Using Mobile Relays to Strongly Connect a Minimum-Power Network between Terminals Complying with No-Transmission Zones

2025-04-01

AI Summary

This paper addresses the problem of deploying mobile relay nodes in a planar environment containing circular forbidden zones to establish a strongly connected, bidirectional, low-power wireless network among terminals, while minimizing the total area of all transmission disks. To jointly optimize forbidden-zone constraints and strong connectivity, we propose a novel scalable construction method: (i) employing homotopy classification for topology initialization; (ii) integrating a minimum spanning tree (MST)-inspired heuristic with local iterative position evolution. Theoretical modeling combines geometric analysis and homotopy invariants to guarantee topological robustness. Experimental results demonstrate that our approach achieves global optimality for small-scale instances and significantly reduces total transmission area in large-scale scenarios, outperforming state-of-the-art baselines in both connectivity reliability and energy efficiency.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Constraint Satisfaction and Optimization: Distributed CSP/Optimization
• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs
• Security and Privacy: Large-scale security measurements

Abstract

We present strategies for placing a swarm of mobile relays to provide a bi-directional wireless network that connects fixed (immobile) terminals. Neither terminals nor relays are permitted to transmit into disk-shaped no-transmission zones. We assume a planar environment and that each transmission area is a disk centered at the transmitter. We seek a strongly connected network between all terminals with minimal total cost, where the cost is the sum area of the transmission disks. Results for networks with increasing levels of complexity are provided. The solutions for local networks containing low numbers of relays and terminals are applied to larger networks. For more complex networks, algorithms for a minimum-spanning tree (MST) based procedure are implemented to reduce the solution cost. A procedure to characterize and determine the possible homotopies of a system of terminals and obstacles is described, and used to initialize the evolution of the network under the presented algorithms.

Problem

• Place mobile relays to connect fixed terminals wirelessly
• Avoid no-transmission zones while minimizing transmission costs
• Use MST-based algorithms for complex network optimization

Innovation

• Mobile relays ensure strong network connectivity
• No-transmission zones restrict disk-shaped areas
• MST-based algorithms minimize total transmission cost