A cooperative forwarding scheme for social preference-based selfishness in mobile social networks

Most schemes in mobile social networks (MSNs) assume that nodes simply forward messages without considering selfishness. We therefore first devise social preference-based selfishness for MSNs by which nodes decide to drop or keep (forward) and replace messages to save buffer space according to the message preference and the communities of nodes. We then propose a novel cooperative forwarding scheme for social preference-based selfishness in MSNs, the social preference-aware forwarding scheme (SPF) incorporates the proposed message forwarding scheme and a buffer replacement policy for the message preference. It takes advantage of social information with the home-cell community-based mobility model. Considering the contact probability and buffer replacement policy for the message preferences, SPF, therefore, efficiently delivers messages to the destination by reflecting the degree of selfishness to which nodes cooperatively manage their buffer spaces and how frequently and how recently they meet. Consequently, all nodes can cooperatively drop or keep (forward) and replace the messages in the buffer spaces for the message preferences in SPF. SPF outperforms Epidemic, PRoPHET, and SimBet in terms of delivery ratio, network traffic, buffer space, hop count, and replacement frequency.