Asynchronous Distributed Topology Control for Signature Management in Mobile Networks

Topology control can be used to reduce transmission power in communication networks. This is valuable for the preservation of battery power, interference reduction and spectrum sharing between geographically separated networks. In a military context it is also important for reducing the detectability of the network. In a mobile network, synchronisation between assets is vulnerable to interference, environmental and adversarial effects and equipment failure. This paper presents four asynchronous distributed topology control techniques based on extant synchronous distributed methods and compares their performance, in simulation, using the metrics of RF footprint and ability to maintain connectivity. We identify a preferred approach, which gives the best balance between the metrics and conclude by describing measures to decrease network fragmentation for future work.