Analysis of Small-World Features in Vehicular Social Networks

Abstract

In this work, we demonstrate that Vehicular Social Networks (VSNs) require specific data dissemination techniques. To this aim, we consider the Barabási model and we study the impact of its use for data dissemination in VSNs. Moreover, the use of a probabilistic data dissemination protocol based on social features [1] proves that the time-evolving dynamics of the vehicular social network graph presents a small-world structure, where nodes tend to connect through clusters whose average distance is low on average. This result highlights how VSNs are a specific class of vehicular ad hoc networks with peculiar features that distinguish them from classical online social networks.