Abstract

Field operations carried out by mobile users in inhospitable contexts, such as disaster relief or battlefield, require communication as effective and efficient as possible. A highly available Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) could be a feasible communication platform for those contexts, provided high connectivity is achievable. In this article, a proactive distributed mechanism, referred to as a self-healing mechanism, to provide high connectivity for MANETs operating in inhospitable contexts is presented. This mechanism is based on enabling mobile users with short-range wireless communication and the introduction of additional unmanned vehicles acting as communication bridges, which proactively aim to detect and avoid network disconnections. Simulation results show that the proactive distributed self-healing mechanism proposed in this article allows MANETs to exhibit high connectivity under high values of network link failure probability. An analytical convergence model demonstrates, consistently with simulation results, that the system exhibits phase transition and becomes unreliable for link probability failure greater than 70%. Small-scale prototypes of the mechanism deployed on ground unmanned vehicles highlights issues such as location services, terrain constraints, and power. Conclusion for this work is that the self-healing connectivity proposed in this article is a feasible mechanism, provided the introduced mobile additional entities are able to quickly displace to areas requested and link probability failure is kept below 70%.