Fault-Models in Wireless Communication: Towards Survivable Ad Hoc Networks

A new approach to modeling wireless networks is presented that allows for the determination of network reliability using diverse fault assumptions. It is shown that one can exploit network topologies by taking advantage of the broadcast paradigm of wireless communication to detect and possibly correct benign and malicious act. Specifically, a general wireless network model is presented that maps subsets of the network to a join graphs of cliques. This join graph allows for horizontal and orthogonal cross-monitoring, which exposes the theoretical limitations of fault detection and correction. For ad hoc and sensor networks the two-dimensional cross-monitoring scheme offers great flexibility with respect to establishing topologies capable of meeting reliability and survivability requirements. Recent approaches addressing tolerance to "misbehaving" nodes are shown to be special cases of the general model