Optimizing network topology to reduce aggregate traffic in systems of mobile agents

Abstract

Systems of networked mobile robots, such as unmanned aerial or ground vehicles, will play important roles in future military and commercial applications. The communications for such systems will typically be over wireless links and may require that the robots form an ad hoc network and communicate on a peer-to-peer basis. In this chapter, we consider the problem of optimizing the network topology to minimize the total traffic in a network required to support a given set of data flows under constraints on the amount of movement possible at each mobile robot. We consider a subclass of this problem in which the initial and final topologies are trees, and the movement restrictions are given in terms of the number of edges in the graph that must be traversed. We develop algorithms to optimize the network topology while maintaining network connectivity during the topology reconfiguration process. Our topology reconfiguration algorithm uses the concept of prefix labeling and routing to move nodes through the network while maintaining network connectivity. We develop three algorithms to determine the final network topology. These include an optimal, but computationally complex algorithm, as well as a greedy algorithm and a simulated annealing algorithm that trade optimality for reduced complexity. We present simulation results to compare the performance of these algorithms. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013.