STEPS - an approach for human mobility modeling

In this paper we introduce Spatio-TEmporal Parametric Stepping (STEPS) - a simple parametric mobility model which can cover a large spectrum of human mobility patterns. STEPS makes abstraction of spatio-temporal preferences in human mobility by using a power law to rule the nodes movement. Nodes in STEPS have preferential attachment to favorite locations where they spend most of their time. Via simulations, we show that STEPS is able, not only to express the peer to peer properties such as inter-ontact/contact time and to reflect accurately realistic routing performance, but also to express the structural properties of the underlying interaction graph such as small-world phenomenon. Moreover, STEPS is easy to implement, exible to configure and also theoretically tractable

Physics-Based Swarm Intelligence for Disaster Relief Communications

This study explores how a swarm of aerial mobile vehicles can provide network connectivity and meet the stringent requirements of public protection and disaster relief operations. In this context, we design a physics-based controlled mobility strategy, which we name the extended Virtual Force Protocol (VFPe), allowing self-propelled nodes, and in particular here unmanned aerial vehicles, to fly autonomously and cooperatively. In this way, ground devices scattered on the operation site may establish communications through the wireless multi-hop communication routes formed by the network of aerial nodes. We further investigate through simulations the behavior of the VFPe protocol, notably focusing on the way node location information is disseminated into the network as well as on the impact of the number of exploration nodes on the overall network performance.Comment: in International Conference on Ad Hoc Networks and Wireless, Jul 2016, Lille, Franc

Adoption of vehicular ad hoc networking protocols by networked robots

This paper focuses on the utilization of wireless networking in the robotics domain. Many researchers have already equipped their robots with wireless communication capabilities, stimulated by the observation that multi-robot systems tend to have several advantages over their single-robot counterparts. Typically, this integration of wireless communication is tackled in a quite pragmatic manner, only a few authors presented novel Robotic Ad Hoc Network (RANET) protocols that were designed specifically with robotic use cases in mind. This is in sharp contrast with the domain of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET). This observation is the starting point of this paper. If the results of previous efforts focusing on VANET protocols could be reused in the RANET domain, this could lead to rapid progress in the field of networked robots. To investigate this possibility, this paper provides a thorough overview of the related work in the domain of robotic and vehicular ad hoc networks. Based on this information, an exhaustive list of requirements is defined for both types. It is concluded that the most significant difference lies in the fact that VANET protocols are oriented towards low throughput messaging, while RANET protocols have to support high throughput media streaming as well. Although not always with equal importance, all other defined requirements are valid for both protocols. This leads to the conclusion that cross-fertilization between them is an appealing approach for future RANET research. To support such developments, this paper concludes with the definition of an appropriate working plan

Performance evaluation of an efficient counter-based scheme for mobile ad hoc networks based on realistic mobility model

Flooding is the simplest and commonly used mechanism for broadcasting in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Despite its simplicity, it can result in high redundant retransmission, contention and collision in the network, a phenomenon referred to as broadcast storm problem. Several probabilistic broadcast schemes have been proposed to mitigate this problem inherent with flooding. Recently, we have proposed a hybrid-based scheme as one of the probabilistic scheme, which combines the advantages of pure probabilistic and counter-based schemes to yield a significant performance improvement. Despite these considerable numbers of proposed broadcast schemes, majority of these schemes’ performance evaluation was based on random waypoint model. In this paper, we evaluate the performance of our broadcast scheme using a community based mobility model which is based on social network theory and compare it against widely used random waypoint mobility model. Simulation results have shown that using unrealistic movement pattern does not truly reflect on the actual performance of the scheme in terms of saved-rebroadcast, reachability and end to end delay

Optimal configuration of active and backup servers for augmented reality cooperative games

Interactive applications as online games and mobile devices have become more and more popular in recent years. From their combination, new and interesting cooperative services could be generated. For instance, gamers endowed with Augmented Reality (AR) visors connected as wireless nodes in an ad-hoc network, can interact with each other while immersed in the game. To enable this vision, we discuss here a hybrid architecture enabling game play in ad-hoc mode instead of the traditional client-server setting. In our architecture, one of the player nodes also acts as the server of the game, whereas other backup server nodes are ready to become active servers in case of disconnection of the network i.e. due to low energy level of the currently active server. This allows to have a longer gaming session before incurring in disconnections or energy exhaustion. In this context, the server election strategy with the aim of maximizing network lifetime is not so straightforward. To this end, we have hence analyzed this issue through a Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) model and both numerical and simulation-based analysis shows that the backup servers solution fulfills its design objective

Stationary and Mobile Target Detection using Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

In this work, we study the target detection and tracking problem in mobile sensor networks, where the performance metrics of interest are probability of detection and tracking coverage, when the target can be stationary or mobile and its duration is finite. We propose a physical coverage-based mobility model, where the mobile sensor nodes move such that the overlap between the covered areas by different mobile nodes is small. It is shown that for stationary target scenario the proposed mobility model can achieve a desired detection probability with a significantly lower number of mobile nodes especially when the detection requirements are highly stringent. Similarly, when the target is mobile the coverage-based mobility model produces a consistently higher detection probability compared to other models under investigation.Comment: 7 pages, 12 figures, appeared in INFOCOM 201

Plausible Mobility: Inferring Movement from Contacts

We address the difficult question of inferring plausible node mobility based only on information from wireless contact traces. Working with mobility information allows richer protocol simulations, particularly in dense networks, but requires complex set-ups to measure, whereas contact information is easier to measure but only allows for simplistic simulation models. In a contact trace a lot of node movement information is irretrievably lost so the original positions and velocities are in general out of reach. We propose a fast heuristic algorithm, inspired by dynamic force-based graph drawing, capable of inferring a plausible movement from any contact trace, and evaluate it on both synthetic and real-life contact traces. Our results reveal that (i) the quality of the inferred mobility is directly linked to the precision of the measured contact trace, and (ii) the simple addition of appropriate anticipation forces between nodes leads to an accurate inferred mobility.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl

A robot swarm assisting a human fire-fighter

Emergencies in industrial warehouses are a major concern for fire-fighters. The large dimensions, together with the development of dense smoke that drastically reduces visibility, represent major challenges. The GUARDIANS robot swarm is designed to assist fire-fighters in searching a large warehouse. In this paper we discuss the technology developed for a swarm of robots assisting fire-fighters. We explain the swarming algorithms that provide the functionality by which the robots react to and follow humans while no communication is required. Next we discuss the wireless communication system, which is a so-called mobile ad-hoc network. The communication network provides also the means to locate the robots and humans. Thus, the robot swarm is able to provide guidance information to the humans. Together with the fire-fighters we explored how the robot swarm should feed information back to the human fire-fighter. We have designed and experimented with interfaces for presenting swarm-based information to human beings