Fault Tolerance Analysis of Mobile Systems

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Deployment of wireless, mobile networks is rapidly increasing as advances in digital cellular systems promise large-scale, reliable voice, data, and multimedia communications in a mobile environment. The realization of Personal Communications Services (PCS) will increase dependence on mobile networks by the mass public and private sectors, implying that system failure resulting in loss of communication or critical data will not be tolerated. Fault tolerance analysis provides an understanding of system functionality in the wake of failures. Fault tolerance analysis such as the reliability, availability, and survivability problems continues to be well researched for wired networks. The mobility of the user along with the unpredictability of motion indicate that models and assumptions for wired networks cannot be carried over to the wireless, mobile domain. Very little focus has yet been placed on fault tolerance analysis for mobile networks in particular. This project fills this void through exploratory research on fault tolerance analysis of systems which provide large-scale PCS, including voice, data and multimedia communications. These systems are comprised of radio frequency communications within mobile cellular or picocellular networks that are interconnected to the existing (wired) infrastructure. The fault tolerance criteria and evaluation approach are not immediately apparent for these systems due to the heterogeneity of the services provided and of the underlying interconnection network, and due to the inherent unreliability of the wireless communications medium. The goal of this project is to formulate the appropriate research problems regarding fault tolerance of mobile systems and to indicate an analysis strategy. This includes identifying fault tolerance parameters (or propose new ones) which are most useful to measuring system robustness, developing a network modeling approach (or set of approaches), and proposing preliminary fault tolerance algor ithms using these models.