Eur. Phys. J. B (2013) 86: 209
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2013-40036-1

Regular Article

Optimal forwarding ratio on dynamical networks with heterogeneous mobility

¹ Web Sciences Center, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu 610051, P.R. China
² Department of Physics and Institute of Theoretical Physics, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shatin, Hong Kong, P.R. China
³ Department of Physics, Fuzhou University, Fuzhou 350002, P.R. China

^a e-mail: tangminghuang521@hotmail.com

Received: 12 November 2012
Received in final form: 15 January 2013
Published online: 7 May 2013

Abstract

Since the discovery of non-Poisson statistics of human mobility trajectories, more attention has been paid to understand the role of these patterns in different dynamics. In this study, we first introduce the heterogeneous mobility of mobile agents into dynamical networks, and then investigate packet forwarding strategy on the heterogeneous dynamical networks. We find that the faster speed and the higher proportion of high-speed agents can enhance the network throughput and reduce the mean traveling time in random forwarding. A hierarchical structure in the dependence of high-speed is observed: the network throughput remains unchanged at small and large high-speed value. It is also interesting to find that a slightly preferential forwarding to high-speed agents can maximize the network capacity. Through theoretical analysis and numerical simulations, we show that the optimal forwarding ratio stems from the local structural heterogeneity of low-speed agents.