Augmenting ad hoc networks for data aggregation and dissemination

Future military operations will feature network-enabled human soldiers working seamlessly with intelligent, autonomous systems such as sensor networks and unmanned vehicles. In these systems, data aggregation (e.g., data fusion, plan monitoring) and data dissemination (e.g., information sharing) will be essential communication patterns. While ad hoc networks are commonly proposed for complex battlefield environments, they can suffer from serious connectivity and capacity limitations. In this paper we study the problem of deploying additional nodes that act as both relay nodes and data aggregation/dissemination points to meet the connectivity and aggregation/dissemination needs of the network. We focus on the NP-hard problem of determining the minimum number of supplemental nodes needed to meet the known communication requirements of an ad hoc network. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer linear program and propose three heuristics for solving the problem. We present empirical results comparing the three heuristics, showing that they perform within 25% of optimal while offering substantial running time improvements.