Taking Benefit from the User Density in Large Cities for Delivering SMS Experimentations in Mexico City

International audienceIn this paper, from a measurement study and analysis of sms based on traces coming from a nationwide cellular telecom-munication operator during a two month period, we propose a DTN (Delay Tolerant Network) like network protocol for delivering sms. More precisely, we perform a temporal and spatial analysis of the Mexico City cellular network considering geolocalized sms. The temporal analysis allows us to detect events and to check for overloading periods, with abnormal or unexpected traffic, and to study the evolution of classical parameters such as activity or distance between source and destination. The spatial analysis is based on the Vorono¨iagram of the base stations covering Mexico City. We explain how sms traffic can be characterized. Such key characterization allows us to answer the question: is it possible to transmit sms using phones as relay in a large city such as Mexico City? We defined a simple network protocol to transmit sms from a source to a destination. This DTN like protocol does not need routing nor global knowledge. The protocol takes benefit from the locality of sms, the density of phones in Mexico City and the mobility of phone users. We studied a mobile dataset including 8 millions users living in Mexico city. This gave use a precise estimation of the average transmission time and the global performance of our approach. After 30 minutes, half of the sms were delivered successfully to destination