Information Spreading in Mobile Opportunistic Networks with Limited Infectability

Similar to the epidemic spreading between humans, information in mobile opportunistic network can be transmitted directly among the nodes. A susceptible node has the chance to become infected only when it meets other infected nodes. Due to the impact of the limited energy or other factors, one infected node may forward the message only to limited nodes, and we say that the node has limited infectability. If a node does not have the ability to forward the message to others any more, we say that the node changes to the refractory state. This paper presents a theoretical model to evaluate the performance of information propagation based on the extend-susceptible-infected-refractory (ESIR) model. Simulation shows the accuracy of the model. Extensive numerical results show that if nodes have limited infectability, the policy about how to use the infectability may have certain impact. In addition, numerical results also show that when exploring the optimal policy, we have to consider the constraint of one specific nodes' infectability.