Improving the Connectivity of Heterogeneous Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Heterogeneous conditions can occur in multi-hop wireless networks due to a variety of factors such as variations in transmission power and signal propagation environments. Directed links can occur when the environment and/or the nodes are heterogeneous. In this paper, the authors examine the network connectivity for heterogeneous multi-hop wireless networks and propose an algorithm to identify the connectivity of the network. They follow this with a numerical study of the connectivity in random topologies. Lastly, they propose two schemes for constructing additional links to enhance the connectivity of the network. The proposed schemes identify the links to be improved or created via a cluster based approach.