Mobile video delivery via human movement

Abstract

This paper proposes VideoFountain, a novel service that deploys kiosks at popular venues to store and transmit digital media to users' personal devices using Wi-Fi access points, which may not have Internet connectivity. We leverage mobile users to deliver content to these kiosks. A key component in this design is an in-depth understanding of user mobility. We gather real mobility traces from two largest location-based social networks (Foursquare and Gowalla) and analyze both macroscopic and microscopic human mobility in different cities. Based on the insights we gain, we study several algorithms to determine the initial placement of content and design routing algorithms to optimize the content delivery. We further consider several practical issues, such as how to incentivize users to forward content, how to manage copyrights, how to ensure security, and how to achieve service discovery. We demonstrate the feasibility of VideoFountain using trace-driven simulations.