ZTE

ZTE Communications ›› 2011, Vol. 9 ›› Issue (1): 27-32.

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WiFace: A Secure GeoSocial Networking System Using Wi-Fi Based Multihop MANET

Lan Zhang1, Xuan Ding1, Zhiguo Wan1, Ming Gu1, and Xiangyang Li2   

  1. 1. Key Laboratory of Information System Security, Tsinghua University;
    2. Department of Computer Science, Illinois Institute of Technology
  • Online:2011-03-25 Published:2011-03-25
  • About author:Lan Zhang (zhanglan03@gmail.com) has a B.S. degree in computer software from Tsinghua University. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University. Her research interests include mobile ad hoc networks and mobile social networks.

    Xuan Ding (dingx04@gmail.com) has a B.S. degree in computer software from Tsinghua University. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Computer Science and Technology, Tsinghua University. His research interests include mobile social networks, social network privacy and anonymity, and graph anonymity.

    Dr. Xiangyang Li (xli@cs.iit.edu) is an associate professor of computer science at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He is also a visiting professor of Microsoft Research Asia from 2007 to 2008. He is recipient of China NSF Outstanding Overseas Young Researcher (B). The research of Dr. Li has been supported by USA NSF, HongKong RGC, and China NSF. His research interests span the wireless sensor networks, game theory, computational geometry, and cryptography and network security. He is a senior member of the IEEE and served various positions (as chairs and TPC members) at numerous international conferences.

    Zhiguo Wan (wanzhiguo@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn) has B.S. degrees from the Departments of Automotive Engineering and School of Software, Tsinghua University. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from the National University of Singapore in 2006. From 2006 to 2008, he undertook postdoctoral work in the Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography research group, Catholic University of Louvain. He is currently a lecturer in the School of Software, Tsinghua University. His research interests include network security, security and privacy, and wireless security.

    Ming Gu (guming@mail.tsinghua.edu.cn) has a B. S. degree in computer software from the National University of Defense Technology, China. She also has an M.A. degree in computer software from Graduate University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is currently the vice-director of the School of Software, Tsinghua University, and vice-director of Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Information Security. Her research interests include software formal methods, trustworthy software, and middleware technology.
  • Supported by:
    This work is supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 90818021, and 9071803.
    The work of Li is supported by Tsinghua National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology(TNList), NSF CNS0832120, National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant No. 60828003, National Basic Research Program of China ( “973”Program) under grant No. 2010CB328100, and the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China ( “863”Program) under grant No. 2007AA01Z180.

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Abstract: A number of mobile Online Social Networking (OSN) services have appeared in the market in recent times. While most mobile systems benefit greatly from cloud services, centralized servers and communications infrastructure is not always available. Nor are location-based services offered to mobile devices without GPS. To take advantage of cloud and to address these problems, a Wi-Fi based multihop networking system called MoNet is proposed. On top of MoNET we propose a privacy-aware geosocial networking service called WiFace. Where there is no infrastructure, a distributed content sharing protocol significantly shortens the relay path, reduces conflicts, and improves data availability. Furthermore, a security mechanism is developed to protect privacy. Comprehensive experiments performed on MoNet show that the system is more than sufficient to support social networking and even audio and video applications.

Key words: Wi-Fi, social network, privacy, MANET, WiFace