To provide an emergency communication infrastructure for rescue helpers and victims in the event of a disaster, the research project VirtO4WMN proposes to utilise a Wireless Mesh Network (WMN)-based disaster network. The network is constructed from battery-supplied wireless outdoor routers. By integrating the concept of Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), the network and service availability as well as their reliability are improved. For eliminating the singlepoint-of-failure of a centralised NFV orchestration the functionality of the NFV orchestration shall be distributed among the nodes in the WMN. For providing the best possible solution for a distributed NFV orchestration in a WMN-based disaster network, various requirements the orchestration must meet are defined and presented in this paper. The requirements are directly derived from the requirements of a WMN-based disaster network, which are also defined in this paper.

This publication deals with distributed NFV orchestration in a WMN-based disaster network. The NFV orchestrator defined by ETSI is designed as a central unit and therefore includes the possibility of a single point of failure. Due to the environment of a disaster, a WMN node hosting this centralized orchestrator might get destroyed at events such as aftershocks resulting in a breakdown of the NFV infrastructure as it cannot be maintained and orchestrated anymore. To eliminate this aspect, requirements for a distributed NFV orchestration are defined. The requirements are categorized into architectural and orchestration specific aspects and are derived from the characteristics of a WMN and the conditions of a disaster environment. A concept for realizing a distributed NFV orchestration in a WMN-based disaster network according to the defined requirements is presented. The architecture consists of five logical layers with each layer fulfilling a specific functionality.

This paper evaluates the performance of the routing protocols HWMP, Babel and B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced for disaster networks. The evaluation is performed using a virtual environment so that the obtained results are similar to the expectations of a real world testbed. According to the specific requirements in disaster situations, three different scenario categories are implemented. The focus of the scenarios defined in the first category is to evaluate the behavior of the protocols inside a static network. The focus in the second category is to test their performance after dynamic processes. The focus in the last category is to predict the behavior of the routing protocols inside a large network expected after a disaster. The obtained results can be interpreted as follows: in the first category, the results obtained by HWMP and B.A.T.M.A.N. advanced are similar. Both protocols take the variations in the link throughput into consideration for their routing operations. In the second category, the protocol HWMP shows the most promising results concerning dynamic processes inside the network. The results obtained in the last category show that none of the examined protocols is appropriate for large networks, with the exception of Babel, which can be modified to support a large number of clients and routers. Because none of the examined routing protocols can fulfil the requirements in disaster situation, a new network architecture is proposed, which combines the advantages of two routing protocols to address the existing routing challenges.

This publication presents a novel concept for autonomous and decentralised M2M application service provision. The functional architecture of the approach is introduced as well as a detailed description of the system structure and process for application creation. Furthermore, this publication describes details about the proposed process for decentralised M2M application service management and formal description of M2M application services as well as independent validation of M2M application service configurations. Finally, the prototype M2M system realising the proposed concept is introduced and several scenarios are evaluated.