An Opportunistic Push Scheme for Online Social Networking Services in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Article synchronization is one of the most fundamental issues in online social networking services (SNSs). In particular, when deploying multiple access networks with different transmission costs, an efficient synchronization scheme should be devised for users to enjoy SNSs in heterogeneous wireless networks. In this paper, we propose an opportunistic push scheme (OPS) that aggregates published articles, opportunistically pushing them through low-cost access networks (e.g., open Wi-Fi networks). To balance the reduced transmission costs and the increased page loading time, we formulate a Markov decision process problem that considers a mobility model based on the users' social contact pattern. Evaluation results demonstrate that OPS with the optimal policy can reduce the number of transmissions in high-cost access networks, while satisfying users' quality of experience in terms of the page loading time.