Using MILP for Optimal Movement Planning in MANETs with Cooperative Mobility

Rapid-deployment mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are frequently characterized by common overarching mission objectives which make it reasonable to expect some degree of cooperativeness on the part of their constituent nodes. In this article we demonstrate new strategies to improve MANET communications, based on inter-node cooperation with respect to node mobility. We present our model for cooperative mobility, and use this cost-benefit framework to explore the impact of cooperation in MANETs where nodes are - to varying extents - willing to be moved for the common good. We develop a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) formulation of the model, accurately capturing its objectives and constraints. The MILP model is evaluated through simulations and found to be very effective, albeit for small networks. To make the proposed technique scale to large networks we develop a new technique for converting a large global MILP into a sequence of smaller local MILP optimizations, and demonstrate that the resulting approach is scalable and succeeds at efficiently moving cooperative nodes in a manner which optimizes connection bit error rates.