Energy aware and privacy preserving protocols for ad hoc networks with applications to disaster management

Disasters can have a serious impact on the functioning of communities and societies. Disaster management aims at providing efficient utilization of resources during pre-disaster (e.g. preparedness and prevention) and post-disaster (e.g. recovery and relief) scenarios to reduce the impact of disasters. Wireless sensors have been extensively used for early detection and prevention of disasters. However, the sensor's operating environment may not always be congenial to these applications. Attackers can observe the traffic flow in the network to determine the location of the sensors and exploit it. For example, in intrusion detection systems, the information can be used to identify coverage gaps and avoid detection. Data source location privacy preservation protocols were designed in this work to address this problem.;Using wireless sensors for disaster preparedness, recovery and relief operations can have high deployment costs. Making use of wireless devices (e.g. smartphones and tablets) widely available among people in the affected region is a more practical approach. Disaster preparedness involves dissemination of information among the people to make them aware of the risks they will face in the event of a disaster and how to actively prepare for them. The content is downloaded by the people on their smartphones and tablets for ubiquitous access. As these devices are primarily constrained by their available energy, this work introduces an energy-aware peer-to-peer file sharing protocol for efficient distribution of the content and maximizing the lifetime of the devices. Finally, the ability of the wireless devices to build an ad hoc network for capturing and collecting data for disaster relief and recovery operations was investigated. Specifically, novel energy-adaptive mechanisms were designed for autonomous creation of the ad hoc network, distribution of data capturing task among the devices, and collection of data with minimum delay.