Supporting real-time message delivery in disaster relief efforts: An analytical approach

Abstract

Several initiatives propose the use of opportunistic networksand heterogeneous devices to help overcome the communication andcoordination limitations evidenced during first response activities in dis-aster relief scenarios. These solutions tend to create an Internet of Thingsecosystem in which most components are mobile, autonomous and inter-act with other in a loosely-coupled fashion. Regardless the benefits pro-vided by these infrastructures, the message delivery on them does notconsider time constraints. This aspect is particularly relevant in thisscenario since the time to conduct the first response activities is quiteshort, therefore they must be done quickly and coordinately. Trying tohelp address this challenge, this paper proposes a message propagationmodel for opportunistic networks that considers heterogeneous devicesand guarantees the real-time behavior of the network by bounding themaximum delay for messages transmission. The message propagation ismodeled using an analytical approach. Two different scheduling policiesare used to analyze the model and their feasibility conditions are proved.