Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-2007

Publication Title

Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing

Department

Department of Computer Science

Abstract

Understanding user mobility and its effect on access points (APs) is important in designing location-aware systems and wireless networks. Although various studies of wireless networks have provided useful insights, it is hard to apply them to other situations. Here we present a general methodology for extracting mobility information from wireless network traces, and for classifying mobile users and APs. We used the Fourier transform to reveal important periods and chose the two strongest periods to serve as parameters to a classification system based on Bayes' theory. Analysis of 1-month traces shows that while a daily pattern is common among both users and APs, a weekly pattern is common only for APs. Analysis of 1-year traces revealed that both user mobility and AP popularity depend on the academic calendar. By plotting the classes of APs on our campus map, we discovered that their periodic behavior depends on their proximity to other APs.

DOI

10.1007/s00779-006-0093-4

Original Citation

Minkyong Kim and David Kotz. Periodic properties of user mobility and access-point popularity. In Journal of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing, August 2007. 10.1007/s00779-006-0093-4

COinS