Spectral analysis of periodicity and regularity for mobile encounters in delay tolerant networks

We study the encounter patterns of mobile devices to understand the potential of mobile nodes as messengers in delay tolerant networks. Specifically, we examine the extensive network and encounter traces that reflect mobility of communication devices, using spectral analysis to unearth hidden repetitive patterns of them. We discover strong presence of periodic encounter patterns between mobile users, particularly weekly pattern. Our results also show different location visiting ratio by more than 10 percent between regularly encountering pairs and others at 77 percent of the locations.