On the Levy-Walk Nature of Human Mobility

—We report that human walks performed in outdoor settings of tens of kilometers resemble a truncated form of Levy walks commonly observed in animals such as monkeys, birds and jackals. Our study is based on about one thousand hours of GPS traces involving 44 volunteers in various outdoor settings including two different college campuses, a metropolitan area, a theme park and a state fair. This paper shows that many statistical features of human walks follow truncated power-law, showing evidence of scale-freedom and do not conform to the central limit theorem. These traits are similar to those of Levy walks. It is conjectured that the truncation, which makes the mobility deviate from pure Levy walks, comes from geographical constraints including walk boundary, physical obstructions and traffic. None of commonly used mobility models for mobile networks captures these properties. Based on these findings, we construct a simple Levy walk mobility model which is versatile enough in emula...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2008
• Where: INFOCOM
• Authors: Injong Rhee, Minsu Shin, Seongik Hong, Kyunghan Lee, Song Chong
• Keywords: Communications, Human Walks, INFOCOM 2008, Levy Walk, Levy Walk Mobility