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The Internet of People (IoP): A New Wave in Pervasive Mobile Computing

Marco Conti, Andrea Passarella, Sajal K. Das

arXiv:2205.14156v1cs.NI

TL;DR

Core-designed Internet paradigms are described as insufficient for an expanding, human-centric network edge. The paper presents the Internet of People as a paradigm that makes human behavior a structural design consideration and surveys early approaches and open challenges. It concludes that IoP should be data-centric and self-organizing, while existing examples remain preliminary building blocks requiring refinement and integration.

  • Problem

    Core-designed Internet paradigms are not sufficient for the expanding edge, where people and their devices are central to network activity.

    Source: §1 · p. 3, §2.2 · p. 10

  • Method

    The paper develops the human-centric IoP concept, discusses initial networking and computing approaches, and identifies research challenges.

    Source: §3.2 · p. 13, §6 · pp. 26–27

  • Results

    The paper concludes that IoP will be data-centric and self-organizing, while existing human-centric systems are preliminary building blocks that need refinement and integration.

    Source: §6 · p. 27

  • Takeaways & Limitations

    IoP design should embed human behavior in networking protocols and devices, linking technology design with human-centric sciences.

    Source: §6 · p. 26

    A comprehensive representation of human cognitive processes for IoP remains unclear because modeling approaches may be contradictory.

    Source: §5.3 · p. 23

Abstract

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Cyber-Physical convergence, the fast expansion of the Internet at its edge, and tighter interactions between human users and their personal mobile devices push towards an Internet where the human user becomes more central than ever, and where their personal devices become their proxies in the cyber world, in addition to acting as a fundamental tool to sense the physical world. The current Internet paradigm, which is infrastructure-centric, is not the right one to cope with such emerging scenario with a wider range of applications. This calls for a radically new Internet paradigm, that we name the Internet of People (IoP), where the humans and their personal devices are not seen merely as end users of applications, but become active elements of the Internet. Note that IoP is not a replacement of the current Internet infrastructure, but it exploits legacy Internet services as (reliable) primitives to achieve end-to-end connectivity on a global-scale. In this visionary paper, we first discuss the key features of the IoP paradigm along with the underlying research issues and challenges. Then we present emerging networking and computing paradigms that are anticipating IoP

1. Introduction

Cyber-physical convergence makes human behavior central to how physical systems and social networks interact with the cyber world. The Internet of People (IoP) frames users and their personal devices as active network elements and calls for networking primitives suited to the expanding, data-rich edge.

1. Introduction

  • CPS monitor physical infrastructure through sensors, analyze the resulting data, and use actuators to control its operation, while people increasingly participate actively in these systems.Personal devices can also mediate human-object interactions and sense user behavior; the cyber layer uses sensed data to determine infrastructure configurations.Source: §1 · pp. 2–4
  • CPSS bring together physical-world social relationships and online social networks, whose interactions and people’s movements are reported as correlated.Physical meetings are associated with online relationships, and people may visit the home locations of their online social contacts.Source: §1 · pp. 3–4
  • Human behavior and social relationships shape how physical systems interpret data, configure infrastructure, and govern interactions between users’ devices.In social Internet of Things settings, devices may share information or permit configurations according to the relationship between their owners or users.Source: §1 · p. 4
  • The paper argues that human behavior should be a structural design element across systems involved in cyber-physical convergence.The introduction presents this as a human-centric design requirement for systems and technologies.Source: §1 · p. 4

1.2 Internet of People: the New Internet paradigm for Cyber-Physical Convergence

  • IoP treats humans and their devices as active network elements and proposes primitives for accessing relevant data and exchanging information with nearby users and things.Its edge environment includes connectivity through the core Internet, self-organizing networks, and IoT; trustworthiness is required for data access and personal interactions.Source: §1.2 · pp. 5–6
  • IoP could give users more control over personal data and use social relationships to inform trust between devices and filtering of unwanted content.The paper also identifies a possible role for IoP in reducing censorship risks.Source: §1.2 · p. 6

2. The Internet of the Future

The Internet’s core is expected to evolve incrementally, while its expanding edge is changing more radically. As edge devices gain resources and human users become central to their operation, core-oriented Internet paradigms are described as insufficient for the edge.

2. The Internet of the Future

  • The legacy Internet core is expected to evolve incrementally, while innovation at the faster-changing network edge may be more radical.The paper describes the core as continuing to provide worldwide connectivity while edge trends are less predictable.Source: §2 · p. 7

2.1. The legacy-Internet evolution

  • Core-network evolution includes virtualization, programmable SDN control, and NFV, which dynamically instantiates network functions as software on generic hardware.Virtualization enables multiple providers to share physical infrastructure, while SDN separates control and data planes.Source: §2.1 · p. 7
  • Content-centric networking research addresses the legacy Internet’s limited support for data-centric communication independent of physical location.The paper identifies Information Centric Networking (ICN) as a family of approaches to this model.Source: §2.1 · pp. 7–8
  • Future access trends include 5G, infrastructure densification, device-to-device communications, and offloading, amid concerns about capacity keeping pace with traffic demand.The paper notes that centralized access coordination may become cumbersome and that distributed algorithms delegating decisions to user devices are being explored.Source: §2.1 · p. 8

2.2. The Internet Edges revolution

  • Internet-edge growth involves more mobile and IoT devices, with greater capacity to generate, process, and exchange data outside the core.The passage reports Cisco’s forecast of an eightfold increase in mobile data traffic from 2015 to 2020, with a 53% CAGR.Source: §2.2 · p. 9
  • Network functions are migrating toward the edge, where powerful user devices can create local networking environments and may help control network-function deployment and operation.The paper describes these devices as potential first-class network nodes that cooperate with core infrastructure to obtain needed services.Source: §2.2 · pp. 9–10
  • Personal devices act as users’ cyber-world proxies, sensing context, configuring themselves, exchanging data, and analyzing local information.The paper describes these devices as both data consumers and producers that can perform complex analyses on local data.Source: §2.2 · p. 10
  • The paper argues that core-designed Internet paradigms are no longer sufficient for the networking environment at the edge.It calls for a radical paradigm shift, named the Internet of People.Source: §2.2 · p. 10

3. Internet of People

The section argues that cyber-physical convergence exposes limits in an infrastructure-first Internet and motivates IoP, where people and their devices participate directly in network and data functions.

3.1 The need for an IoP

  • An infrastructure-centric Internet prioritizes global connectivity, but edge growth and nearby-device use call for native spontaneous networking rather than cloud-dependent exchanges.The paper illustrates the mismatch with nearby mobile devices needing global Internet and cloud services to exchange a file.Source: §3.1 · pp. 10–11
  • IoP treats data relevance and trust as network concerns, while behavioral traces make privacy and security essential design considerations.Current Internet primitives delegate relevance and trust to optional add-ons; personal data can reveal mobility, relationships, opinions, and consumption patterns.Source: §3.1 · p. 11

3.2 IoP features

  • IoP makes people and devices active elements: devices proxy users and take initiative over network and data-dissemination decisions.Devices may determine how the network is configured and operated to meet users’ requirements.Source: §3.2 · p. 11
  • IoP also envisions humans contributing resources as network nodes, with crowdsourcing offered as an early example of people and computers solving problems together.The paper frames this as an evolution toward a social-computer vision.Source: §3.2 · p. 12
  • IoP combines human-, device-, data/computing-centric, and self-organizing networking; devices coordinate nearby and remote resources with core infrastructure while legacy Internet remains for global connectivity.The paper describes current Internet services as an enabling technology, not something IoP replaces.Source: §3.2 · p. 12
  • Figure 5 illustrates receiver-side relevance filtering and sender-side social-closeness filtering, with users’ devices carrying out the operations automatically.In the social-closeness example, a receiver sets a minimum threshold; a relay may validate data and transfer its closeness to the forwarded data.Source: Figure 5 · p. 12, §3.2 · p. 13

4. First Steps towards IoP

This section presents early networking and computing paradigms toward IoP, including how personal devices organize communication, sensing, computing, and data exchange around people and how ego-network structure can support data availability in mobile social networks.

4.1 People-centric networking: self-organizing networks

  • Opportunistic networking uses mobile nodes’ store-carry-and-forward behavior to support self-organizing, human- and data-centric communication.Human mobility is influenced by social relationships; devices make local data-storage decisions under resource constraints, and IoP may combine ad hoc paradigms with infrastructure-based networks.Source: §4.1 · pp. 14–15

4.2 People-centric sensing and computing

  • People-centric sensing turns personal devices into mobile sensors that transfer observations of the physical world to the cyber world.The paradigm supports context-aware services, but privacy and inferences about users’ behavior are major research challenges; opportunistic computing also coordinates nearby personal-device resources for localized services.Source: §4.2 · pp. 15–17

4.3 Human-centric data collection

  • Human-centric data collection uses cognitive heuristics to help devices select relevant information from what is available in their environment.Recognition-based selection stores the most relevant items, while later approaches use semantic networks to represent changing interests and guide exchange of concepts and associated content; local diffusion aggregates and stochastic replication improve scalability.Source: §4.3 · pp. 17–19

4.4 The ego-network model and data dissemination in IoP

  • Ego-network structure informs trust-aware information diffusion and the design of decentralized online social networks, which are human- and device-centric and store users’ personal data and exchanged content on their devices.Source: §4.4 · p. 21
  • Ego-network structure can improve data dissemination accuracy and context adaptability in mobile social networks, including through social-circle heuristics.The passage identifies social-circle-based dissemination schemes as an example, described in Section 4.2.Source: §4.4 · p. 22

5. IoP Research Challenges

The IoP research agenda spans architecture, human-centric networking, data and computing services, resource management, and performance evaluation. Across these areas, it asks how to make human behavior and needs part of the network’s design.

5.1 IoP framework and architecture

  • IoP nodes may include infrastructure devices, user devices, physical objects, and eventually humans, providing communication, data-management, and computing services.The architecture also raises questions about embedding behavioral models in protocols, stack modularity, and cross-layer interactions.Source: §5.1 · p. 22

5.2 IoP Network protocols

  • Protocols should provide end-to-end connectivity while letting devices choose Internet or local self-organizing links and configure their networks autonomously.Human-centric design may prioritize trust and social behavior alongside network performance, using social relationships and mobility or centrality models to guide group-casting, routing, forwarding, and replication.Source: §5.2 · pp. 22–23

5.3 IoP in-network data and computing services

  • IoP data services should filter, find, share, advertise, disseminate, replicate, and protect data according to human access and trust needs.Cognitive models could help filter information for users, but existing approaches can conflict and do not yet provide a comprehensive model of human cognition.Source: §5.3 · p. 23
  • IoP nodes are envisioned to provide native computing alongside networking, using distributed mobile clouds and human-centric policies to organize shared computing resources.A key open question is how to embed computation on data into IoP primitives.Source: §5.3 · pp. 23–24

5.4 Resources management and trust models

  • Resource management must represent and orchestrate heterogeneous, dynamic resources while establishing trust and fair cooperation among users.The paper proposes socially informed microeconomic models to describe resource availability, trade, access, and incentives for collaboration.Source: §5.4 · p. 24

5.5 IoP Performance Evaluation

  • Hierarchical Modelling decomposes complex systems into sub-models, analyzes simplified versions, then aggregates them; hybrid simulation enabled country-scale data-dissemination analysis involving millions of users.The example models communities analytically and travelers explicitly in the aggregate model.Source: §5.5 · pp. 24–25
  • IoP performance depends strongly on human mobility: encounter duration affects exchange volume, while encounter frequency and patterns affect delivery delay and probability.Mobility traces and synthetic models are used to study and validate opportunistic-network protocols, providing a basis for IoP evaluation.Source: §5.5 · pp. 25–26

6. Conclusions

The paper frames IoP as a socio-technical Internet in which people and their devices are key network nodes, making human behavior a structural design parameter. It argues for interdisciplinary, data-centric, and self-organizing systems, while treating existing human-centric systems as preliminary building blocks that require further development and integration.

6. Conclusions

  • IoP treats people and their devices as key network nodes, with human behavior modeled as a first-class design parameter across networking and data exchange.The authors propose quantitative models grounded in human-centric sciences and validated by the relevant research communities.Source: §6 · p. 26
  • IoP’s interdisciplinary design draws on social science, cognitive psychology, complex networks, and microeconomics to model human relationships, information use, and resource sharing.Big Data Analytics and Deep Learning are proposed to validate and tune these models in the IoP context.Source: §6 · pp. 26–27
  • Unlike a bio-inspired networking wave or an application-only approach, IoP applies human-centered design across network layers above enabling communication technologies.IoP also treats data management and data-centric computing as native functions, with nearby devices able to form infrastructure-less networks when useful.Source: §6 · p. 27
  • Crowdsensing, mobile social networking, and cognitive-based data dissemination are preliminary IoP building blocks that need refinement, integration, and further investigation.The IoP concept offers a unifying framework for developing these elements, which have so far been investigated in isolation.Source: §6 · p. 27
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