Phoenix: A Collaborative Location-Based Notification System for Mobile Networks

Location-based notification (LBN) aims to alert the users in a target area to their interested information. With a wide range of applications, LBN has been gaining more and more attraction among wireless users and service providers. The mainstream centralized solution based on cellular networks may incur high service cost. In this paper, we present an innovative scheme called Phoenix, which does not rely on any infrastructure, to implement location-based notification service. In our design, devices (users) across the target area form a dynamic peer-to-peer network, where a user can be a message source, a message carrier, or a message subscriber. When a user meets the message carrier, he will get a copy of the message. Phoenix keeps messages of interest being circulated in the target area; hence users are being notified. To achieve desired notification performance, Phoenix adaptively controls when a user should take the carrier role and help disseminating a message in order to keep the message “alive,” given the fact that message carriers may leave the target area and drop the message. Extensive simulations have been conducted to show the efficacy of Phoenix notification system.