Fault tolerant mobility planning for rapidly deployable wireless networks [chapter]

Charles Shields, Vikas Jain, Simeon Ntafos, Ravi Prakash, S. Venkatesan
1998 Lecture Notes in Computer Science  
Rapidly deployable wireless networks consist of mobile base stations and less powerful mobile hosts. The mobile base stations have t o maintain wireless connectivity while on the move along pre-de ned paths. Physical obstructions and wireless range limitations may prevent a pair of mobile base stations from establishing a wireless link. We study situations of distance-constrained mobility, and fault situations like distance and topology induced mobility deadlocks. We also propose a deadlock
more » ... dance mobility s c heme using repeaters, and derive an upper bound on the number of repeaters. We propose two heuristics, using sleeper nodes, for providing coverage to areas that may lose coverage due to a mobile base station crash. powerful, nodes will be referred to as mobile hosts (M H s ). RDNs can be useful in several key environments. For example, in battleeld situations a network might h a ve to be deployed in an area of variable and ? perhaps unknown terrain to support the operation of troops or other elements, without the possibility of establishing a xed wired network. 1 Another example occurs at the site of a disaster (natural or otherwise) to coordinate and support relief operations. However, these examples are by no means exhaustive. Actually, RDNs could be used whenever a wireless network must be deployed to service mobile hosts over a fairly wide area, in which it is not possible (or even desirable) to establish a xed wired network. The characteristics of RDNs di er from those of other more traditional wireless network designs such as cellular and ad-hoc networks. In cellular networks powerful stationary base stations are tied to a wired backbone network and communicate with presumably less powerful mobile hosts over wireless links 3]. The presence of powerful xed base stations connected by a wired network simpli es the solutions of many problems, including the routing problem and the reliable communication problem. In ad-hoc networks all nodes are presumed mobile, all links are wireless, and it is in general assumed that all nodes have similar capabilities with respect to energy supply, bu ering capacity, processing power, etc. As a result each n o d e m ust be prepared to o er general support services to the network as a whole (such as routing or bu ering messages), and the solutions of many problems become far more complex. RDNs are in some sense intermediate
doi:10.1007/3-540-64359-1_741 fatcat:bisras264rhmxacgaqf4mznpp4