Taking Benefit from the User Density in Large Cities for Delivering SMS

Abstract

International audienceIn this paper, from a measurement study and analysis of SMS based on traces coming from a nationwide cellular telecommunication operator during a two month period, we propose a DTN (Delay Tolerant Network) like network protocol for delivering SMS. More precisely, we perform a temporal and spatial analysis of the Mexico City cellular network considering geolocalized SMS. The temporal analysis allows us to detect events and to check for overloading periods, with anormal or unexpected traffic, and to study the evolution of classical parameters such as activity or distance between source and destination. The spatial analysis is based on the Voronoï diagram of the base stations covering Mexico City. We explain how SMS traffic can be characterized. Such key characterization allows us to answer the question : is it possible to transmit SMS using phones as relay in a large city such as Mexico City ? We defined simple network protocols to transmit SMS from a source to a destination. This DTN like protocol does not need routing nor global knowledge. The protocol takes benefit from the locality of SMS, the density of phones in Mexico City and the mobility of phone users. We studied a mobile dataset including 8 millions users living in Mexico city. This gave us a precise estimation of the average transmission time and the global performance of our approach. After 30 minutes, half of the SMS were delivered successfully to destination

Are sirens effective tools to alert the population in France?

“…The December 2018 directive establishing the European Electronic Communications Code requires member states to establish a national SMS alerting system by June 2022 (Vogel, 2017;Bopp et al, 2021). Countries such as Italy, Norway, Germany, and Romania are using the Common Alerting Protocol (CAP) to increase the alert effectiveness as the protocol allows an alert message to be consistently disseminated simultaneously over many warning systems to many applications, such as cell phone broadcast (Bean et al, 2016;Landewr et al, 2016;Leo et al, 2015;Mileti and Sorensen, 1990;Vinet et al, 2011). This can allow the integration of sirens with other tools.…”

Why keep alert sirens in France?

“…Messages are also well recognized to successfully complete the sound signal or sirens (Leo et al, 2015;Zunkel et al, 2015), to increase the empowerment of people by knowledge (Becker and Bendett, 2015;Fajardo and Oppus, 2009;Jagtman, 2010) or/and to help people to take the right decisions during alarms (Bean et al, 2016;Zhang et al, 2004). In addition, when we look at the number of sirens deployed in other countries or other cities (Table 1), we see that their number varies markedly and that coverage rates are heterogeneous.…”

Alerting people prioritising territories over technologies. A design framework for local decision makers in France

“…The message is displayed on the main screen with the emission of a sound whether the telephone is switched off or not (ETSI, 2010). LB-SMS sends SMS messages to cell phones linked to one or more target cells, allowing the authorities to know the number of people who have received the message (Azid et al, 2015;Leo et al, 2015). The USA, Canada, Lithuania, Greece, and Italy, for example, use CB while Belgium, Australia, Iceland, and Tunisia use LB-SMS.…”

“…The estimating method is explained below (see 2.4.1). Network congestion problems may affect mobile telephony solutions in times of crisis (Leo et al, 2015). The congestion depends on the number of people in each telecommunication cell, the alert delay, and the tool.…”