Elsevier

Computer Networks

Volume 56, Issue 16, 14 November 2012, Pages 3594-3608
Computer Networks

The Social Internet of Things (SIoT) – When social networks meet the Internet of Things: Concept, architecture and network characterization

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comnet.2012.07.010Get rights and content

Abstract

Recently there has been quite a number of independent research activities that investigated the potentialities of integrating social networking concepts into Internet of Things (IoT) solutions. The resulting paradigm, named Social Internet of Things (SIoT), has the potential to support novel applications and networking services for the IoT in more effective and efficient ways.

In this context, the main contributions of this paper are the following: (i) we identify appropriate policies for the establishment and the management of social relationships between objects in such a way that the resulting social network is navigable; (ii) we describe a possible architecture for the IoT that includes the functionalities required to integrate things into a social network; (iii) we analyze the characteristics of the SIoT network structure by means of simulations.

Introduction

There are scientific evidences that a large number of individuals tied in a social network can provide far more accurate answers to complex problems than a single individual (or a small group of – even knowledgeable – individuals) [38]. The exploitation of such a principle has been widely investigated in Internet-related researches. As a consequence, several schemes have been proposed that use social networks to search Internet resources, to route traffic, or to select effective policies for content distribution, e.g., [27], [11], [31], [39], [8], [29].

The Internet of Things (IoT) integrates a large number of technologies and envisions a variety of things or objects around us that, through unique addressing schemes and standard communication protocols, are able to interact with each others and cooperate with their neighbors to reach common goals [36], [1].

Recently the idea that the convergence of the “Internet of Things” and the “Social Networks” worlds is possible, or even advisable, is gaining momentum, as it will be discussed in the following. This is due to the growing awareness that a “Social Internet of Things” (SIoT) paradigm would carry many desirable implications into a future world populated by intelligent objects permeating the everyday life of human beings.

In fact, applying the social networking principles to the IoT can lead to several advantages:

  • the SIoT structure can be shaped as required to guarantee the network navigability, so as that the discovery of objects and services is performed effectively and the scalability is guaranteed like in the human social networks;

  • a level of trustworthiness can be established for leveraging the degree of interaction among things that are friends;

  • models designed to study the social networks can be re-used to address IoT related issues (intrinsically related to extensive networks of interconnected objects).

Even if the idea of a Social Internet of Things (SIoT) has been already discussed, as we will explain in Section 2, in this paper we go beyond the state of the art in several ways:

  • we identify appropriate policies for the establishment and management of social relationships between objects in such a way that the resulting social network is navigable;

  • we describe a possible architecture for the IoT, which includes the functionality required to integrate things into a social network;

  • we study the characteristics of the SIoT network structure. To this purpose we present some interesting results obtained through the SWIM mobility simulator [28].

A further major contribution of this paper is the provision of an overview (the first one, to the best of our knowledge) of the research activities aimed at the integration of social networks and the Internet of Things.

The paper is organized as follows. In Section 2 we provide a survey of the research activities that focus on the integration of social networking concepts into the Internet of Things. In Section 3 we present the basic idea of the SIoT and propose a classification of the types of social relationships that can be established between objects. In Section 4 we describe our proposal for a SIoT architecture and relevant functionalities, while in Section 5 we illustrate some examples of how the SIoT can be exploited. The structure of the resulting SIoT network is the subject of the analysis reported in Section 6. Finally, in Section 7 some concluding remarks are drawn.

Section snippets

State of the art

The collective intelligence emerging in social networks is an extremely interesting phenomenon that has been described in fascinating ways (e.g., [38]). This has been pointed out by many researchers – quoting the words by the DARPA Director Regina Dugan during her keynote speech at IEEE Globecom 2010 – as the key factor of a “new era of wonder for science”. In fact, the incredible success of social networking websites, such as Twitter and Facebook, and the availability of data about the

A Social Internet of Things

The cited literature, however, still lacks in some basic aspects which should be addressed to fully achieve an actual “social networks of intelligent objects”. In fact, in analogy with the social networks of human beings we need: (i) the definition of a notion of social relationship among objects, (ii) the design of a reference architectural model implementing a Social Internet of Things based on the codified inter-object relationships, and (iii) the analysis of the social network structure,

The SIoT system

In this section we provide an overview of a possible implementation of the SIoT. More specifically, in Section 4.1 the envisioned reference architectural model is described, in Section 4.2 the major functions required to run the SIoT are illustrated, and in Section 4.3 the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed architecture are analyzed.

Sample applications

Several applications can benefit from the availability of social relationships between things interconnected to a network composed of trillions of nodes. While a few interesting applications can be already defined, many others will show up in the years to come according to the increase in the number and categories of objects able to connect to the Internet. Fig. 3 provides a sketch of some sample applications, which are described in the following:

  • 1.

    Giacomo has just bought a new notebook. It is a

SIoT network characterization

In order to characterize the SIoT network, we will study the probability distributions of the geographical distance between nodes that are connected with each other as well as the probability distribution of the length of the shortest path between a pair of nodes randomly selected.

In order to estimate such a probability distribution, we would need the mobility data traces of a large number of objects. Unfortunately, such a data is not available to date. Therefore, we have exploited the SWIM

Conclusions

In this paper we have focused on the integration of social networking concepts into the Internet of Things, which leads to the so called “Social Internet of Things” (SIoT) paradigm. Recently, the SIoT has been the subject of several independent research activities as it promises to achieve scalable solutions in networks interconnecting trillions of nodes and to support new interesting applications. More specifically, in this paper we have identified the types and the characteristics of the

Luigi Atzori ([email protected]) is assistant professor at the University of Cagliari (Italy) since 2000. His main research topics of interest are in multimedia networking: error recovery and concealment, IP Telephony, video streaming, network QoS management. He has published more than 80 journal articles and refereed conference papers. Dr. Atzori has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship (11/2003–05/2004) to work on video at the University of Arizona. He is editor for the ACM/Springer

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    Luigi Atzori ([email protected]) is assistant professor at the University of Cagliari (Italy) since 2000. His main research topics of interest are in multimedia networking: error recovery and concealment, IP Telephony, video streaming, network QoS management. He has published more than 80 journal articles and refereed conference papers. Dr. Atzori has been awarded a Fulbright Scholarship (11/2003–05/2004) to work on video at the University of Arizona. He is editor for the ACM/Springer Wireless Networks Journal and is involved in the organization of several International Conferences on Multimedia Networking.

    Antonio Iera is a Full Professor of Telecommunications at the University “Mediterranea” of Reggio Calabria, Italy. He graduated in Computer Engineering at the University of Calabria in 1991; then he received a Master Diploma in Information Technology from CEFRIEL/Politecnico di Milano and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Calabria. From 1994 to 1995 he has been with Siemens AG in Munich, Germany to participate to the RACE II ATDMA (Advanced TDMA Mobile Access) project under a CEC Fellowship Contract. Since 1997 he has been with the University Mediterranea, Reggio Calabria, where he currently holds the positions of scientific coordinator of the local Research Units of the National Group of Telecommunications and Information Theory (GTTI) and of the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), Director of the ARTS – Laboratory for Advanced Research into Telecommunication Systems, and Head of the Department DIMET. His research interests include: new generation mobile and wireless systems, broadband satellite systems, Internet of Things. Elevated to the IEEE Senior Member status in 2007.

    Giacomo Morabito was born in Messina, Sicily (Italy) on March 16, 1972. He received the laurea degree in Electrical Engineering and the PhD in Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering from the Istituto di Informatica e Telecomunicazioni, University of Catania, Catania (Italy), in 1996 and 2000, respectively. From November 1999 to April 2001, he was with the Broadband and Wireless Networking Laboratory of the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Research Engineer. Since April 2001 he is with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica e delleTelecomunicazioni of the University of Catania where he is currently Associate Professor. His research interests focus on analysis and solutions for wireless networks.

    Michele Nitti received the M.S. degree in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Cagliari, Italy in 2009. In 2010, he spent one year as a researcher at the National Consortium for Telecommunications (C.N.I.T.) in Cagliari, Italy, developing models for networ connectivity in mobile ad hoc networks. Currently, he is working towards the Ph.D. degree in Electronic and Information Engineering at the University of Cagliari, Italy. His main research areas of interest are multimedia and wireless sensor networks.

    A previous version of this paper was presented at ITU Kaleidoscope 2011 with the title “Making things socialize in the Internet – Does it help our lives?”

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