Message Fragmentation for Disrupted Links

Abstract:
In networks with unstable links the connection between the sender and the receiver may be cut before the entire message has been transmitted. Quantization of the message into blocks before its transmission, enables message fragments consisting of one or more such blocks to be transmitted successfully, even if the connection time is too short for transmitting the entire message. But fragmentation may also reduce the chances of delivering the entire message to its destination, due to lost or misrouted fragments. In this paper we (1) formulate the problem of in-time transmission of fragmented messages in disrupted networks; and (2) develop methods to analytically estimate the mean transmission time of fragmented message within a basic system model for the case of transmission over a single disrupted link.