A lightweight localization architecture and application for opportunistic networks

Abstract

Mobile communication is increasingly becoming part of everyday life. Haggle (www.haggleproject.org) is an innovative project that exploits human mobility for creating an invisible social network to enable communication in the presence of intermittent network connectivity. Mobile devices equipped with network interfaces, may in fact (temporarily) be out of range of the Internet infrastructure, and thereby unable to access Internet services. However, these devices may often be in range of other networked devices, or pass by an area where some type of connectivity is available (e.g. WiFi hotspots) and may be able to perform useful networking transactions involving local exchanges of data, exploiting, in this way, the opportunistic communication. One of the mechanisms for realizing the opportunistic communication is by taking advantage of context information (such as location) for correlating on-line social and physical networks. This, together with the need for information regarding devices locations and the ‘pervasive’ presence of wireless networks in indoor environments, suggested us to implement a lightweight application able to localize mobile devices, exploiting opportunistic networking.