INDAPSON: An Incentive Data Plan Sharing System Based on Self-Organizing Network

The contradiction between dynamic user traffic
and fixed data plans has drawn increasing attention in the
field of mobile applications. In this paper we build a data
plan sharing system named INDAPSON to consider a scenario
where some smartphone users have surplus data traffic and are
willing to help others download data. Virtual credits can be
gained as reward, which can be used to ask for future help
in downloading. To realize this model, we make the following
contributions: 1) A dynamic self-organization strategy to adapt
to mobile terminals; 2) An incentive mechanism named RAP
to encourage participation; 3) Power-saving strategies to reduce
power consumption. The main advantage of our system is that
users gain improvement in download rate while being able to
convert their surplus data traffic to virtual credits. The results
of experiment and simulation show that users in our system can
manage their surplus data plan more efficiently while a highspeed
download rate can be achieved.