A Concept of Communication Distance and Its Application to Six Situations in Mobile Environments

Wireless networks combined with location technology create new problems and call for new decision aids. As a precursor to the development of these decision aids, a concept of communication distance is developed and applied to six situations. This concept allows travel time and bandwidth to be combined in a single measure so that many problems can be mapped onto a weighted graph and solved through shortest path algorithms. The paper looks at the problem of intercepting an out-of-communication team member and describes ways of using planning to reduce communication distance in anticipation of a break in connection. The concept is also applied to ad hoc radio networks. A way of performing route planning using a bandwidth map is developed and analyzed. The general implications of the work to transportation planning are discussed.