Challenges of Large Scale Systems

Coupled and Co-evolving Social and Telecommunication Networks

Madhav Marathe

Virginia Bioinformatics Institute , Washington Street, MC 0477, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0477, USA

We will describe an interaction based approach for modeling very large socio-communication networks -- coupled and co-evolving social and communication networks.

Current modeling tools are designed to exclusively study communication networks. This approach is adequate for studying wire-line networks. But with the advent of mesh, ad-hoc and sensor networks, it is becoming increasingly important to represent the social networks (networks where individual entities are individuals) and their interaction and co-evolution with the communication networks. In other words, understanding telecommuncation network in isolation is simply not adequate. Examples of these coupled social and communication networks include: vehicular ad-hoc networks, wireless networks for distributed data fusion and next generation cognitive radio networks.

The talk will describe an end-to-end modeling approach for studying coupled socio-communication networks and illustrate the approach with carefully chosen realistic applications. For example, one can use these methods for assessing the vulnerability of communication networks, optimally deploying mesh networks by taking into account the predicted load, network structure and optimal methods for model driven data aggregation in the context of vehicular ad-hoc networks.

Presentation Slides (PDF)