Extracting a Mobility Model from Real User Traces

Citations Over TimeTop 1% of 2006 papers

Abstract

Understanding user mobility is critical for simula- tions of mobile devices in a wireless network, but current mobility models often do not reflect real user movements. In this paper, we provide a foundation for such work by exploring mobility characteristics in traces of mobile users. We present a method to estimate the physical location of users from a large trace of mobile devices associating with access points in a wireless network. Using this method, we extracted tracks of always-on Wi-Fi devices from a 13-month trace. We discovered that the speed and pause time each follow a log-normal distribution and that the direction of movements closely reflects the direction of roads and walkways. Based on the extracted mobility characteristics, we developed a mobility model, focusing on movements among popular regions. Our validation shows that synthetic tracks match real tracks with a median relative error of 17%.

Related Papers

• → Simulating the behavior of software modules by trace rewriting(1994)45 cited
• → Simulation Based Performance Comparison of Community Model, GFMM, RPGM, Manhattan Model and RWP-SS Mobility Models in MANET(2009)23 cited
• → Simulating the behaviour of software modules by trace rewriting(2002)5 cited
• → ON TRACE MOVEMENT(1997)2 cited
• → Trace and inverse trace of Steklov eigenvalues II(2016)