MCR: A Motif Centrality-Based Distributed Message Routing for Disaster Area Networks

Internet of Things (IoT) enables the collection of large volumes of data by billions of pervasive intelligent devices and sharing them with remote cloud servers for processing, resulting in increasing network congestion and server response times. The advent of edge computing has addressed these challenges by introducing an intermediate edge layer comprising networked fog nodes that provide on-demand computation, caching, and communication services to meet critical Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. However, in a challenging environment brought by disaster and aftershocks, the QoS is hampered as several fog nodes in the edge layer are damaged. Nevertheless, the existing network infrastructure should still support the uninterrupted flow of time-critical contextual data between the survivors and rescuers for quick recovery operations. In this work, we envision that the IoT devices and existing fog nodes will collaborate to form ad-hoc networks for emergency message delivery under disaster situations. We present a distributed routing mechanism, termed motif centrality-based routing (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$MCR$ </tex-math></inline-formula>), that leverages the concept of network motifs (subgraphs) seen in social and biological networks. Specifically, the proposed mechanism addresses three QoS requirements of an ad-hoc network: 1) robustness against component failures; 2) low latency; and 3) energy efficiency. We experimentally show that the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$MCR$ </tex-math></inline-formula>-based routing ensures high data delivery, low latency, and comparable efficiency in energy usage. Finally, an extensive simulation-based study shows that <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$MCR$ </tex-math></inline-formula> outperforms the related benchmarks in terms of the three QoS requirements.