Patent ID: 8331267

Claim:
A system for determining an optimal backbone for a robotic relay network, comprising: a robotic relay network comprising a plurality of nodes including a base station node, one or more mobile relay nodes, and one or more user nodes; a signal module to identify a signal strength value for each pair-wise communication link between each of the nodes; a weight module to apply a weight function to each communication link value to determine a communication link weight, wherein the weight function is applied according to one of the following equations: w ( v )=1/√{square root over (( v ))} where w is the communication link weight, and v is the signal strength value; or w ( v )=| v−vo | if v>vc and w ( v )= M+vc−v if v≦vc where w is the communication link weight, v is the signal strength value, vc is a cutoff signal strength value threshold, vo is an optimal signal strength value, vm is a maximum signal strength value, and M=max(vo−vc, vm−vo); and a backbone module to determine an optimal backbone tree from the communication link weights.