WaterChat: A Group Chat Application Based on Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks

—Recently there are emerging applications based on opportunistic mobile social networks, which are kinds of delay tolerant networks (DTNs) with social relations between the nodes. In such networking scenarios, messages are disseminated through intermittent connections in a store-carry-and-forward manner. A major advantage of the opportunistic mobile social networks includes enabling communication under extreme networking conditions where Internet is unstable or unavailable. However, challenges include limited resources in networking and computing. Network coding is an effective solution to improve the networking performance in opportunistic mobile social networks. We propose a Two-Phase Network Coding solution that uses network coding based on opportunistic mobile social characteristics. Priority of messages is also considered to make the solution more practical for actual applications. To sum up, we introduce a mobile chat application based on the aforementioned, WaterChat, which has enhanced networking performance.