M2M-Based Service Coverage for Mobile Users in Post-Emergency Environments

In an infrastructure-based wireless network, including mobile users and vehicles, many crucial and important services are provisioned by a centralized server. However, due to damaged infrastructure and increased mobility caused by an emergency, maintaining continuous service coverage in such a network can be challenging. Although several prediction-based replication methods have been proposed to achieve service coverage through replication of the central server, they are unable to accurately predict future topological changes and thus maintain service coverage in a post-emergency network. These topological changes are, in fact, directly related to user mobility. Nevertheless, existing mobility models are unable to realistically represent post-emergency user movements. Consequently, at first, this paper proposes a realistic mobility model that includes users' post-emergency complex behavioral changes. Subsequently, this paper proposes a machine-to-machine (M2M) networking-based service coverage framework for post-emergency environments. The proposed framework performs not only accurate prediction of the proposed user mobility but also optimal replication, utilizing these predictions, of the central server to achieve continuous service coverage. In addition, the framework requires no supervision and fewer resources to perform these functions due to use of the M2M networking. Simulation results are further used to verify the effectiveness of proposals presented in this paper.