Spatial and temporal intermittent connectivity for delay improvement in wireless communication networks

In delay- and disruption-tolerant wireless communication networks, capacity is commonly traded off for delay. That is the case of spatial intermittent connectivity (SIC) networks. SIC networks are designed to provide high data rates to mobile nodes in small disjoint geographical areas. However, because of userspsila mobility, these high data rates come at the expense of significant connectivity delay and service disruption that users may experience. In this paper, the spatial and temporal intermittent connectivity (STIC) network paradigm is introduced to improve system performance in terms of both connectivity delay and disruption connectivity. The STIC paradigm consists of one or more non-overlapping and coordinated sets of information nodes operating in a temporal intermittent and sequential fashion. This temporally intermittent and sequential operation mode allows STIC systems to spatially distribute the total system capacity. To quantify performance improvement of STIC over SIC wireless communication networks, a simple but an illustrative one-dimensional (drive-through) architecture is considered.