Cluster-based failure detection service for large-scale ad hoc wireless network applications

The growing interest in ad hoc wireless network applications that are made of large and dense populations of lightweight system resources, calls for scalable approaches to fault tolerance. Moreover, the nature of these systems creates significant challenges for the development of failure detection services (FDSs), because their quality often depends heavily on reliable communication. In particular, ad hoc wireless networks are notoriously vulnerable to message loss, which precludes deterministic guarantees for the completeness and accuracy properties of FDSs. To meet the challenges, we propose an FDS based on the notion of clustering. Specifically, we use a cluster-based communication architecture to permit the FDS to be implemented in a distributed manner via intra-cluster heartbeat diffusion and to allow a failure report to be forwarded across clusters through the upper layer of the communication hierarchy. In doing so, we extensively exploit the message redundancy that is inherent in ad hoc wireless settings to mitigate the effects of message loss on the accuracy and completeness properties of failure detection. As shown by our mathematical analysis, the resulting FDS is able to provide satisfactory probabilistic guarantees for the desired properties.