  Mobile Social Networks (MSNs) have been evolving and enabling various fields
in recent years. Recent advances in mobile edge computing, caching, and
device-to-device communications, can have significant impacts on 5G systems. In
those settings, identifying central users is crucial. It can provide important
insights into designing and deploying diverse services and applications.
However, it is challenging to evaluate the centrality of nodes in MSNs with
dynamic environments. In this paper, we propose a Social-Relation based
Centrality (SoReC) measure, in which social network information is used to
quantify the influence of each user in MSNs. We first introduce a new metric to
estimate direct social relations among users via direct contacts, and then
extend the metric to explore indirect social relations among users bridging by
the third parties. Based on direct and indirect social relations, we detect the
influence spheres of users and quantify their influence in the networks.
Simulations on real-world networks show that the proposed measure can perform
well in identifying future influential users in MSNs.
