The abundance of mobile devices with wireless communications capability gave birth to mobile networks with opportunistic connectivity among devices. These networks, coupled with modern online social networks or roaming patterns of users, fuel a new networking paradigm, that of opportunistic mobile social networks. This book, comprised of a collection of 16 chapters, is about this exciting type of wireless network.

One of the most interesting and difficult problems for these networks is the routing problem; thus, the book dedicates almost one-third of its contents (chapters 6 to 10) to various approaches to that issue. The first chapters cover topics related to the characteristics of this network, including terminologies, link connectivity, communication patterns, and structural analysis (chapters 1, 3, 4, and 5). Of particular significance is the problem addressed by chapter 2, which is about influence maximization. The last chapters cover issues such as privacy preservation, testbeds for research, and crowdsourcing.

This is not a textbook, but the book’s breadth and depth of coverage along with the wealth of references at the end of each chapter make it a rich source of information in this field.

Even though the areas of interest in this topic evolve rapidly and many new articles are published every year, this is an excellent starting point for graduate and postgraduate students of computer science and electrical engineering. It is appropriate not only for research students and university instructors, but also for professionals who may also find useful approaches, protocols, and solutions to many practical problems that they face in the design and evaluation of this type of network.