Social relevance of topological communities in ad hoc communication networks

Abstract

In this article, we investigate the social relevance of dynamic community structures that can be determined on dynamic communication networks. We first present and validate SAND/SHARC (Stability And Network Dynamics over Sharper Heuristic for Assignment of Robust Communities), a distributed algorithm for community detection. Then, based on real-world communication traces and social information, we evaluate how the structures found by SAND/SHARC can be translated to social links and favor interaction between users with similar social characteristics. Such a study is important to envision community detection algorithm in the design of ubiquitous social interaction protocols, like those used in mobile social networks (MoSoNets).