Communication-Based Motion Planning

The conventional philosophy in designing mobile networks is that network node movement should be independent of network state. However, there are practical situations where movement decisions may be modified to ensure connectivity. For example, emergency responders in a crisis region relying upon an ad hoc network may need constant reliable communications and therefore adjust their search plan to stay connected, though aspects of their mission may override their objective of staying connected. We present a discrete formulation for this problem and a method for solving it optimally. We propose a cooperative and a noncooperative algorithm, showing that the run-time of the latter is drastically more efficient with a minimal performance cost relative to optimality.