Survivability analysis for mobile communications networks

Cellular wireless communication has become the mainstay for mobile workers in all fields. Diverse and reliable service is required by the users, and as such the wireless network that supports these services are becoming more and more complex. As complexity increases so does vulnerability to failure. New designs must accommodate failures. The ability of a network to continue to provide acceptable service during and in the wake of a failure is defined as its survivability. Up to now, survivability of a network was evaluated by standard metrics aimed at measuring the connectivity of wired networks. This research proposes the concept of a real-time survivability index to evaluate the radio level survivability of a mobile network. The index is a function of cost and performance metrics aimed at measuring the real time cost-performance tradeoffs incurred by dynamic network protocols employed to improve mobile network survivability. The development and evaluation of these survivability indices is approached using discrete-event simulation and information visualization tools. Simulation results demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed indices to illustrate wireless network performance before, during and after a fault is applied. This enables comparative analysis of competing survivability strategies.