On Leveraging Partial Paths in Partially-Connected Networks

Mobile wireless network research focuses on scenarios at the extremes of the network connectivity continuum where the probability of all nodes being connected is either close to unity, assuming connected paths between all nodes (mobile ad hoc networks), or it is close to zero, assuming no multi-hop paths exist at all (delay-tolerant networks). In this paper, we argue that a sizable fraction of networks lies between these extremes and is characterized by the existence of partial paths, i.e. multi-hop path segments that allow forwarding data closer to the destination even when no end-to-end path is available. A fundamental issue in such networks is dealing with disruptions of end-to-end paths. Under a stochastic model, we compare the performance of the established end-to-end retransmission (ignoring partial paths), against a forwarding mechanism that leverages partial paths to forward data closer to the destination even during disruption periods. Perhaps surprisingly, the alternative mechanism is not necessarily superior. However, under a stochastic monotonicity condition between current v.s. future path length, which we demonstrate to hold in typical network models, we manage to prove superiority of the alternative mechanism in stochastic dominance terms. We believe that this study could serve as a foundation to design more efficient data transfer protocols for partially-connected networks, which could potentially help reducing the gap between applications that can be supported over disconnected networks and those requiring full connectivity.Comment: Extended version of paper appearing at IEEE INFOCOM 2009, April 20-25, Rio de Janeiro, Brazi

Energy-efficient broadcast in mobile networks subject to channel randomness

© 2002-2012 IEEE. Wireless communication in a network of mobile devices is a challenging and resource-demanding task, due to the highly dynamic network topology and the wireless channel randomness. This paper investigates information broadcast schemes in 2-D mobile ad hoc networks where nodes are initially randomly distributed and then move following a random direction mobility model. Based on an in-depth analysis of the popular susceptible-infectious-recovered epidemic broadcast scheme, this paper proposes a novel energy and bandwidth-efficient broadcast scheme, named the energy-efficient broadcast scheme, which is able to adapt to fast-changing network topology and channel randomness. Analytical results are provided to characterize the performance of the proposed scheme, including the fraction of nodes that can receive the information and the delay of the information dissemination process. The accuracy of analytical results is verified using simulations driven by both the random direction mobility model and a real-world trace