Abstract

Abstract—In this paper, we promote the use of online communities as a means to provide incentives for people to collaborate in building wireless community networks. To achieve this goal, we define a novel type of online community spanning a specific physical area (i.e., a neighborhood) called Wireless Neighborhood Community (WNC). On the one hand, in addition to the standard activities of an online neighborhood community (e.g. i-neighbors), a WNC’s members cooperate to build a network and share their resources at different layers. On the other hand, in addition to standard Wireless Community Networks being deployed today in big cities, a WNC incorporates the social layer in its design. It is a hybrid (both virtual and physical) community whose activities are linked to the operation and management of the underlying network. If designed appropriately, this cross-layer community will provide incentive to users to participate and share their

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