Opportunistic multi-technology cooperative scheme and UAV relaying for network disaster recovery

Farouk Mezghani (1) , Nathalie Mitton (1)

1 FUN - Self-organizing Future Ubiquitous Network

Disaster scenarios have caused crisis situations that have threatened human life. 1 Particularly, during such events, public communication infrastructure get damaged which impedes 2 rescue operations and it took a considerable time and effort (days to weeks) before a reliable 3 communication infrastructure could be restored. Therefore, there is a tremendous need to quickly 4 deploy communication networks to assist rescue operations for sharing emergency data (e.g. alert 5 message, rescue instruction). This work evaluates the performances of smartphones and leverages the 6 ubiquitous presence of mobile devices during disaster scenarios to assist and speed up rescue 7 operations. It proposes a cooperative communication scheme that exploits available network 8 technologies and takes various energy levels into account. A multi-tiers network architecture is 9 proposed targeting a balanced energy consumption in the whole network. Moreover, it introduces 10 a lifetime efficient data collection scheme that employs drones to scan the disaster area and to visit 11 mobile devices and relay their data. Extensive simulations have been conducted and results show that 12 the proposed scheme allows to keep mobile devices alive as long as possible by saving a considerable 13 energy and guarantees a short drone-path for data relaying.

Mots clés: Smartphone performances; Performance evaluation; Disaster recovery; Drone-based data relaying; Multi-tier cooperative 15 communication; Energy-efficient communication; Mobile devices

Domaines: Réseaux et télécommunications [cs.NI]

Farouk Mezghani, Nathalie Mitton. Opportunistic multi-technology cooperative scheme and UAV relaying for network disaster recovery. Information, 2020, 11 (1), ⟨10.3390/info11010037⟩. ⟨hal-02431659⟩