Dynamic relay deployment for disaster area wireless networks

This paper investigates the disaster area communication system using relay-assisted wireless network for first responders as mobile nodes (MNs). Firstly, a novel mobility model is proposed to describe the movement pattern of MNs within a large disaster area. Secondly, we study the relay management problem of finding a minimum number of relay nodes (RNs) and their dynamic locations to cover all the MNs within the disaster area. A square disk cover (SDC) problem is formulated and three different algorithms, including the two-vertex square covering (TVSC) algorithm, the circle covering algorithm and the binary integer programming (BIP) algorithm, are proposed to solve the SDC problem. Simulation results are presented to validate the mobility model and compare the algorithms with respect to computational complexity and worst case performance ratio. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.