GICS: Group-Based Internet Connection Spreading Architecture for Disaster Recovery

Disconnection of Internet access in natural disasters may cause serious obstacles for relief works. Immediately providing Internet connection in disaster stricken regions is still a challenge because infrastructure-based networks may have been drastically destroyed. This paper proposes a Group-based Internet Connection Spreading (GICS) architecture for disaster recovery. This architecture supports groups of Internet-unconnected mobile devices to connect to the Internet through still alive infrastructure access points or groups of Internet-connected mobile devices in an effective way. By the support of the Internet-connected Device Discovery mechanism in the proposed GICS, mobile devices can discover nearby devices that have already reached the Internet connection and can share their Internet connectivity. GICS enables mobile devices within a group to collaborate together to bring reasonable Internet connection to all group members. Moreover, GICS can flexibly adapt with changes in the network condition since GICS groups can rearrange the roles of group members to maintain the suitable the Internet connection. In addition, the quality of connections between devices in GICS is reliable since they are based on the IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) standard.