Optimizing the dependability attributes of wireless networks

With increasing dependence on wireless networks and the emergence of 3G and other high-performance networks, wireless dependability issues become crucial, especially when multiple providers with networks of varying dependability attributes are interconnected. Although some work has been done in wireless networks for studying dependability, little work has been done to address how to optimize the dependability attributes of wireless networks. Our focus in this paper is the optimization of wireless dependability attributes using fault-tolerance. We show that fault tolerance can be incorporated using both block level and interconnection level redundancies. We used simulation techniques to model a large-scale wireless network with multiple building blocks and several interconnection architectures. The results show that significant improvements are possible in wireless dependability attributes of the current and emerging wireless networks, especially with the deployment of a fault-tolerant architecture.