BASA: Building Mobile Ad-hoc Social Networks on Top of Android

Mobile ad-hoc social networks (MASNs) are emerging as a self-configuring and self-organizing social networking paradigm, which enhance local interactions among mobile and handheld device users. However, the MASNs cannot be directly derived on demand for various Android systems from existing social networks (SNs) without having access to end-to-end IT network infrastructure. In this article, we propose a detailed solution called BASA which would help in rapidly building local mobile ad-hoc social networks on top of the current Android platform. BASA establishes a four-layer system architecture according to the underlying challenges and requirements in MASNs. BASA is implemented in an EU project named SOCITIES. Our prototype shows that BASA is flexible to expedite various services.