Shortest Path Computation on Air Indexes

Shortest path computation is one of the most common queries in location-based services that involve transportation networks. Motivated by scalability challenges faced in the mobile network industry, we propose adopting the wireless broadcast model for such location-dependent applications. In this model the data are continuously transmitted on the air, while clients listen to the broadcast and process their queries locally. Although spatial problems have been considered in this environment, there exists no study on shortest path queries in road networks. We develop the first framework to compute shortest paths on the air, and demonstrate the practicality and efficiency of our techniques through experiments with real road networks and actual device specifications.