Selfish-Free Influential Nodes Detection in Mobile Social Networks

Abstract

Mobile networks where users group in communities based on their interests, and disseminate data mainly to their community using their mobile devices, are called Mobile Social Networks (MSN). However, the efficiency of data dissemination becomes a challenging problem in these networks. Using influential users can improve the efficiency of data dissemination. An influential user should have an effective activity on the network and influence other users. The participation behavior of nodes in the network dramatically affects the detection process of influential nodes. Self-sufficient nodes who selectively participate in the dissemination of data in the network may reduce the influence of the other nodes. This paper proposes detecting influential nodes that consider the negative effects of selfish behavior. The performance analysis of the proposed selfish-free influential node detection protocol is presented by comparing it to another one that does not consider the selfishness problem. This comparison shows that the proposed protocol achieves efficiency up to 30% in a environment of selfish behavior.