Journal
IEEE COMMUNICATIONS SURVEYS AND TUTORIALS
Volume 17, Issue 3, Pages 1557-1581Publisher
IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC
DOI: 10.1109/COMST.2014.2371813
Keywords
Mobile social networking; application; service platform; opportunistic networks; system architecture
Funding
- Canadian Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council through NSERC DIVA Strategic Network
- TELUS
- Department of Computing in Hong Kong Polytechnic University
- STINT initial grant for international collaboration
- SSF Profun
- Vinnova Innovation Grant in Sweden [2014-00655]
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Mobile social networks (MSNs) have become increasingly popular in supporting many novel applications since emerging in the recent years. Their applications and services are of great interest to service providers, application developers, and users. This paper distinguishes MSNs from conventional social networks and provides a comprehensive survey of MSNs with regard to platforms, solutions, and designs of the overall system architecture. We review the popular MSN platforms and experimental solutions for existing MSN applications and services and present the dominant mobile operating systems on which MSNs are implemented. We then analyze and propose the overall architectural designs of conventional and future MSN systems. In particular, we present the architectural designs from two perspectives: from the client side to the server side, and from the wireless data transmission level to the terminal utilization level. We further introduce and compare the unique features, services, and key technologies of two generations of architectural designs of MSN systems. Then, we classify the existing MSN applications and propose one special form of MSN, i.e., vehicular social network, and demonstrate its unique features and challenges compared with common MSNs. Finally, we summarize the major challenges for on-going MSN research and outline possible future research directions.
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