networks it is required that a
space-time multihop path exists [21] (see Figure 2 for a graphical example). Due to users mobility and
network reconfigurations, different portions of a space-time path can become available at different points
in time. For example, in Figure 2 node 2 moves close to node 3 at time t2, while node 5 moves close to the
destination at time t3, thus establishing a space-time path between nodes S and D. Intermediate nodes in
space-time paths exploit the store-carry-and-forward concept [17][28]: They temporarily store messages
addressed to a currently unreachable destination (if better next hops are currently not available), until a
new portion of the space-time path appears, and therefore the message can progress toward the final
destination.

Figure 2. Example of a space-time path.



To be able to characterise the capacity of the integrated network, several steps are needed. In this
document we report initial activities of the work package, aimed at three main goals. The first one is to
understand the capacity limits of LTE network, perceived by individual users. When finally achieved, this will
allow us to have a clear picture about the configurations of users spatio-temporal distributions that require
capacity enhancements through opportunistic networks. The second one is identifying a reference solution
for a complete MOTO solution. This allows us to start investigating some aspects of the capacity gain that
can be achieved through offloading, and to have practical indications on which aspects are more important
to focus on to understand and fully characterise these capacity gains. The third one, is investigating the
capacity available in opportunistic networks in isolation. This deliverable reports the status of the MOTO
WP3 activities along these three lines of research. Note that, we consider capacity as the throughput
perceived by individual users of the network, as well as the entire cell, rather than as the capacity of the
network in terms of information theory. This, in our opinion, is more appropriate to derive results of
practical applicability, as the former is one of the key elements of the network performance perceived by
the users, and thus of the resulting Quality of Experience. Also note that these results mainly come from
the work of Task 3.2. Work has been also carried out in Task 3.1 and 3.3, which will be reported in the
corresponding scheduled deliverable of the WP.
The following three sections are devoted to each of these lines. Specifically, in Section 2 we present the
initial results we have obtained about the limits of LTE capacity. We have used the reference simulation
platform of the project, NS3, in order to start an extensive simulation-based measurement campaign. We
aim at highlighting the limits of LTE (in terms of throughput experienced by a tagged user, as well as of
overall cell throughput) in some of the scenarios identified in WP2 of the project (e.g., crowds and vehicular
enviroenments). Specifically, up to now we have considered the performance of static users in a single cell,
with respect to the number of users served by the same eNB and to the scheduling algorithm executed by
the eNB. We have then started considering mobile vehicular environments, to understand the performance
when users move across multiple eNBs, populated with a number of other users. Our results confirm that
enforcing throughput fairness among the users in a cell and maximizing the cell throughput are two
contrasting objectives, and a trade-off is generally sought by the operator when implementing a radio
resource allocation strategy at the eNB. Furthermore, our results already highlight some interesting
properties and cases where the LTE network alone does not provide acceptable throughput to the user,
considering the likely demands in terms of data traffic. Specifically, as expected the throughput perceived
by a tagged user is highly dependent on the quality of the wireless link between the tagged user and the
eNB. In fact, when the tagged user is close to the eNB it generally obtains a stable throughput. On the other
hand, after a critical distance, throughput performance falls steeply. In addition, the exact throughput
behaviour of a tagged user depends in a complex manner on a variety of factors beyond channel
conditions, including the history of perceived throughputs.
Section 3 deals with the second line of research. We have considered the Push&Track system (originally
proposed by some of the MOTO partners in [43]), as a practical solution for integrating wireless
infrastructures with opportunistic networks. In this context, we present the overall Push&Track system
architecture. In addition, we discuss two adaptive re-injection strategies to fine control the pace at which
contents are disseminated. Results presented in this document show that such a solution can efficiently be
implemented. The integration between LTE and opportunistic networks provides to the users the benefit of
both worlds, e.g. the possibility of offloading part of the traffic from possibly congested LTE networks,
without losing the timeliness of delivery (when needed) that cannot be guaranteed in conventional
opportunistic-only offloading strategies. We have used a simplified simulator to abstract the LTE protocol
stack, in order to properly focus on the important factors influencing message propagation. In particular,
we show through simulation that Push&Track is able to save more than 50% of the LTE traffic, even in the
case of tight delivery constraints (in the order of few minutes or less).
Section 4 presents the initial results we have obtained to characterise the capacity of opportunistic
networks. In this case we aim at deriving analytical models of the throughput in opportunistic networks, so
as to obtain analytical tools to understand the capacity gain in an integrated network (note that one of the
10


next steps planned for the analysis of LTE is deriving similar analytical models). We discuss the two main
overall aspects that need to be considered from this standpoint. First of all, we consider the problem of
convergence, i.e. the possibility that the expected delay of messages from source to destination can be
infinite. As discussed in Section 4 this is a possible case, and practically means that messages can be
trapped in relays from which they cannot exit, based on the forwarding policy used. Although we are
working on this topic in the framework of MOTO, we have not yet obtained original results to present.
Therefore, we present the main background results we have obtained before, to describe the starting point
from where we move on inside MOTO. Then, we present original results that provide an analytical model of
the delay achieved by messages in a number of mobility settings and with a range of forwarding protocols.
As discussed in Section 4, characterising the delay is the most important aspect in order to derive models
for the throughput. We have been able to derive a model providing closed form expressions for the delay in
heterogeneous mobility settings (i.e., when the characteristics of the contact patterns between nodes
change across different pair of nodes), and with different types of routing (representative of State-of-the-
Art solutions in the literature). Using this model, we have been able to characterise the delay of the
protocols in these settings, highlighting the reasons why some protocols behave better or worse than the
others. This analysis shows examples of how our model can be used in practice.
Finally, Section 5 discusses the main directions of future work in the work package related to these
activities.
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2 Investigations on the capacity limits of LTE

LTE technology promises to improve cell performance in terms of coverage, spectral efficiency and
throughput by exploiting a mix of advanced Radio Resource Management (RRM) functions, including
enhanced OFDMA-based and Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communications, Channel Quality
Indicator (CQI) reporting, link adaptation through Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC), Hybrid
Automatic Retransmission Request (HARQ), and advanced radio resource allocation strategies. However,
the use of more sophisticated physical and MAC layer functions make the capacity analysis of LTE networks
more complex. This difficulty is farther exacerbated by the fact that the LTE capacity may be influenced by
many factors such as radio environment, traffic profiles, mobility patterns, and so on. Thus, simulators are
fundamental tools to assess the performance of LTE networks because they provide the flexibility and
possibility of testing large-scale networks, as well as of modifying environment attributes in a controlled
manner.
As discussed in the Introduction, in our performance study we adopt a twofold perspective. On the one
hand, we consider the operators point of view and we evaluate the cell capacity in terms of average
and/or aggregate performance. For instance, one of the goals that an operator may want to reach is to
maximize the cell spectral efficiency by maximizing the volume of bits that a single cell base station (eNB) is
able to deliver to the cell users (UEs). Alternatively, the operator might be more interested in ensuring that
long-term throughput fairness, which can be maintained within a cell by guaranteeing minimum data-rate
requirements. On the other hand, we also consider the users point of view by investigating the
performance of an individual user with respect to the spatial distribution and traffic profiles of other users
in the same cell (or nearby cells). It is important to point out that most existing studies on individual users
performance in LTE networks have focused on edge users to characterize cell coverage. Instead in our
study, we are more concerned with capacity issues, thus we explore a wider range of possibilities. For
instance, our initial results suggest that in some scenarios, the users that are not far from the eNB
experience reduced throughputs. Thus, the goal of our capacity analysis is to identify some of the common
uses cases in which an individual user receive performance that are unsatisfactory, at least for a data-
intensive applications.
It is straightforward to recognize that a simulation-based study is affected by some intrinsic limitations. One
of the most important is the use of simplified models to keep both the implementation complexity and the
computational costs manageable. In the following performance study we have used the reference
simulation platform of the project, NS3, which is a popular object-oriented event-driven packet-level open-
source simulator that not only include a complete IP stack, modules for common network elements, and
packet tracking capabilities, but also simulation models for the complete LTE Radio Protocol stack (RRC,
PDCP, RLC, MAC, PHY) [1]. Deliverable D.5.1.1 will provide a comprehensive description of the MOTO
simulation tool environment and a detailed overview of the LTE-EPC simulation model in NS3. In this
section, we give a brief overview of the features of the NS3 LTE module that most affect capacity
performance, with particular focus on channel models, OFDMA radio resource management and QoS-
aware packet scheduling. After this introduction we report our initial results on the assessment of the
performance perceived by individual users, and we develop a first understanding of capacity limits and
resource sharing problems in LTE networks, which might be addressed by exploiting offloading techniques
based on opportunistic communications.
2.1 LTE module in NS3

The LTE simulation model in NS3 includes core network interfaces, protocols and entities, but the
procedures of the LTE radio protocol stack reside entirely within the UE and the eNB nodes. In the following
we overview the implementation of the main physical and MAC layer functions, with special focus on
channel models and packet schedulers.
12


2.1.1 Air interface

The LTE air interface is based on OFDM, which supports high data rates with low inter-symbol interference.
In particular, LTE uses OFDMA on the downlink to simplify the UEs receiver and SC-FDMA on the uplink to
reduce the cost and power consumption associated with the UEs transmitter. The LTE air interface is built
around a frame structure that is further divided into subframes, slots and Resource Blocks (RB). A Resource
Block Group (RBG) consists of multiple RBs in a single slot. Radio resource scheduling decisions in LTE are
always made in units of RBs or RBGs. Specifically, each 10ms Frame is divided into ten 1ms subframes, with
each subframe further divided into two 0.5ms Slots (1ms is also the Transmission Time Interval, or TTI). In
principle, a Slot may consist of variable number of OFDM symbols in the time-domain depending on the
cyclic prefix in use. However, the LTE module assigns to each subframe fourteen ODFM symbols. In the
frequency domain, each RB consists of 12 sub-carriers that occupy a bandwidth of 180 KHz. The total
number of RBs that can be allocated in a slot is variable and it depends on the frequency band assigned to
the eNB. According to the standard [5], the downlink control frame starts at the beginning of each
subframe and lasts up to three symbols across the whole system bandwidth, where the actual duration is
provided by the Physical Control Format Indicator Channel (PCFICH). The information on the allocation is
then mapped in the remaining resource up to the duration defined by the PCFICH, in the so called Physical
Downlink Control Channel (PDCCH). The PCFICH and PDCCH are modelled with the transmission of the
control frame of a fixed duration of 3/14 of milliseconds spanning in the whole available bandwidth, since
the scheduler does not estimate the size of the control region. This implies that a single transmission block
models the entire control frame with a fixed power across all the available RBs.
2.1.2 CQI feedback
The generation of Channel Quality Indicator (CQI) feedback is done accordingly to what specified in [7].
However, among the seven CQI transmission modes specified in the standard for the downlink, the LTE
simulation model implements only two of them: i) periodic wideband CQI, i.e., a single value of channel
state that is deemed representative of all RBs in use; and ii) inband CQIs, i.e., a set of value representing the
channel state for each RB. In downlink, the CQI feedbacks are currently evaluated according to the SINR
perceived by control channel (i.e., PDCCH + PCFIC) in order to have an estimation of the interference when
all the eNB are transmitting simultaneously. In uplink, two types of CQIs are implemented: i) SRS based,
periodically sent by the UEs, and ii) PUSCH based, calculated from the actual transmitted data.
2.1.3 Propagation model
Several propagation models are available in ns3, ranging from the simple Friis and Two-Ray propagation
models to the more sophisticated and realistic Nakagami and Jakes propagation models. However, the
propagation model most commonly adopted for LTE evaluation is an extension of the popular Okumura
Hata model [2], known as the COST231 [3]. COST231 extends the Okumura Hata model for the frequency
range from 1500 MHz to 2000 MHz, and to model more accurately urban, as well as suburban and open
environments. In the following we detail the models adopted.
The pathloss expression of the COST231 OH is:
L = 46.3 + 33.9 log f - 13.82 log hb + (44.9 - 6.55 log hb ) log d - F(hM ) + C ,
where F(hM) = (1.1log(f)) - 0.7 x hM -(1.56 x log(f) - 0.8) for medium and small size cities, while F(hM) = 3.2 x
(log (11.75 x hM))2 for large cities; C = 0 dB for medium-size cities and suburban areas, while C = 3 dB for
large cities. The parameters in the above formula are: frequency f, eNB height above the ground hb, UE
height above the ground hM, and distance d (km)
The extension for the standard OH in suburban is
i=LU - 2 (log f/28)2 - 5.4
where LU is the pathloss in urban areas. The extension for the standard OH in open area is
LO = LU - 4.70(log f)2 + 18.33 log f - 40.94
13


2.1.4 Fading model

The online generation of fading profiles may be computationally costly. Therefore the LTE simulation model
allows evaluating fading values during simulation run-time based on pre-calculated traces. Various
parameters can be controlled to simulate different fading conditions, including users speed, number of
multiple paths (taps) considered, time granularity and number of nodes. Since the number of variables is
pretty high, the generation of traces considering all of them might produce a high number of traces of huge
size. Therefore, one fading value per TTI is generated, i.e., every 1 ms (as this is the granularity in time of
the NS3 LTE PHY model), and one fading value per RB (which is the frequency granularity of the spectrum
model used by the NS3 LTE model). Furthermore, the LTE module provides traces for three different
scenarios defined in Annex B.2 of [8] for pedestrian (with nodes speed of 3 kmph), vehicular (with nodes
speed of 60 kmph) and urban scenarios (with nodes speed of 3 kmph). All traces have duration of ten
seconds and they are computed for a total bandwidth of 100 RBs.
2.1.5 Data PHY Error Model
The LTE module adopts the well-known Gaussian interference models to compute the received
interference, according to which the powers of interfering signals are summed up together to determine
the overall interference power. Interference, attenuation and fading models determine the received SINR
value of each sub-channel (note that the received signal quality by each sub-carrier in the same sub-
channel is usually different). From the SINR samples an effective SINR value is computed using a link-to-
system mapping (LSM) technique. The specific LSM method adopted is the LTE module is the one known as
Mutual Information Based Effective SINR (MIESM) that is able to maintain a good level of accuracy and at
the same time limit the computational complexity. Finally a separate link-level simulator has been used to
derive the lookup tables that express the code block error rate (BLER) of each modulation and coding
scheme as a function of the effective SINR.
2.1.6 Adaptive Modulation and Coding
The LTE module implements an Adaptive Modulation and Coding (AMC) model that is a modified version of
the model described in [Piro2011]. Specifically, let i denote the generic user, and let i be its SINR. We get
the spectral efficiency i of user i using the following equations:
BER = 0.00005
ln(5 BER)

1.5
$ '
i = log 2 &1+ i )
% (
=
The procedure described in [10] is used to get the corresponding modulation-and-coding scheme (MCS) for
the downlink. The spectral efficiency is quantized based on CQI samples, rounding to the lowest value, and
is mapped to the corresponding MCS scheme. Specifically, the MAC scheduler receives CQI reports from all
UEs in the cell based on their measurements of the downlink channel. The reported CQI is a number
between 0 (worst) and 15 (best) indicating the most efficient MCS which would give a Block Error Rate
(BLER) of 10% or less.
2.1.7 Resource Allocation model
The packet scheduler implemented at the eNB is the crucial function of the resource allocation model
because it is in charge of assigning portions of spectrum shared among users within each frame, by
following specific policies. Specifically, the scheduler generates special control messages, called Downlink
Control Information (DCI), which indicates the resource allocation for each user. The information in DCIs
include: i) an allocation bitmap which identifies which RBs will contain the data transmitted by the eNB to
each user; ii) the Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS) to be used in each RB; and iii) the MAC transport
block size. Note that LTE supports three different ways for allocating RBs or RBGs in downlink grants. At the
14


time of writing, the LTE simulation implements only the Type 0 resource allocation, which uses a bitmap of
RBGs, where the RBG size is a function of the channel bandwidth. RBGs may be allocated from across the
full channel bandwidth. Allocated RGBs are not required to be contiguous.
Many different schedulers have been proposed for LTE, but most of them cannot be deployed in real
systems due to both the difficulty to be implemented in real devices and the high computational cost
required. For these reasons, only a subset of existing schedulers has been included in the LTE simulation
model [1][11]. In the following, we describe the features of the most relevant ones, which have been
evaluated in the simulations. First of all, let us introduce some useful notation that will be used in the
following sections. Let i, j denote generic users, t be the subframe index, and k be the resource block index;
let Mi,k(t) be MCS usable by user i on resource block k according to what reported by the AMC model; finally
let S(M,B) be the TB size in bits as defined in [6] for the case where a number B of resource blocks is used.
Then, the achievable rate Ri(k, t) in bit/s for user i on resource block group k at subframe t is defined as Ri(k,
t) = S(Mi,k(t),1)/TTI.
2.1.7.1 Round Robin (RR)
The RR scheduler is the simplest channel-unaware scheduler supported in the LTE module. It works by
dividing the available resources among the active flows, i.e., those logical channels that have a non-empty
RLC queue. If the number of RBGs is greater than the number of active flows, all the flows can be allocated
in the same subframe. Otherwise, if the number of active flows is greater than the number of RBGs, not all
the flows can be scheduled in a given subframe; then, in the next subframe the allocation will start from
the last flow that was not allocated. The MCS to be adopted for each user is done according to the received
wideband CQIs.
2.1.7.2 Proportional Fair (PF)
Thanks to CQI feedbacks, which are periodically sent (from UEs to the eNB) using ad hoc control messages,
the scheduler can estimate the channel quality perceived by each UE; hence, it can predict the maximum
achievable throughput. As explained above, Ri(k, t) is the achievable expected for the user i at the t-th TTI
over the k-th resource block group. Let Ti(t) be the past throughput performance perceived by the user i,
which is determined at the end of the subframe t using an exponential moving average approach (more
details can be found in [1]). Finally, at the start of each subframe t, each RBG k is assigned to the user ik(t)
by solving the following optimization problem
! R (k, t) $
&&
ik (t) = argmax ## j
j=1,,N " T j (t) %
In other words, the PF scheduler uses the past average throughput as a weighting factor of the expected
data rate, so that users in bad conditions will be surely served within a certain amount of time. The scaling
factor used in the moving average estimator of the past throughput determines the time window over
which fairness wants to be imposed.
2.1.7.3 Maximum Throughput (MT)
The scheduling strategy known as MT aims at maximizing the overall throughput by assigning each RBG to
the user that can achieve the maximum throughput in the current TTI. More formally, the user ik(t) to which
RBG k is assigned at subframe t is determined as
ik (t) = argmax ( R j (k, t))

j=1,,N
Although MT can maximize cell throughput, it cannot provide fairness to UEs in poor channel conditions.
Note that the LTE module implements two MT variants: frequency domain (FDMT) and time domain
(TDMT). In FDMT, every TTI, MAC scheduler allocates RBGs to the UE who has highest achievable rate
15


calculated by sub-band CQI. In TDMT, every TTI, MAC scheduler selects one UE which has highest
achievable rate calculated by wideband CQI.
2.1.7.4 Throughput to Average (TTA)
The TTA scheduler can be considered as an intermediate between MT and PF. The user ik(t) to which RBG k
is assigned at subframe t is determined as:
! R (k, t) $
&& ,
ik (t) = argmax ## j
j=1,,N " R j (t) %
where Rj(t) is the achievable rate for user j at subframe t. The difference between Ri(k,t) and Ri(t) achievable
rates is in the selection of the MCS value. For Ri(k,t), MCS is calculated by subband CQI while Ri(t) is
calculated by wideband CQI. In other words, the average achievable throughput in the current TTI is used
as normalization factor of the achievable throughput on the considered RBG. Thus, TTA scheduler
guarantees that the best RBs are allocated to each user. As a consequence TTA should ensure a strong level
of fairness on a temporal window of a single TTI. In fact, the higher the overall expected throughput of a
user is the lower will be its metric on a single resource block.
2.1.7.5 Blind Average Throughput (BAT)
The BAT scheduler aims to provide equal throughput to all UEs under eNB. The metric used in TTA is
calculated as follows:
! 1 $
&&
ik (t) = argmax ##
j=1,,N " T j (t) %
Two BAT variants are implemented in the LTE module. In the time-domain BAT (TD-BET), the scheduler
selects the UE with largest priority metric and allocates all RBGs to this UE. On the other hand, in the
frequency-domain BAT (FD-BET), at the start of each TTI, the scheduler first selects one UE with largest
priority metric (i.e., lowest expected throughput). Then, scheduler assigns one RBG to this UE, it calculates
expected throughput of this UE and uses it to compare with past average throughput Tj(t) of other UEs. The
scheduler continues to allocate RBG to this UE until its expected throughput is not the smallest one among
past average throughput Tj (t) of all UE. Then, the scheduler will use the same way to allocate RBG for a
new UE that has the lowest past average throughput Tj (t) until all RBGs are allocated to UEs. The principle
behind this is that, in every TTI, the scheduler tries the best to achieve the equal throughput among all UEs.
2.1.7.6 Priority Set (PS)
The PS scheduler controls the fairness among UEs by a specified Target Bit Rate (TBR). Then it uses a two-
step technique to allocate radio resources. At first, PS scheduler operates in the time domain by selecting
multiple subsets of active users in the current TTI among those connected to the eNB. Then, RBs are
physically allocated to each user based on frequency-selective metrics. The main advantage of such
partitioning is that a different policy can be selected in each phase.
More precisely, the PS scheduler implemented in the LTE simulation model divides the UEs with non-empty
RLC buffer into two sets based on the TBR. Set A is composed of all UE whose past average throughput is
smaller than TBR. A priority metric is associated to each UE in set A using the same formulas as in BET. Set B
is composed of all UE whose past average throughput is larger (or equal) than TBR. A priority metric is
associated to each UE in set A using the same formulas as in BET. A priority metric is associated to each UE
in set B using the same formulas as in PF. UEs belonged to set A have higher priority than ones in set B.
Then PS scheduler will select Nmux UEs with highest metric in two sets and forward those UE to the packet
scheduler. Then, the scheduler allocates RBG k to UE i in a way similar to PF. The only difference is that the
past throughput performance perceived by the user i is updated only when the i-th user is actually served.
16


2.2 Capacity limits in LTE networks

In this section we evaluate the capacity limits achieved for the various resource sharing mechanisms
described in both pedestrian and vehicular scenarios. Specifically, for each of the considered scheduling
policy, we show the aggregate cell throughput, the average throughput of a tagged user, and the well-
known Jain fairness index.
2.2.1 Results in pedestrian environments
The main goal of this first set of tests is to evaluate the maximum throughput that a tagged UE can obtain
in an LTE cell depending on the cell congestion levels, its channel conditions, and the scheduling policy. The
main simulation parameters are summarized in Table II. In the considered scenario we investigate a single
cell with radius 1.5Km. Then, we deploy uniformly in the cell a number N of UEs. An additional tagged UE is
positioned at distance D from the centre of the cell. By varying the distance D and the parameter N, we can
study the impact of channel interference on the maximum throughput that the LTE technology can ensure
to an individual user as a function of the perceived channel quality for different congestion levels. To
ensure that our results are statistically valid we replicate each test with 40 different topologies and we plot
both average values and confidence intervals with a 90% confidence level.
Table II: Main simulation parameters
Parameter
Value
Simulation duration
Number of topologies
Number of UEs
Carrier frequency
Bandwidth for the Downlink
Symbols for TTI
SubFrame length
SubCarriers per RB
SubCarrier spacing
Fading scenario
eNB Power transmission
MAC scheduler
TBR for PS scheduler
UE Mobility
Traffic model
10 seconds
20
[10,50] + tagged UE
2 GHz
5 MHz
14
1 ms
12
15 kHz
pedestrian
43 dBm
RR, PF, MT, TTA, BAT, PS
10 Kbps
Static
Best effort: infinite buffer

Figure 3 and Figure 4 represent, for each of the considered algorithms, the aggregate cell throughput and
fairness index. Presented results demonstrate how, as expected, MT performs always better than the other
strategies in terms of the overall achieved throughput, but significantly worse when we consider the
achieved fairness level. The reason is that MT is able to guarantee a high throughput only to a limited
number of users, whereas the rest of the users experience very low throughputs. In addition, the fairness
decreases as the number of users increases. In fact, growing the number of users, the probability to find a
user close to the eNB that monopolizes the channel increases. On the other hand, BAT is able to obtain the
highest throughput fairness (see Figure 4) because it is designed to equalize the throughput of individual
users. However, this approach is highly inefficient from the point of view of the aggregate throughput
because the users with bad channel quality (thus, low expected throughputs) drive the performance of
users with good channel conditions. Interestingly, we can observe that the cell throughput obtained with
RR is similar to the one obtained with TTA, and the differences between the two schedulers decrease with
the number of users in the cell. The schedulers that obtain the best trade-off between fairness and cell
throughput are PF and PS (which is in part derived by PF). This can be explained by the fact the scheduling
decisions take into account the expected data rate that a user would obtain if a given RBG were assigned to
him, as well as the past average throughput. Thus, even users with bad channel conditions will receive their
share of radio resources on the long term. We can also observe that the impact of parameter D on the cell
17


throughput decreases with the number of users. This is quite intuitive because average measurements tend
to hide sample variations if the sample size is large. Finally, many studies have shown that cell capacity
slightly increases with the number of users in the cell due to the effect of multi-user diversity gain (i.e., the
probability to find a user experiencing good channel conditions at a given time and on a given frequency
increases with the number of users in the cell). However, our results do not reveal this property because
the open-area pedestrian scenario is typically affected only by flat fading, which minimize the multi-user
diversity.
18000
18000
16000
RR
PF
MT
TTA
BAT
PS
14000
12000
Cell Throughput [Kbps]
16000
10000
8000
6000
4000
12000
10000
2000
0
RR
PF
MT
TTA
BAT
PS
14000
8000
6000
4000
2000
10
100
D [m]
0
1000
10
100
D [m]
(a) N=10
1000
(b) N=20
18000
16000
RR
PF
MT
TTA
BAT
PS
14000
12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
10
100
D [m]
1000
(a) N=50
Figure 3: Total throughput of a single LTE cell as a function of the distance of the tagged UE from the eNB. A variable
number N of UEs is uniformly distributed in the cell. Downlink traffic flows are saturated.
18


1
RR
PF
MT
TTA
BAT
PS
0.6
0.4
0.2
RR
PF
MT
TTA
BAT
PS
0.8
Fairness Index
Fairness Index
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
10
100
D [m]
1000
10
100
D [m]
(a) N=10
1000
(b) N=20
1
RR
PF
MT
TTA
BAT
PS
Fairness Index
0.8
0.6
0.4
0.2
0
10
100
D [m]
1000
(a) N=50
Figure 4: Throughput fairness of a single LTE cell as a function of the distance of the tagged UE from the eNB. A
variable number N of UEs is uniformly distributed in the cell. Downlink traffic flows are saturated.
Up to now we have analysed the cell throughput by highlighting the intrinsic trade-off between fairness and
aggregate throughput. The general conclusion is that in most cases higher the fairness, the lower the
aggregate throughput that is obtained in a cell. However, cell throughput measurements do not provide a
particularly useful insight on the performance perceived by an individual user. An obvious result is that the
average user throughput decreases as the number of users increases because the same amount of
resources has to be shared among a higher number of competing UEs. However, this is generally not true
when considering a tagged user. Therefore in Figure 5 we plot the throughput perceived by a tagged user in
the same scenarios that were used to obtain the results reported in Figure 3 and Figure 4. Our results
indicate that when the tagged user is close to the eNB, it generally obtains a stable throughput. On the
other hand, after a critical distance (around 200 meters in the considered fading environment) throughput
performance typically falls steeply. In fact, LTE standard changes the Modulation and Coding Scheme (MCS)
assigned to a UE as a function of the reported CQI, and the higher the distance between the tagged user
and the eNB, the lower the CQI should be. However, the exact throughput behaviour of a tagged user
depends in a complex manner on a variety of factors beyond channel conditions, including the history of
the past average throughput. For instance, with TTA scheduler there is an intermediate range of distances
where the throughput perceived by the tagged user may be even higher than the one obtained when the
tagged user is close to the eNB. Another observation is that with MT scheduler throughput performances
are greatly influenced by the topology layout and this explains the huge confidence intervals obtained
when the MT scheduler is used.

19


1200
RR
PF
MT
TTA
BAT
PS
2000
Throughput of tagged UE [Kbps]
2500
1500
1000
500
0
10
100
D [m]
1000
800
600
400
200
0
1000
RR
PF
TTA
BAT
PS
10
100
D [m]
(a) N=10
(b) N=20
500
1000
RR
PF
TTA
BAT
PS
400
300
200
100
0
10
100
D [m]
1000
(a) N=50
Figure 5: Throughput perceived by the tagged UE as a function of the distance of the tagged UE from the eNB. A
variable number N of UEs is uniformly distributed in the cell. Downlink traffic flows are saturated.

2.2.2 Results in vehicular environments
The goal of this second set of tests is to evaluate the LTE throughput performance in a typical vehicular
environment. To this end, we have considered a straight road segment (e.g., a section of an highway) with
four eNBs deployed along the road. The cell radius is set to 1.5 Km. Thus, each eNB covers with its signal a
section of the road segment that is 3 Km long. The mobile UEs (e.g., mobile phones or onboard wireless
transceivers) are initially deployed according to a uniform distribution over the road. Then, the speed of
each vehicle is selected uniformly in the range [80,120] kmph. Thus, the number of UEs that are attached to
the same eNB varies during the simulation because vehicles can overtake other front vehicles that move
slower. The physical layer parameters are the same as the one reported in Table II. Regarding the packet
scheduler, we have considered only the PF scheduler because this scheduling algorithm provides the best
trade-off between fairness and cell throughput.
In Figure 6, we plot the throughput obtained by a single UE moving at constant speed as a function of the
travelled distance for different velocities. As expected, the throughput shows a bell-shaped trend because
the LTE capacity is order of magnitudes lower at the cell edge than close to the cell centre. Interestingly,
the dependence of the throughput on the UEs speed is negligible, at least for the considered ranges of
speed. This can be explained by noting the robustness of the LTE technology against the Doppler effect.
20


20
speed=80kmph
speed=120kmph
Throughput (Mbps)
15
10
0
0
6
X (Km)
10
12
Figure 6: LTE link capacity measured by a single mobile UE for different speeds
In Figure 7 Figure 8 we plot the spatial distribution of the throughput obtained by a varying number of
mobile UEs attached to the same roadside eNB. Specifically, we vary the density of mobile UEs in the road
segment from 2 UE/km up to 10 UE/km. As pointed out above each UE uniformly selects a speed uniformly
in the range [80,120] kmph. Then, in the figures we show the average, the maximum and the minimum
throughputs measured by a generic UE as a function of the travelled distance under the cell coverage area
of the eNB. As expected, the higher the UE density and the lower the throughput. Furthermore, with a low
UE density we can observe that there is a higher relative difference between the minimum and maximum
throughout performance that each UE obtains.
8000
average
minimum
maximum
7000
Throughput (Kbps)
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
0
500
1000
1500
X (meters)
2000
2500
3000
Figure 7: Spatial distribution of per-UE throughput for a node density of 2 UEs per km
21


1200
average
minimum
maximum
Throughput (Kbps)
1000
800
600
400
200
0
0
500
1000
1500
X (meters)
2000
2500
3000
Figure 8: Spatial distribution of per-UE throughput for a node density of 10 UEs per km
To investigate more in depth how throughput dynamics are affected by node density, in Figure 9 we show
two scatter plots that illustrate the correlation that exists between the average throughput obtained by
each UE and the coefficient of variation (CV)1 of the throughout samples for the two node densities of
Figure 7 and Figure 8. We remind that the coefficient of variation is defined as the ratio of the standard
deviation to the mean and it is a normalized measure of the dispersion of a probability distribution or a
discrete data set. Distributions with CV>1 are considered high variance. The plots indicate that all UEs
experience a CV of throughput measurements between 1 and 1.2. In other words, the performance of an
average user cannot be considered representative of the performance of each individual user.

1.2
1.2
0.8
0.8
CV
1.4
CV
1.4
0.6
0.6
0.4
0.4
0.2
0.2
0
1000
1200
1400
1600
1800
2000
Average Throughput (Kbps)
2200
2400
(2 UE/km)
0
180
200
220
240
260
280
Average Throughput (Kbps)
300
320
340
(10 UE/Km)
Figure 9: Scatter plot of average values and coefficients of variation of the throughputs obtained by each mobile UE for
two node densities.
CV is a normalized measure of dispersion of a probability distribution or frequency distribution, and it is defined as

the ratio of the standard deviation (i.e., the square root of the variance) to the mean.
22


3 The Push&Track system as a technique for opportunistic offloading

Solving the problem of excessive load on infrastructure networks will require paradigm-altering
approaches. In particular, when many users are interested in the same content, it is possible to leverage
the multiple ad hoc networking interfaces (e.g., WiFi or Bluetooth) ubiquitous on todays mobile devices in
order to assist the infrastructure in disseminating the content. Subscribers may either form a significant
subset of all users, comprising for example all those interested in the digital edition of a particular
newspaper, or may include all users in a given area, for example vehicles receiving periodic traffic updates
in a city.
The core mechanism behind Push&Track aims at alleviating the load on the operators infrastructure by
reducing redundant traffic. In our vision, mobile nodes may subscribe to various content feeds that are
distributed from a point inside the infrastructures access network and can be of any size. Whenever the
subscriber base is significant enough that islands of ad hoc connectivity exist, Push&Track can leverage
these to offload traffic from the infrastructure to the ad hoc radio. The idea is to benefit from node mobility
and delay tolerance of a number of content types to help the infrastructure to shift a portion of the traffic
from the primary (cellular) channel to an alternative (terminal-to-terminal) channel. Recent studies
confirmed this as an alternative solution when many co-located users are interested in the same contents
[13][26]. The main limitations of the existing solutions are that they need the knowledge of the contact
probability of nodes or a training period. In addition, none of them take into account nodes that enter or
leave the system. Push&Track does not rely on any restricted hypothesis on contact statistics, and adapts
the offloading process to the current evolution of the dissemination process, leading to much more
responsive and efficient offloading levels.
3.1 High level operation of Push&Track

In Push&Track, a subset of mobile users initially receives content from the primary channel and propagates
it opportunistically using the ad hoc interface. When a node receives content from a neighbor, it
acknowledges the reception to an offloading coordinator through the infrastructure network, forming a
feedback loop in the system. This mechanism allows Push&Track coordinator to monitor in real time the
evolution of the content dissemination process. The offloading coordinator continually estimates the actual
infection status to decide whether or not to re-inject additional copies in order to boost the content
diffusion in the network. Since acknowledgements sent by mobile nodes on the infrastructure channel are
relatively lightweight (compared to the size of the disseminated content), the proposed system allows
considerable reduction of the infrastructure load.
Figure 10: High level operation of Push&Track

Note that the feedback loop

guarantees also a fallback method to
overcome various issues that may
appear in the network, such as node
failures or mobile users behaving
selfishly - occurrence of these events
could heavily impact the opportunistic
diffusion [29]. Since opportunistic
communications depend heavily on
the particular mobility of nodes, only
probabilistic guarantees of successful
content delivery and reception times
can be given. To solve this issue, when
we approach the maximum delivery
delay D (i.e., the validity of the content),
23


and the time left is equal to the time required to send the message through the infrastructure, denoted as
P, the offloading coordination agent enters a panic zone and pushes the content to all uninfected nodes
through the infrastructure, guaranteeing 100% delivery ratio while minimizing the load on the
infrastructure. The high-level operation of Push&Track is illustrated in Figure 10.
Note that every re-injection decision is expected to bring benefit to the system, but it depends on the re-
injection time and the target node (to which copies will be sent through the infrastructure). In fact, there is
a difficult trade-off to consider. On the one hand, if too many copies are injected in the beginning (in
general, earlier injections have more time to diffuse) the system may be overestimated (as we do not know
in advance how nodes will encounter). On the other hand, if the system injects too few copies in the
beginning and waits for the panic zone to compensate for lags, many opportunistic encounters might be
wasted because of the lack of enough copies in the network. Re-injection is beneficial when the subsequent
opportunistic transmissions saves additional infrastructure pushes. Of course, the benefit can be null if the
offloading coordination agent selects a node that would have received the message later from another
node.
3.2 Subset Selection

The following subset-selection strategies are considered by Push&Track when content has to be pushed:
Random: Push to a random node chosen uniformly among those that have not yet acknowledged
reception.
Entry time: If content subscription is localized, then each nodes entry time (i.e., subscription time)
is correlated to its position in the interest area. For example, selecting nodes that have the most
recent (Entry-Newest) or oldest (Entry-Oldest) entry times should target nodes near to the edge of
the area, whereas pushing to those that are closest to the average entry time (Entry-Average)
should target the middle of the area.
GPS-based: On top of the existing acknowledge messages, each node may also periodically inform
the control system of its current location. From this information we consider two GPS-based
strategies. In order to ensure rapid replication, GPS-Density strategy pushes the content to an
uninfected node within the highest density area, GPS-Potential pushes the content to the node that
is the furthest away from other infected nodes.
Connectivity-based: Nodes can periodically communicate to Push&Track coordinator a list of their

current neighbors. Even though each node will still perform opportunistic store-and-forwarding,
the control system will have a good slightly out of sync picture of the global connectivity graph. The
CC (Connected Components) strategy uses this information to push content to a randomly chosen
node within the largest uninfected connected component. The idea is to push only one copy per
connected component thereby getting close to the optimal number of pushed copies.
3.3 When to Push

3.3.1
Fixed Objective Function
A simple re-injection strategy is to bind the actual current infection ratio to a fixed objective function. Let x
be the fraction of time elapsed between a messages creation and expiration dates. Each strategy is defined
by an objective function (see Figure 11), which indicates for every 0 x 1 what the current infection ratio
should be (i.e., the fraction of the number of subscribing nodes that have the content).
24


Infection ratio can go down if infected

nodes unsubscribe or up if non-infected
nodes unsubscribe. If, at any time, the
measured infection ratio, obtained from
user-sent acknowledgements, is below the
current target infection ratio, then the
strategy returns the minimal number of
additional copies that need to be re-
injected in order to meet that target.
Furthermore, when the time left before the
deadline is equal to the time required to
push the message directly, the Push&Track
coordinator enters a panic zone and pushes
the content to all uninfected nodes through
Figure 11: Infection rate objective functions. x is the fraction of
the
infrastructure, guaranteeing full
time elapsed between a messages creation and expiration dates. x
dissemination.

= 1 is the deadline for achieving 100% infection.
Fixed Objective Functions may broadly be divided into three categories:
Slow start: This includes two very simple strategies that push an initial number of copies and then
do nothing until the panic zone: the Single Copy and Ten Copies strategies. The objective function
for the Quadratic strategy is x2. The Slow Linear strategy starts with an x/2 linear objective for the
first half of the messages lifetime, and finishes with a 3/2 x 1/2 objective.
Fast start: The objective function for the Square Root strategy is x . The Fast Linear strategy starts
with a 3/2x linear objective for the first half of the messages lifetime, and finishes with an x/2 + 1/2
objective.
Steady: This is the Linear strategy which ensures an infection ratio strictly proportional to x.
3.3.2
Derivative-based Re-injection (DROiD)
The general principle behind Push&Track is to adapt to the heterogeneous individual mobility pattern of
nodes. This heterogeneity is most of the time at the base of a stepwise pattern in the epidemic diffusion,
alternating plateaux and periods of infection as in Figure 12. For this reason, a better re-injection decision is
taken by analyzing the outlook of the diffusion rather than comparing the actual infection to a fixed
objective function. Exploiting this evidence, Push&Track detects plateaux in the content diffusion evolution,
and, if needed, adaptively re-injects additional copies in the system to fine control the pace at which
contents are disseminated. Thanks to this adaptive re-injection strategy, Push&Track reaches much better
performance than using fixed objective functions.

Figure 12: Epidemic diffusion of 6 initial copies in the Rollernet dataset: the diffusion behavior presents three steep
zones and three flat zones, resulting from the heterogeneity of encounter probabilities.
25


3.3.2.1 Motivation
Let us now dig into the relationship between mobility patterns and the stepwise pattern in the epidemic
diffusion. This phenomenon is intrinsically related to the heterogeneity of contact patterns, i.e., the fact
that two different nodes do not meet on average the same number of other nodes.
To capture the heterogeneity of patterns, we adopt a Marked Poisson Process model of node contacts
[19][33]. In this model, the meeting times of any two nodes (i,j) follow a Poisson Process with rate ij = pij .
The inter-contact times Tij are thus independent exponentials with parameter ij, and contact matrix C = (pij)
captures the patterns of interactions between nodes. In the homogeneous case, C is the identity matrix,
i.e., all nodes can see each other with the same probability. At any given time instant of the dissemination
process, a set S of nodes is infected. We are interested in the random plateau duration TS during which the
dissemination does not progress. This corresponds to the random time during which this set of nodes do
not meet any other nodes. Looking at the set of links between nodes in S and its complement, one can see
that TS = infiS,jS Tij . By Poisson calculus, and noting the cut value S =iS,jS pij, TS is an exponential random
variable with parameter S [16]. The expected plateauing duration, once set S has been reached, is thus
1/S.
This simple argument shows that TS is directly related to the structural properties of the contact patterns C.
This provides a natural connection between the community structure of the contact graph and the
progression (and lack of progression) of the opportunistic dissemination process. Applying these ideas to
the graph of contacts C (which represents the probability of two nodes to meet) means that a community S
of users will spread the message quickly within the group (high conductance), but will reach a plateau once
the nodes in the group all have the message, because the weight of inter-cluster edges and thus its cut
value S is low. This observation provides the motivation of our further investigation of adaptive offloading
strategies that are able to chase the individual mobility of nodes, re-injecting copies when the diffusion
evolution runs into a plateau.

Figure 13: Discrete time slope detection performed by DROiD. For clarity we consider the content creation time
t0=0.

3.3.2.2 Re-injection strategy
We achieve higher offloading efficiency by making the re-injection decision dependent not only on the
actual dissemination level, but also on the trend of the infection ratio.
For instance, using only fixed objective functions, the offloading coordinator reacts too late when the
infection ratio is above the objective function but still not evolving, or overreacts when the infection
26


evolves well but its instantaneous value still lies under the objective function. Late or too violent re-
injections result in a waste of messages pushed through the infrastructure. Another limitation in the use of
a fixed objective function is that different objective functions behave differently depending on the content
lifetime and network status.
With the derivative re-injection strategy, the offloading coordinator stores in memory a short snippet of
past infection ratio values. All content has an associated tracker that stores the evolution of the infection
ratio for a temporal sliding window of size W.
As illustrated in Figure 13 at evaluation time step t, the offloading coordinator performs a forward
difference quotient on the instantaneous infection ratio I(t) that approximates to a discrete derivative:
I (t ) =
I (t ) I (t W )

W
I() approximates the slope of the infection ratio and is one of the parameters that influence the re-
injection decision. Push&Track in this case re-injects additional copies of the content whenever the discrete
derivative I() is below a lim threshold computed on line. The threshold lim varies according to the actual
distance from the panic zone and the infection rate. lim is computed as the ratio between the fraction of
uninfected nodes and the time remaining before the panic zone. A steeper slope is needed when time gets
closer to panic zone or the infection ratio is lagging (different from when we are at the beginning of the
infection process). Formally speaking, we have:
lim (t ) =
1 I (t )

( D P) t
As a final step, the injection rate rinj(t) is computed as a piecewise function, depending on the ratio of the
current I(t) value and the lim threshold:
c
I (t ) 0

(t )
rinj (t ) = c 1 I
0 < I (t ) lim (t )
(
t
)
lim
0
I (t ) > lim (t )

where c[0, 1] is a clipping value used to limit the overall amount of re-injected copies in the case of
negative values of I .
Finally, rinj(t) is multiplied with the number of uninfected nodes to find R(t), the number of copies to re-
inject at t:
R(t ) = (1 I (t )) N (t ) rinj (t )
where |N (t)| is the total number of nodes in the network.
3.4 Results
3.4.1
Evaluation Setup
We evaluate Push&Track re-injection strategies using a large-scale vehicular mobility trace of Bologna
(Italy) with 10,333 vehicles. This dataset, initially exploited to evaluate cooperative road traffic
management strategies within the previous FP7 iTetris project, covers 20.6 km2 comprising 191 km of
roads. The dataset is derived by real traffic measurements and inferred into a micro-mobility model
through the SUMO simulator. From the extracted mobility data, we derive a contact trace considering a 100
meters threshold. The final trace has duration of about one hour; in average, 3,500 vehicles are present at
the same time (because of their mobility, some nodes leave while others join during the observation
period).
27


We built a streamlined event based simulator, considering a simple contact-based ad hoc MAC model,
where a node may transmit only to a single neighbor at a time. Transmission times are deterministic since
we do not take into account complex phenomena that occur in the wireless channel such as fading and
shadowing. The ad hoc routing protocol employed by nodes to disseminate the content is the epidemic
forwarding.
We investigate how our system performs under tight delivery constraints, when the maximum delivery
delay D lies in the range [30, 180] seconds. In fact, we are mostly interested in very short maximum
reception delays, in the order of minutes, as otherwise users would not realistically accept to trade-off
reception delays for cellular capacity. All the results presented in this section are averages over 10
simulation runs. Contents are issued periodically; with the previous one expiring when a new one is created
(for now a single content is active in the system at a time).
3.4.2
Fixed Objective Function
We focus primarily on the aggregate load that flows through the infrastructure and across the ad hoc links.
Load measurements take into account acknowledgement messages as well as failed and aborted transfers.
We use two reference strategies for evaluation purposes: infrastructure only (Infra) and connected
component oracle (Oracle). In the Infra strategy, there is no offloading at all, and the infrastructure
represents the only means of distributing content. In the Oracle strategy, the offloading coordinator has a
real-time picture of the ad hoc connectivity of the entire network. In this strategy, the oracle pushes the
content to a random node within each existing connected component. We are mainly interested in the
offloading efficiency, which is computed by comparing the infrastructure load of a specific run with the
reference Infra strategy load, e.g. in the absence of any ad hoc radio.
One of the most interesting result is that the Random re-injection strategy consistently does better than
most of the more sophisticated strategies described in Section 3.2, as shown in Figure 14.
Random selection combines the best of all the more complex strategies. Indeed it statistically has a high
chance of hitting the large connected components and also tends to spread the copies uniformly over the
considered area. If one is not willing to deal with the added complexity of a more sophisticated control
channel, let alone privacy concerns about localization and/or proximity information, then the simple
Random whom-strategy consistently performs very well.
As we can see from Figure 14, in the absence of feedback loop, the choice of the initial number of copies to
inject has a huge impact on the offload ratio. Consider the Single-Copy and the Ten-Copy strategies. Due to
the epidemic propagation, a difference of only 9 initial copies translates to a 4x final offloading efficiency.

Figure 14: 1-minute delay: average offloading efficiency for different combinations of whom and when strategies,
three different participation rates are considered. The rows correspond, from top to bottom, to the following whom
strategies: Random, Connected Components, Entry-Oldest, Entry-Average, Entry-Newest, GPS-Density, and GPS-
Potential. The columns represent the following when strategies, from left to right: Single Copy, Ten Copies, Quadratic,
Slow Linear, Linear, Fast Linear, and Square Root.
On the other hand, the presence of the control loop permits to quickly react and adapt to changing
conditions. This allows Push&Track to avoid massive last-minute re-injections upon arriving in the panic
28


zone, and achieving excellent offloading efficiency (73% for Slow Start and 72% for Linear at 100%
participation rate). A drawback of this schema is that it does not propose a single solution, but instead a
multitude of objective functions; the problem is that different objective functions behave differently
depending on the content lifetime, network status and number of users. For instance, we can clearly see
that in Figure 14 the objective function that gives the best results is not the same for 25% and 100%
participation rates.
3.4.3
Derivative-based Re-injection (DROiD)

Figure 15: Offloading efficiency for different re-injection schema. Different maximum reception delays for messages
are considered.
For evaluation, we compare the derivative strategy with the Linear and Slow-start strategies, since these
strategies gives the best results in the 100% participation scenario.
All the Push&Track (PnT in figures) strategies perform very well in terms of reduced infrastructure load, by
delivering the majority of traffic through device-to-device communications even in the case of tight delays.
As we can see from Figure 15, compared to Linear and Slow-start strategies, the derivative strategy always
leads to better results. The gap between the derivative and the two fixed objective functions strategies
increases when the tolerance to delay increases, suggesting a better adaptation to the diffusion evolution.
This curve shows also a well-known phenomenon: an increase in the reception delay corresponds to an
increase in the offloading efficiency.
29


Figure 16: Infrastructure vs. ad hoc load per message sent using the Infra, the Oracle, and the DROiD strategies.
Different maximum reception delays for messages are considered.
Simulation results plotted in Figure 16, show that DROiD presents roughly the same infrastructure load of
the oracle to guarantee 100%-delivery ratio. Sudden variations in the infection ratio, due to nodes that
dynamically enter and leave, are well handled by the feedback mechanism.
Although DROiD and Oracle show more or less the same trend in the offloading efficiency curve, this result
is achieved through two completely different strategies. On the one hand, Oracle, exploits its perfect
knowledge of the connectivity status in the network, pushing the content to specific high potential nodes.
On the other hand, the derivative strategy has a much less complete, and slightly out of sync view of the
system, and employs the algorithm explained in Section 3.3.2.2 to guess when additional copies of the
content are required.
30


4 Throughput analysis of opportunistic network protocols

The main goal of this part of the analysis is to provide analytical models describing the throughput
attainable in the opportunistic part of the MOTO reference networking scenario. As a matter of fact, in
opportunistic networks the main performance figure that impacts on the throughput is the delay
experienced by messages sent from a sender to a destination (and forwarded through a given forwarding
algorithm). The other key component to derive the throughput is the bandwidth available during direct
communications between nodes, which is a topic far less investigated in the framework of opportunistic
networks, as it has been already investigated in the more general framework of mobile ad hoc networks.
In order to correctly model the delay, we need to separately investigate two aspects. The first one deals
with convergence of forwarding algorithms2, i.e. whether a given forwarding algorithm yields finite or
infinite expected delay. The second one deals with providing closed form expressions for the delay, in the
cases where routing algorithms converge. While the second aspect is intuitive to understand, the first one
needs some additional explanation.
As messages follow multi-hop paths across the nodes of the network, their delay is the result of the delay
accumulated at each hop along the forwarding path. Therefore, the time (intermeeting time) between
consecutive encounters of a pair of nodes is the elementary component of the overall delay. Thus, knowing
the distribution of intermeeting times, one could - in principle - model the distribution of the delay
experienced by messages. Unfortunately, there is no agreement on the actual shape featured by pairwise
intermeeting times in real networks. Of the many hypotheses that have been made [22][24][34][36], the
most challenging from the forwarding standpoint is the one proposed by Chaintreau et al. [20]. Chaintreau
et al. found intermeeting times extracted from real mobility traces to follow a Pareto distribution, i.e.
whose Complementary Cumulative Distribution Function (CCDF) is in the form
! b $
P ( X > x) = #
& , b, x, > 0 , where b is the scale and the shape parameter. The problem with
"b+ x%
Pareto distributions is that their expectation is finite only for certain values of their exponent . More
specifically, the expectation is finite if >1, while for <1 it diverges to infinity. Being the delay the result of
the composition of the time intervals between node encounters, depending on the exponent values
featured by intermeeting times, the expectation of the delay might diverge. In practical terms, in cases
where this happens, messages may be trapped on nodes from where they are not forwarded further
(according to the rules of the specific forwarding protocol), thus not reaching the final destination.
Therefore, given a specific pattern of nodes mobility (and, thus, a specific pattern of intermeeting times)
and a given forwarding protocol, it is important to know whether that forwarding protocol may yield
infinite delay, in order to know whether it can safely be used in the network or not.
In the following of this section, we therefore first present the main results obtained by MOTO partners on
the problem of convergence, and then we present an initial model for the delay of forwarding protocols in
case of convergence. The first aspect is background information, as it has been obtained by MOTO partners
before the start of the project. It is nevertheless briefly presented hereafter as it is one of the starting
points of the activities in the work package. Specifically, we are currently extending these results to more
general settings, and we expect to report these new results in the following deliverables of the work
package.
As the routing and forwarding processes are typically done at the same time in opportunistic networks, the two
terms, although conceptually different, are typically used interchangeably in the literature, and in the following of this
document.
31


4.1 Convergence of forwarding protocols in opportunistic networks

We hereafter provide a brief summary of the work presented in [14] (from the CNR team working in
MOTO). We assume a network of N mobile nodes. As it is typically (and accepted) in the opportunistic
networking literature, we assume that a contact between two nodes lasts long enough to allow the nodes
to exchange the messages they have to, according to the rules of the forwarding protocol. Therefore, in the
evaluation of the delay, the main role is played by the intermeeting times. Specifically, we assume a general
heterogeneous mobility setting, where intermeeting times follow Pareto distributions, with parameters
possibly different from pair to pair. Therefore, the CCDF of the intermeeting time between node i and j is
denoted as follows:
! t (ij ) $ ij
Fij (t ) = # (ij )min &
" tmin + x %
(1)
(ij )
where ij is the shape parameter and tmin
the scale parameter. Note that considering such heterogeneous
environment (instead of a homogeneous one where all nodes meet with exactly the same distribution) is
one of the main contributions of [14] with respect to previous literature.
From the standard properties of Pareto distributions it follows that the average intermeeting time between
i and j is finite if and only if (iff) ij is larger than 1. Another important statistic for this study is the residual
of intermeeting times, i.e. the time until the next contact between the two nodes, starting from a random
point in time. It is known that, if intermeeting times follow a Pareto distribution, residuals are also Pareto
with the same scale parameter and shape parameter reduced by one (i.e., ij -1 for nodes i and j). It thus
follows that residuals have finite expectation iff ij is greater than 2.
In terms of forwarding strategies, results presented in [14] hold for social-oblivious protocols, one of the
two large families that can be identified in the literature. Social-oblivious protocols, which do not exploit
any information about the users' context and social behaviour but just hand over the message to the first
node encountered (avoiding at most those nodes that have already forwarded the message). The main
advantage of these strategies is that they are intrinsically simple and lightweight (practically no information
to collect, store, or mine). Despite their simplicity, they are a reference point in the literature, as a number
of foundational works on the properties of opportunistic networks have been found considering this class
of protocols. To accurately represent the different variants in this class, we identify three main groups,
differing in the number of hops allowed between source and destination, the number of copies generated,
and whether the source and relay nodes keep track of the evolution of the forwarding process or not. First,
forwarding strategies can be single-copy or multi-copy. In the former case, at any point in time there can be
at most one copy of each message circulating in the network. In the latter, multiple copies can travel in
parallel, thus in principle multiplying the opportunities to reach the destination (we assume that all copies
are generated by the source node). Second, forwarding protocols can be classified based on the number of
hops that they allow messages to traverse, or, in other words, based on a TTL computed on the number of
hops. When the number of allowed hops is finite, the last relay can only deliver the message to the
destination directly. Third, the amount of knowledge that each agent in the forwarding process can rely on
(or is willing to collect and store) is an additional element for classifying forwarding strategies. Focusing on
the source node, there can be social-oblivious strategies in which the source node does not keep track at all
of how the forwarding process progresses. In this case, considering the configuration in which the source
node can generate up to m copies of the message, the m copies might end up being all distributed to the
exact same relay, thus eliminating the potential benefits of multi-copy forwarding. A memoryful source,
instead, is able to guarantee to use distinct relays. A similar problem holds for intermediate relays.
Memoryless relays can forward the message to the same next hop more than once, because they are not at
all aware of what happened in the past. On the other hand, memoryful relays possess this knowledge, and
are able to refuse the custody of messages that they have already relayed. Please note that we assume that
the source node can never be handed over messages that it has generated. This assumption simply takes
into account the fact that the source identity is always enclosed into the message header, thus this does
32


not require any additional knowledge beside what is already present in the system. Table 3 summarizes the
feasible combinations (the ones marked with the checkmarks) of the forwarding characteristics described
above when social-oblivious schemes are considered. These combinations can be found in well known
routing strategies. For example, the 1-hop 1-copy memoryless forwarding corresponds to the Direct
Transmission strategy [7], in which the source node can only deliver the messages to the destination. The 2-
hop 1-copy memoryless forwarding is equivalent to the Two Hop forwarding introduced in [25]. The 2-hop
m-copy memoryful forwarding is equivalent to the multi-copy version of the Two Hop protocol studied in
[20]. Please note that relays can be memoryful only when they have multiple forwarding choices. This is not
the case when the number of hops is limited to either one (there is no relay in this case) or two (relays can
only deliver the message to the destination).

Table 3. Summary of forwarding strategies.
In [14] we derive sufficient and necessary conditions on the shapes of the intermeeting time distributions
for convergence of the various families of protocols highlighted in Table 3. We hereafter exemplify one of
these cases, and then provide the final results for all classes, together with examples of practical
applications of these results.
Let us consider the 2-hop 1-copy memoryless scheme. We can prove that the protocol converges iff both
the following conditions hold

where s and d denote the source and destination nodes, respectively. The physical meaning of the
conditions is quite intuitive. Recall that in the 2-hop 1-copy scheme the source hands over the only copy of
the message to the first encountered node, which then has to relay it directly to the destination. Condition
C1 guarantees that the first phase occurs within a finite expected time. Specifically, the source node
encounters the first possible relay with a time that is distributed according to a Pareto law with shape
sj
Ps . Therefore, the first phase converges if the average value of this time is finite, which leads to
jPs
condition C1. Condition C2 guarantees that whatever relay is chosen by s, it encounters the destination
within a finite expected time (note that the time for such relay to meet the destination is the residual of
their intermeeting time, as the process of encounter between nodes is asynchronous, and therefore node s
meets the relay at a random point in time with respect to the meetings between the relay and the
destination).
Replicating the same methodology also for the other schemes, we obtain the conditions listed in Table 4.

Table 4. Convergence conditions.
Specifically, conditions C3 and C4 are as follows:

33


where m denotes the number of copies generated by the source, and m* is defined as follows

and denotes the i-th largest sj with j Ps . C3 and C4 are needed only in case of multi-copy
*
i
forwarding. The value m* is a threshold on the number of copies, such that if the source generates up to
m* copies, all of them are handed over to m* distinct relays with finite expected delay, while if m exceeds
m* the additional copies cannot be handed over with finite expected delay. Condition C3 thus imposes that
the source can actually relay m distinct copies of the message; while condition C4 guarantees that the
destination meets at least one of the used relays with finite expected delay.
These theoretical conditions can be used to decide which protocols to use given a configuration of
intermeeting times. For example, let us consider the case of a network of N=10 nodes, and define the
following set of exponents

whose components are denoted as 1, , N-1. We assume that a generic node i meets all the other nodes
in a way such that i,1= 1, , i,N= N-1. We also consider the case where the source node is 1 and the
destination node 10. According to the above results, the expected delay for the Direct Transmission is not
defined, because 1,10 = 1.3, while it should be greater than 2 for convergence. Analogously, the
convergence condition for the 1-copy 2-hop scheme is not satisfied because of condition C2. The only
scheme able to achieve a convergent expected delay is the m-copy 2-hop scheme, with m=4. For the three
forwarding strategies discussed above, we plot the empirical cumulative distribution function in Figure 17.
As expected, in the case of 4-copy 1-hop scheme, the great majority of messages (~99.9%) is delivered
within a short time (100s) from their generation. For both the 1-hop 1-copy and the 2-hop 1-copy schemes,
instead, after 10000 seconds there is still a big fraction (around 10%) of messages to be delivered. These
long delays, predicted by our model, are those that cause the expected delay to diverge.

Figure 17. Example of delays with different forwarding strategies.
Starting from these results, we are currently extending them in order to take into consideration not only
social-oblivious protocols, but also social-aware protocols, which use context information about the relays
and the destination in order to take forwarding decisions. For example, they take into consideration the
rate of encounter with the destination as a measure of fitness to relay towards it. We expect to report
these results in the next deliverables of the work package.
34


4.2 Modelling the delay of opportunistic routing protocols

In this section, we describe the initial work carried out in WP3 to model the delay of opportunistic
networking protocols. The results are currently under submission for publication in an international journal
(the paper is accepted under major revisions), and are also available as a CNR Technical Report.
As already introduced in the previous section, forwarding protocols in opportunistic networks can be
classified as social oblivious or social aware. The simplest form in the first class is represented by Epidemic
forwarding [42], which generates and hands over a new copy of the message for each new encounter. The
rationale behind this approach is to leverage as many routes to the destination as possible. Unfortunately,
this greedy approach suffers from severe resource consumption and tends to overload the network [37].
Smarter, social-aware, strategies as to whom to forward and how many copies should be generated have
been devised. According to the type of information used when making forwarding decisions, these
strategies can be further classified as partially social-aware [31][38] and fully social-aware [15][27][23].
They leverage information about the users, their contact dynamics, the environment they operate in, the
social relationships they share, in order to select one (or a bunch of) best next hop. As discussed in the
previous section, depending on the number of copies generated for the same message, forwarding
protocols can also be classified into single-copy or multi-copy schemes.
Despite the variety of practical forwarding solutions based on different heuristics to define social-aware
policies (such as encounter frequency and sociality metrics), no general framework has been introduced so
far for the analysis of opportunistic forwarding protocols in a structured way. Some models exist in the
literature (e.g., [44][1][38][39][30]), but they are specific to the protocols being studied and can hardly be
re-used when the protocols are changed. The situation is even worse for social-aware schemes, which,
despite their popularity, are typically difficult to model analytically. Moreover, the absence of a general
consensus on some fundamental properties of user movement patterns (e.g., the distribution of the inter-
meeting times) makes it even more complex to find a model on a solid basis.
The contribution of the work we report in this section is twofold. First, a general framework for the analysis
of single-copy forwarding schemes is introduced. This model, based on Markov chains, allows us to
compute significant quantities, such as the first and second moments of the number of hops and delay,
which characterize the forwarding performance. These moments can then be used to approximate, e.g.,
the full distribution of the delay and number of hops. Clearly, the full distribution, e.g., of the delay is more
informative than just its expectation, as it allows us to analyse, for example, the dependency of the delay
on the TTL. This general framework also takes into account social-awareness, which can be incorporated
seamlessly into the model. In addition, our framework is independent of specific mobility assumptions, thus
it would remain usable even if new insights on the way users move were provided.
The second contribution is the instantiation of the framework in three different mobility scenarios. More
specifically, we solve the framework exactly in the case of exponential and power law inter-meeting times,
which are popular assumptions for inter-meeting times emerged in the literature [24][20][18]. In addition,
we also provide a complete solution to the framework in the case of hyper-exponentially distributed inter-
meeting times. The latter result is particularly significant, since the hyper-exponential distribution can
approximate the behaviour of a large class of distributions, those having a coefficient of variation greater
than 1. The coefficient of variation [40] is defined as the ratio between the standard deviation and the
mean, and measures the dispersion of a probability distribution. The higher the coefficient of variation, the
more distant a sampled value can be from the mean. High-variance distributions are extremely important
in opportunistic networks for two reasons. First, they have often emerged as a plausible hypothesis for
inter-meeting times (apart from the power law hypothesis, recently the LogNormal one has also gained a
lot of popularity [41]). Second, high-variance distributions can drastically affect the delay experienced by
messages, causing the expectation of the delay to diverge in extreme cases, as discussed in Section 4.1.
The characteristics of single-copy schemes have been analytically studied in the literature for what
concerns social-oblivious strategies [38][20], but, to the best of our knowledge, the one we have proposed
35


is the first general framework that takes into account the social-awareness of the forwarding process.
Moreover, results obtained for single-copy schemes are important to multi-copy schemes as well. Consider
for example multi-copy schemes in which replication can occur only at the source node. Each copy travels
along a path independently of the others. While the delivery from the source node to the first relays is
significantly different from a single-copy delivery due to the multi-copy generation, from the first relay to
the destination the delay can be approximated using single-copy results. The extension of the framework to
the multi-copy case is currently under study.
4.2.1 General framework for modelling the delay
Due to its flexibility, we use a semi-Markov process with N states (N being the number of nodes in the
network) to model the opportunistic forwarding process. A semi-Markov process is one that changes state
in accordance with a Markov chain (called embedded or jump chain) but where transitions between states
can take a random amount of time with an arbitrary distribution [35]. As such, it is fully described by the
transition matrix associated with its embedded chain and by Ti, i = 0,N, where Ti denotes the distribution
of the time that the semi-Markov process spends in state i before making a transition. We express our
semi-Markov process associated with the single-copy message forwarding process in terms of the
embedded Markov chain in Figure 18

Figure 18. Semi-Markov chain for the general delay modelling framework.
Assuming that node i is currently holding a message whose destination is d, the probability pijd that node i
will delegate the forwarding of the message to another node j is a function of both the likelihood of
meeting node j and the probability that node i will hand over the message to node j according to the
forwarding policy in use. It is simple to write the delay from node i to the destination as follows
(2)

where Tij denotes the time before node i hands over the message to node j conditioned on the fact that j is
the first encountered suitable next hop for node i (corresponding to the time before the chain moves from
state i to state j), and pij is the probability that node j is actually the first encountered suitable next hop for
node i (a similar equation can be found for the number of hops). The first two moments of the delay can
then be written as follows.
(3)

(4)

Equations (3) and (4) are extremely powerful, as they allow us to completely characterize the first two
moments of the single-copy delay and number of hops. By knowing the first two moments, we can use, for
example, the moment matching approximation technique [40] to compute the approximate distribution of
the delay, thus completely characterizing it. Note that Equation (3) has an intuitive explanation: the
expected value of the delay from node i is the expected time to exit from node i (because of an encounter
36


generating a forwarding event), plus the average delay from any possible relay j to node d, weighted by the
probability that node i encounters relay j and forwards the message to it (pij).
The first and second moments can be computed when pij, Tij and Ti are characterised. This can still be done
in general, i.e. irrespective of the specific forwarding protocols used. Then, these expressions can be
customised and converted in closed form expressions for each specific protocol. To provide a general idea,
let us focus on the derivation of pij. Denoting with Rij the residual intermeeting time between node i and j,
and with Ri the set of possible relays that i may consider for destination d according to the specific
forwarding protocol, we obtain
(5)

Basically, Equation (5) tells that the probability that node i uses j as forwarder is the probability that j is the
first node encountered by i among those that it will use as forwarders towards destination d.
4.2.2 Using the general framework: concrete examples
In this section we exemplify how the proposed framework can be used to assess the performance of the
Direct Transmission, Always Forward, Two Hop, Direct Acquaintance, and Social Forwarding schemes in
such cases. Direct Transmission and Two Hop have been introduced already in Section 4.1. Always Forward
is basically Epidemic Routing. Direct Acquaintance and Social Forwarding are representative of social-aware
policies. Both forward according to a gradient of fitness with respect to the given destination. In the former
case, fitness is computed as the rate of direct encounter with the destination, while in the latter indirect
contacts (i.e., contacts mediated from other nodes) are also considered. We consider two mobility
scenarios, falling in the category of social-oriented mobility models (which are the reference class for
opportunistic networks). The two scenarios are represented in Figure 19 (left) and (right). In both cases,
nodes are divided in three communities. Most of the nodes move only inside their reference community,
while a few nodes (travellers) move across different communities, thus representing bridges among them
(travellers are the only way for messages to travel across communities). In Scenario 1, all communities have
one traveller towards the other communities, while in Scenario 2 there is only one community with two
travellers, one for each of the other communities. Clearly, Scenario 2 is much more challenging from a
forwarding standpoint. In both scenarios we considered both exponential and Pareto intermeeting times,
fixing the average intermeeting times of regular nodes and travellers appropriately.
Figure 19. Scenario 1 (left) and 2 (right).
Figure 20 show the forwarding performance as far as the delay is concerned for scenario 1 and exponential
mobility. Specifically, we compute from the model the expected delay E[Dij] for all pairs i,j, and we plot in
Figure 20 the distribution of the expected delay (across all pairs). The Direct Transmission scheme suffers
when the source and the destination of the message do not get in touch with each other directly, thus
producing infinite delays. This is because, with Direct Transmission, nodes can only deliver their messages
directly to the destination, thus missing all the opportunities offered by relaying: when the destination is
never met, the message cannot be delivered. However, relaying does not always guarantee a better
performance in terms of expected delay, as the Two Hop case in Figure 20 shows. Recall that the expected
37


delay is a weighted average of the expected delay of each possible path. Thus, if there exists even a single
path with infinite expected delay, the overall expected delay will diverge. This is exactly what happens with
the Two Hop strategy: due to the blind selection of the next hop, messages can take a wrong path at the
first hop, and then they get stuck there because the intermediate relay node never meets the destination.
In this scenario, such sequence of events is possible for all (i,j) source-destination pairs such that either (a)
source node i and destination node j neither are traveler nor are in the same community or (b) source node
i is a traveler. In both cases there are some paths that achieve a finite expected delay, but there are also
paths with infinite expected delay, and the latter drag the overall expected delay to infinite. Comparing the
Two Hop scheme with the Direct Transmission strategy, in case (a) the fraction of node pairs that
experience an infinite expected delay is the same under both protocols. In the second case, instead, i.e.,
when source node i is a traveler, among the possible paths that are added by the Two Hop scheme with
respect to the Direct Transmission strategy, there are some characterized by an infinite delay, and those
paths drag to infinite the expected delay for the Two Hop scheme, even if the direct encounter between
the traveler and the destination would have a finite expectation. As an example of the first case, consider a
message with source node in community C1 and destination node in community C2. In addition, assume
that the source and destination nodes are not travelers. If the first encounter of the source node is with the
traveler connecting C1 and C3, the message will be handed over to this node. However, this traveler never
gets in touch directly with the destination in community C2, and the message will never be delivered. As for
the second case, when the traveler is the source of the message (with destination in community C1, for
example), there is always a non-negligible probability that, at the time the message is generated, the
traveler is roaming in a community (C3, for example) different from the one in which the destination
resides. In this case, the message will be handed over to the first encountered node, which, in our example,
belongs to C3 and which will never meet the destination.
Direct Acquaintance, Social Forwarding, and Always Forward are able to exploit the social bridges between
communities and to hand over the message to the convenient node. The Always Forward approach,
however, forwards totally at random, and many hops may be required before the message eventually finds,
by chance, its destination. Social strategies are instead able to choose the relays providing the best trade-
off between low delay and efficient use of resources. Note also that in this scenario Direct Acquaintance
and Social Forwarding show the same performance. In fact, they only differ when transitivity of contacts
needs to be exploited for successful delivery, which is the case of the scenario discussed in the next section.

Figure 20. Distribution of the delay in Scenario 1 (exponential mobility).
Figure 21 shows the same results for Scenario 2. The Direct Transmission, Two Hop, and Direct
Acquaintance schemes are not able to deliver a subset of messages. In the case of the Direct Transmission
scheme the reason lies in the absence of direct contacts between the source of a message and its
destination. The Two Hop scheme again suffers from the problem of messages that move away from their
source node and get stuck at intermediate relays. In the case of the Direct Acquaintance policy, losses are
due to the fact that a node hands over a message to another node that has a higher probability of meeting
38


the destination, measured in terms of direct encounters only. The traveler that visits C2 does not meet any
nodes of C3 directly, thus it is not considered a good relay for destinations in C3 by the Direct Acquaintance
scheme. However, that traveler will meet in C1 the other traveler that visits C3 and thus it can be
considered, indirectly, a good forwarder for C3 by nodes that roam only in C2. For this reason, a more
efficient strategy should also consider the transitivity of opportunities (e.g., node a meets b, which in turn
meets c, thus a can be considered a good relay for destination c). This transitivity of encounters is detected
by the Social Forwarding strategy, which, for this reason, is able to deliver all messages to their
destinations. The Always Forward strategy is, as before, able to deliver all messages, but using many relays,
even more than in the previous scenario. The reason is that, being the forwarding opportunities so limited,
with the Always Forward strategy the destination is typically found by chance after many (bad) relays have
been used.

Figure 21. Distribution of the delay in Scenario 2 (exponential mobility).
39


5 Next steps
Despite far from being complete, we think that the results presented in this deliverable are relevant and
interesting for the MOTO objectives, and the objectives of WP3 in particular. The three lines we have
pursued and reported in this document have produced interesting results, in order to (i) characterise the
limitations of LTE networks in providing sufficient throughput to individual users; (ii) defining a reference
system for integrating LTE and opportunistic networks, which also highlights key aspect to focus on in terms
of capacity enhancements, and (iii) characterise the capacity of opportunistic networks.
Starting from these results, there are two main directions that we need to pursue (remember that, as
planned, this document does not cover the entire spectrum of activities of WP3, but is mainly related to
Task 3.2). On the one hand, we need to complete the investigations in these three lines of research. There
are still many aspects to be investigated more deeply about the performance of LTE, such as multi-cell
configurations and unsaturated traffic conditions. We need to derive analytical tools to predict its
performance from a given scenario. We need to complete the activities on modelling the capacity of
opportunistic networks. We need to refine the characterisation of the opportunities and performance limits
of solutions like Push&Track.
On the other hand, we need to put the individual pieces together. This will be mainly achieved by
deriving models of the capacity of an integrated network (including both wireless infrastructures and
opportunistic communications), and characterising the resulting capacity gain, taking systems like
Push&Track as reference. These models will provide tools in the hand of the operators, to decide how to
configure the offloading process when additional capacity is needed and the infrastructure alone cannot
cope with the demand of the users.
These activities will be synergic to the rest of the work package. In particular, as will be described in D3.2,
work is already ongoing in T3.1 to characterise the impact of different contact patterns on the capacity of
the network, taking in particular consideration the case of duty cycling and energy saving policies. Results
from T3.1 will be part of the final model for the capacity of the opportunistic network and of the integrated
network. In addition, scheduling policies studied in T3.3 will benefit from these results, as scheduling
decisions may be taken also based on the expected capacity available on the different parts of the network.
Finally, the results presented in this deliverable will start feeding the work in WP4 (which has just started)
on the design of the control aspects of the offloading process, and the detailed protocols for data
dissemination through device-to-device communication in the integrated infrastructure and opportunistic
network.
40


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43


DISCLAIMER

The information in this document is provided "as is", and no guarantee or warranty is given that the
information is fit for any particular purpose. The above referenced consortium members shall have no
liability for damages of any kind including without limitation direct, special, indirect, or consequential
damages that may result from the use of these materials subject to any liability which is mandatory due to
applicable law.
Copyright 2013 by Thales Communications & Security SA, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Asociacin de
Empresas Tecnolgicas Innovalia, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris 6, FON wireless ltd, Avea Iletisim
Hizmetleri As, Centro Ricerche Fiat Scpa, Intecs Informatica e Tecnologia del Software s.p.a. All rights
reserved.
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317959

Mobile Opportunistic Traffic Offloading

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

Grant Agreement No.

Mobile Opportunistic Traffic Offloading

Initial results on offloading foundations and enablers

WP 3 Offloading foundations and enablers

Vania Conan (TCS), Filippo Rebecchi (TCS), Raffaele Bruno (CNR),

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

4.2 MODELLING THE DELAY OF OPPORTUNISTIC ROUTING PROTOCOLS .................................................................. 35

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

Authentication, Authorization and Accounting

Adaptive Modulation and Coding

Channel Quality Indicator

Evolved Node B or eNodeB

Hybrid Automatic Retransmission Request

Medium Access Control

Modulation and Coding Scheme

Multiple input multiple output

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing

Packet Data Convergence Protocol

Resource Block Group

Radio Link Control

Radio Resource Control

Radio Resource Management

Transmission Time Interval

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

2 Investigations on the capacity limits of LTE

2.1 LTE module in NS3

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

2.1.1 Air interface

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

2.1.4 Fading model

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

ik (t) = argmax ( R j (k, t))

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

2.2 Capacity limits in LTE networks

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

Cell Throughput [Kbps]

Cell Throughput [Kbps]

Cell Throughput [Kbps]

MOTO Consortium 2013

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

WP3 Offloading foundations and enablers

Throughput of tagged UE [Kbps]

Throughput of tagged UE [Kbps]