Mobility Control for Joint Coverage-Connectivity Optimization in Directional Wireless Backbone Networks

The use of directional wireless communications to form flexible mesh backbone networks, which provide broadband connectivity to capacity-limited wireless networks or hosts, promises to circumvent the scalability limitations of traditional wireless networks. The main challenge in the design of directional wireless backbone (DWB) networks is to assure backbone network requirements such as coverage and connectivity in a dynamic wireless environment. This paper considers the use of mobility control, as the dynamic reposition of backbone nodes, to provide assured coverage-connectivity in dynamic environments. This paper presents a novel approach to the mobility control problem by formulating it as an energy minimization problem. DWB configurations are characterized with cost functions that mimic the potential energy of an analogous particle system in a potential field. Our formulation allows the design of self-organized network systems which autonomously achieve energy minimizing configurations driven by local forces exerted on network nodes. Forces between nodes are defined based on network connectivity. This paper provides initial designs for scalable self-organized DWB networks, which can autonomously adapt their physical topology to maximize coverage to terminals or hosts at lower layers while maintaining backbone connectivity.