Deployment scheduling of contingency cellular network for disaster relief operations

Abstract

When a catastrophic natural disaster occurs, the efficiency of disaster response operation is crucial to life saving. However, communication systems, such as cellular networks, usually crashed due to various causes that make coordination difficult for many disorganized disaster response workers extremely. Unfortunately, rapid deployment of many existing emergency communication systems relies on a good transportation system, which is usually not available in a catastrophic natural disaster. We propose a Contingency Cellular Network (CCN) by connecting disconnected base stations together with wireless links and portable power generators. CCN can support existing mobile phone users with limited capability. Since the transportation capacity may be very limited, scheduling of CCN deployment order according to the demand of disaster operation becomes an important issue. A model of the CCN Deployment Scheduling (CCN-DS) Problem which is aiming to maximize disaster operation efficiency is proposed in this research. Emergency levels of disaster areas, time decreasing profit functions and scheduling constraints are taken into consideration in the CCN-DS model. The problem is proven NP complete. Thus, we design an efficient heuristic algorithm to solve the problem when it is needed in urgent. © 2013 IEICE.