Measures of region failure survivability for wireless mesh networks

Abstract

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are considered as a promising alternative to wired local, or metropolitan area networks. However, owing to their exposure to various disruptive events, including natural disasters, or human threats, many WMN network elements located close to the failure epicentre are frequently in danger of a simultaneous failure, referred to as a region failure. Therefore, network survivability, being the ability to provide the continuous transmission after a failure, is of great importance. In this paper, we define three new measures of wireless mesh networks survivability for a region failure scenario, including the region failure survivability function, p-fractile region survivability function, and the expected percentage of total flow delivered after a failure as a function of region radius r. These measures are next used to evaluate the vulnerability of example wireless mesh networks to region failures.