Population protocols on real social networks

In this paper we present an experimental analysis to assess the performance of Population Protocols, a well-known fully decentralized computational model, on real, dynamic social networks. We set-up two infrastructures to collect data coming from wireless active RFID tags, and we asked - 120 volunteers to wear them while normally moving and interacting in the monitored areas. We then used the collected data to evaluate Population Protocols on these real topologies using NetLogo simulator. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time population protocols are evaluated on real social networks. Copyright 2012 ACM.