Adaptive Swarm Control for Mobile Resource Placement in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

The use of additional radio resources in disconnected wireless ad-hoc networks can take the form of range extension or data ferrying between graph components. The former approach places resources between disconnected components to act as a radio relay, while the latter approach has resources move between disconnected components to deliver waiting traffic; algorithms exist for both functions in the literature. However, in some operational environments such as tactical networks, connectivity will likely vary in different regions of the network due to localised geographical and radio-frequency issues. To address this problem, this article presents a swarming-inspired algorithm that is able to achieve contextually appropriate behaviour using a single set of rules. The approach reduces latency by as much as 45% with 8 resource nodes for low graph connectivity as compared to a Travelling Salesman Problem solution. An almost arbitrarily large improvement is seen when the approach adopts a relaying strategy, reconnecting the network completely in high graph connectivity cases. Leveraging connectivity results from Random Geometric Graph theory, an analysis of the algorithm's ability to adapt to various network densities is presented.