On Network Topology Augmentation for Global Connectivity under Regional Failures

Abstract

Several recent studies shed light on the vulnerability of networks against regional failures, which are failures of multiple nodes and links in a physical region due to a natural disaster. The paper defines a novel design framework, called Geometric Network Augmentation (GNA), which determines a set of node pairs and the new cable routes to be deployed between each of them to make the network always remain connected when a regional failure of a given size occurs. With the proposed GNA design framework, we provide mathematical analysis and efficient heuristic algorithms that are built on the latest computational geometry tools and combinatorial optimization techniques. Through extensive simulation, we demonstrate that augmentation with just a small number of new cable routes will achieve the desired resilience against all the considered regional failures.