Measuring the reliability and survivability of infrastructure-oriented wireless networks

The focus of research in wireless networking has been on increasing the capacity and users, reducing call blocking, improving mobility management techniques and optimizing individual wireless links. However, very little attention has been paid towards understanding and improving the reliability and survivability (RS) of wireless networks experiencing infrastructure failures. We present a scalable approach to model and simulate the reliability and survivability of infrastructure-oriented wireless networks. Simulation results include the expected number of failures for different component/link reliability levels, number of subscribers, network size and the total number of subscribers impacted by these failures. The specific simulation work presented here addresses infrastructure reliability and survivability, and is offered as a proof of concept to show that this approach has promise and can offer insights not otherwise gained. Key findings show that survivability characteristics vary widely for reasonable ranges of different component failure frequencies, and that the reliability of some components matter much more than others.