Fault Tolerance in IEEE 802.

11 WLANs
Flavio E. de Deus, Ricardo S. Puttini, Luis F. Molinaro, Humberto Abdalla Jr, G. Amvame-Nze, and
Joseph Kabara.

area coverage and performance criteria are taken into

Abstract— in this paper, we address the problem of
enhancing the fault tolerance of IEEE 802.11 wireless local
area networks focusing on tolerating Access Point - AP
failures. We develop a fault detection approach, which
promises to be more effective to identify AP failures. In
particular, we focus on the problem of overcoming APs failures
working with reconfiguration of the remaining APs by
changing parameters such as power level and frequency
channels. Our approach consists of two main phases: Design
and Fault Response. In Design phase, we deal with quantifying,
placement and setting up of APs according to both area
coverage and performance criteria. In Fault Response phase
we consider the reconfiguration of active APs in order to deal
with AP fault in the service area. Finally, we describe one of
the major characteristics of the proposed architecture, which is
a simple implementation in concordance with established IEEE
802.11 standards and related management systems.
Index Terms— WLAN design, fault tolerance, fault
detection, IEEE 802.11.
I. INTRODUCTION
R ecently, wireless local area networks – WLAN based
on the IEEE 802.11 standard [1] has gained popularity
in providing wireless connectivity to mobile stations.
However, as wireless networks become more ubiquitous and
start to support more critical applications, users will expect
wireless networks to provide the same guarantees of
reliability as their wired counterpart are often able to ensure.
Our research addresses the issues surrounding the
reliability and survivability of wireless local area networks.
In this paper, we propose architecture to improve fault
tolerance during access point failures in IEEE 802.11
WLAN. To clarify our work we need to specify what kind
of AP faults this architecture can recovery. Initially, we are
taking into account the occurrence of failures due to lack of
energy to an AP or problems with the wired link to an AP.
In particular, we focus on the problem of overcoming these
APs failures working with reconfiguration of the remaining
APs by changing parameters such as power level and
frequency channels. Failures regarding to fault on AP
functions or slighter problem (e.g., stops forwarding
packets) or malfunction can not be detected and solved. Our
proposal is based on a network design approach where both
Manuscript received April 15, 2006. This work was supported in part by
the CAPES Foundation under grant number BEX 2930/03-0.
Flavio E. de Deus, Ricardo S. Puttini, Luis F. Molinaro, Humberto
Abdalla Jr., and G. Amvame-Nze are with the Electrical Engineering
Department, University of Brasilia, Brasilia - DF 70.910-900 Brazil (e-mail:
{flavio@nmi.unb.br, ricardo@unb.br, georges@labcom.unb.br).
Joseph Kabara is with the Department of Information Sciences and
Telecommunications, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260 USA.
(e-mail: jkabara@pitt.edu).
account.
The proposed architecture is divided in two main phases:
Design and Fault Response. The Design phase is based on
previous work by C. Prommak et al. [2]. The WLAN design
is formulated as a Constraint Satisfaction Problem (CSP)
which formally express area coverage and client bandwidth
requirements. The solution to the formulated problem is
searched allowing for definition of parameter such as: AP
quantity, AP placement, AP power level and frequency
channel assignment. As a first contribution, we evaluate the
definition of additional constraints to the original CSP
problem formulated [2], in order to introduce fault tolerance
properties in the network design. These constraints consist
in limitations on the maximum power level and throughput
considered during the network design, allowing for power
level and throughput increasing during a fault occurrence.
The second contribution of this paper is the proposal of the
system for the Fault Response phase. Whenever an AP
failure is detected, the Fault Response phase is started. A
new CSP is formulated and the solution search is initialized
with the current configuration of the APs that remain
working. The solution is searched from this starting point by
relaxing the fault tolerance constraints imposed in the
Design phase and restricting the AP quantity and placement
parameters. The solution to this modified network design
problem aims to provide the best solution possible with the
remaining APs, allowing only for soft configuration changes
in these elements.
We emphasize that the Fault Response phase can be
easily implemented in a centralized Management Station
(MS), implemented by software, which polls the AP in the
network for detecting failures and remotely sets the new
configuration in the still-working APs after the calculation
of the new network design for the fault situation. Both poll
and set operations can be easily done by means of SNMP
and standard IEEE 802.11 MIB agents, usually found in
major supplier’s APs. As a last contribution, we present a
cost-effective implementation of this Management Station.
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. We provide
in Section II the mathematical formulation of the WLAN
design problem and constraints that we tailored. The Fault
Response phase is presented in Section III. We evaluate the
applicability of propose architecture in Section IV. We
describe our implementation in Section V. We present the
previous work in Section VI, and finally, Section VII
provides some conclusions and next research steps.
II. DESIGN PHASE
The task of network planning is to place a sufficient
number of APs in a service area. The power level and

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frequency channel of an AP, together with the environment
specific path loss and the antenna radiation pattern,
determine the region (called Basic Service Area – BSA)
over which the AP can support traffic demand to/from
wireless users. According to capacity analysis of the
CSMA/CA protocol used in 802.11 WLANs [3], the
capacity of an AP varies depending on the number of
wireless users simultaneously transferring data through the
AP [4]. As the number of wireless users actively
transferring data through an AP increases, the effective AP
capacity decreases. Thus, the number of APs in a service
area should be a function of the number of users and the
characteristics of their traffic demand [5]. Due to the low
cost of the APs, compared to the wireless devices with
which they communicate, minimizing the number of the
APs is unnecessary. However, over-provisioning the service
areas leads to serious system performance degradation due
to co-channel interference [6]. Thus, we define that it will
be more appropriate and effective work with a design
problem that was formulated as a constraint satisfaction
problem rather then an optimization problem.
The WLAN design was formulated as a Constraint
Satisfaction Problem (CSP) and an efficient heuristic
solution technique was developed to solve the CSP network
design problem [2]. Following, we present the mathematical
formulation and the respective explanations.
A. WLAN Design Model
The WLAN design prescribes requirements for a finite
number of variables with a given set of possible values
(called domains) that can be assigned to the variables. Let
G = {g1, g2 ,...,gc} denote a set of signal test points (STP)
representing locations for testing the received signal
strength and the signal-interference rate (SIR). Each STP
refers to a coordinate in three-dimensional
space ( xh , yh , z h ) , where zh is the floor where gh is located.
Let U = {d1t , d 2t ,..., d mt } denote a set of demand nodes, where
index t indicates the type of sub-area where demand node i
is located. The position of demand node i within the service
area is denoted by ( xi , yi , zi ) , where ( xi , yi ) are the
coordinates on floor zi where d
t
is located. The user
i
activity level (α t ) and the average data rate requirement
( Rt ) specify the network usage characteristics for the
demand node.
The CSP for the WLAN design model is defined by the
triple (V , D, C ) , where:
V = {n, p j , f j , (x j , y j , z j )} denotes a set of variables of the
design problem;
D = {Dn , Dp , D f , D( x, y ,z ) } denotes a set of finite domains
associated with each variable; and
C = {C1, C 2, C3} denotes a set of constraints.
Let A = {ap1, ap2 ,...,apn} denote a set of APs used in the
service area, where n is the total number of APs required.
Let acj = {pj , f j , (xj , yj , z j )} denote a set of parameters
assigned to ap j for 1 ≤ j ≤ n , where p j denotes the power
627
level assigned to ap j , f j denotes the frequency channel
assigned to ap j , and ( x j , y j , z j ) denotes the coordinate
t
( x j , y j ) on floor z j where ap j is located. d ij is a user
association binary variable that equals 1 if demand node
i ∈ U associates to ap j ∈ A ; 0 otherwise. g hj is a signal
availability binary variable that equals 1 if STP h ∈ G can
receive a signal from ap j ∈ A ; 0 otherwise. Dn is a set of
integer numbers, which are candidate for the number of APs
used in the network. D p is the set of candidate power levels
for variable p j ∈{P1 , P2 ,..., Pmax} . D f is the set of candidate
frequency channels for variable f j ∈{F1, F2 ,...,Fk } . D( x , y , z )
is the domain of variable ( x j , y j , z j ) .
The constraints in the CSP for the WLAN design model
are:
C1 : rit > Rt , ∀i ∈ U (1)
C 2 : g hj ( PRhj − PRth ) ≥ 0 , ∀h ∈ G, ∀j ∈ A (2)
C 3 : g hj ( PRhj − Intf hj − SIR th ) ≥ 0 ,∀h ∈G,∀j ∈ A (3)
Constraint C1 (1) ensures that the average data rate
available to wireless user i which is a type t user (rit ) is
greater than the specified user data rate ( Rt ) . The 802.11
capacity model and the user activity pattern correlated with
the type of sub-areas where users locate are incorporated in
this constraint to estimate the average data rate that the
active wireless user can obtain [3, 4].
The set of constraints C2 (2) – C3 (3) ensure that the
radio signal is available throughout the service region. To
assess the signal quality in the service area, the received
signal strength and the SIR level are tested at all signal test
points (STP’s). The decision variable g hj is equal to one if
the received signal strength at the STP h transmitted from
the ap j ( PRhj in dBm) and the SIR level with respect to the
ap j (i.e., PRhj - Intfhj ) meet the received sensitivity threshold
( PRth ) and the SIR threshold ( SIRth ) as specified by (2) and
(3), respectively; g hj is equal to zero otherwise 1 .
B. Survivability Constraints
We envision a new WLAN design that aggregates
survivability properties in order to provide even if not a
better service, a minimum connectivity to all user during a
failure scenario. Towards this objective we tailored the
WALN design model [2] changing constraints to build our
proposed architecture.
Our approach consists in increasing some constraints to
produce a solution that can deal with AP faults. The
mathematical formulation for the design model considers
both the signal radio coverage requirements and the data
1
Although g may be equal to one for multiple APs (j), the dynamic
hj
parameter d ijt will be equal to one for only one AP. This is required as the
demand node can be associated with one and only one AP.
rate capacity requirements. Network usage characteristics of
WLANs were accounted for by incorporating the correlation
between users’ network usage behavior and their locations
into the CSP formulation. We change constraints related to
the domain of possible power level assignment D p . Instead
of allowing Dp = {P1, P2 ,..., Pmax} , we introduce a parameter β
(e.g., 75%) in this calculation to limit the maximum power
level of the APs during network design, in order to create a
response range and to make possible our architecture to act
in a failure scenario. Thus,
Dp = { p j / p j ∈{P1, P2 ,..., Pmax}and p j ≤ βPmax} .
Construction and Frequency Channel Assignment (FCA)
steps aim to generate a good starting configuration that
provides an estimated number of APs and their initial
parameters. The Construction step employs two heuristics:
Area Covering Heuristic (ACH) and Demand Clustering
Heuristic (DCH). Together, these two modified heuristics
determine the initial locations and power levels of the APs
considering the β parameter. The FCA step utilizes
simulated annealing to determine the frequency channel
assignments of the APs based on AP locations and power
levels determined in Construction step.
The Constraint Violation Reduction (CVR) step evaluates
the network configuration based on the set of constraints. If
any design requirement constraint is violated, the CVR step
reduces the constraint violations by adjusting the locations
and power levels of the APs by using Tabu search. The
CVR step reassigns frequency channels by using the FCA
simulated annealing method. If the CVR fails to produce a
feasible network configuration satisfying all design
constraints, the intensification phase revisits good candidate
solutions recorded during the CVR step and performs a
repairing process for each revisited solution. After the
intensification phase, if a feasible network configuration is
solution technique receives all parameters from the
remaining APs which will be the initial values to run the
CVR phase. However, to manipulate the new variables, we
define a new CSP because power level is no longer fixed
while APs’ position and number are fixed. Such
initialization bypasses the Construction and the FCA steps.
Moreover, starting the solution search from the current
assures a solution which implies minimum modifications.
Fig. 1 illustrates the framework of Fault Response phase.
Inside this context, the CVR step checks the network
configuration and start to reduce the constraint violations by
adjusting only the APs power levels and frequency channel
reallocation through simulated annealing method. If CVR
step cannot find a feasible network, the Intensification step
takes place and the best available solution is chosen, even if
the network configuration does not satisfy all design
constraints, as we can not run an “Add-AP” step to fully
solve the constraints.
In the Intensification step, the constrain violation for each
candidate solution is evaluated according to a configuration
evaluation function (4) which must be minimized. Equation
(4) is composed of a weighted combination of two different
measures of degree of constrain violations, accomplishing
both area coverage and data rate requirements.
E ( solution ) i = w1 M 1 + w2 M 2 (4)
where,
w1= weight factor representing relative importance of
radio signal coverage criteria, and
w2 = weight factor representing relative importance of
traffic demand coverage criteria.
Input:
- # Access Points
- Access Point
Parameters:
- Locations
- Frequency channels
- Power levels

still not found, the Add-AP step attempts to solve the Output:
- Access Point
problem by installing additional APs in the service area. Modified Constraint
Violation Reduction
Solution
Found?
Yes
Parameters:
- Frequency channels
Running the Design phase we find a survivable solution that - Power levels
No
matches the needs of the environment and users. CVR
No
Stopping
Rule?
III. FAULT RESPONSE PHASE
Yes

In our approach power control offers a simple but Intensification

Solution
Found?
Yes
Fundamental Calculations:
powerful response to a failure scenario. The tradeoffs are - Path Loss calculation
- 3D antenna gain calculation No
obvious: reducing the power on a channel can improve - CSMA/CA capacity analytical
calculation
Termination
performance for other channels by reducing interference, Rule?
Yes

but it can reduce the throughput of the channel by forcing

the transmitter to use a lower rate to deal with the reduced Fig. 1 - Framework of the Fault Response phase.
signal-to-noise ratio [7]. As a result, we must carefully
consider the β % of power level in a Design phase to allow 1 ⎛ ⎛ Prth − Prg ⎞ ⎛ SIRth − (Prg / Intf g ) ⎞ ⎞
(5)
us to work in a Fault Response phase increasing the power M1 =
2 ∑ wg
∑ w ⎜⎜ max⎜⎜ 0,
g
Pr
⎟ + max⎜ 0,
⎟ ⎜ SIRth
⎟⎟
⎟⎟
∀g∈G ⎝ ⎝ th ⎠ ⎝ ⎠⎠
level and later reallocating frequency channels if necessary. ∀g∈G

In practice, the incentives for using power control are
complex and we have to distinguish between the techniques
that are fully applicable to planned WLAN.
Initially, our architecture imposes a monitoring phase to
detect failures and identify which AP(s) is/are out of
service. The process of monitoring the network will also
gather information to feed the modified CSP to produce
another solution for the failure scenario. At this moment, the
Prg = signal strength at STP g (in watt)
Intfg = interference level at STP g (in watt)
SIRth = signal to interference ratio threshold (no unit, ratio)
The first metric (5) concern about the number of users
that becomes out of coverage area in a failure scenario and
is defined as the ratio between the numbers of users without
coverage and the total number of users from the Design
phase. Equation (5) measures the ability of users, which

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were originally associated to the failed AP, to re-associate
TABLE I - NETWORK USAGE CHARACTERISTICS.
with another AP after the Fault Response phase.
Average
The second metric (6) references the average User and Sub-area Type
User Activity
usage data
performance not serviced to the users in the service area Level
rate(Kbps)
during a failure. Let rit denote average data rate available to Type 1: Private sub-areas (e.g., staff
α1 = 0.70 R1 = 460
and graduate student offices)
user i which is type t after the Failure-response phase. M2 is Type 2: Public sub-areas for
defined as: unscheduled activities (e.g., library, α2 = 0.60 R2 = 260
⎛ (6) student lounges)
1 ⎛ d t − rit ⎞ ⎞
M2 = ∑ w ⎜⎜ max⎜⎜ 0, ⎟⎟ ⎟
⎟
Type 3: Public sub-areas for
∑w
i
i ∀i∈M ⎝ ⎝ dt ⎠⎠ schedule-based activities (e.g,. α3 = 0.50 R3 = 80
∀i∈M
classrooms, laboratories)
wg = weight factor representing relative importance of
grid g, determined by the network component that fails and its
wi = weight factor representing relative importance of location [10]. In WLAN scenarios the main component is
user i, and the APs.
dt = required average data rate of user of type t (in bps). In order to evaluate the survivability properties of our
proposed architecture, we ran the Design Phase for the SIS4
In reaction to a failure, our architecture is used to select network service areas with different survivability
the best-available solution to the failure situation – using a constraints. We considered useful values of β parameter
network design criterion – and set the new parameters on (e.g. 100%, 85%, 70%, 55% and 40%), which leads to
the still-working APs. Once the AP(s) in fault is recovered available power levels of commercial APs (e.g. 20, 17, 14,
the Fault Response phase is terminated and the previous 11 and 8dBm) [11]. Then, we measure the degree of
configuration takes over. functionality remaining in the network during an AP failure
after reconfiguration by a Fault Response phase run by
IV. RESULTS
taking a look in the values of M1 and M2 obtained for each
The design of WLANs through a demand-based network design, reflecting different values of β parameter.
perspective can be accomplished by identification of the The results are shown in Table II.
individual requirements of wireless users in the service area, We also found useful to analyze the number of frequency
represented by demand nodes. This concept allows a channels changes due to the new configuration for the fault
designer to precisely describe the potential number of situation. This number is relevant because of the impact on
wireless users and their locations, in order to appropriately users’ activity as users associated to an AP which changes
place APs and assign users to the APs frequency channel assignment may experience a temporary
For the results presented in this paper, demand node service interruption due to AP reassociation. This is also
distributions were created from site surveys and information shown in Table II as a normalized metric M3, defined as:
from the facility staff in each location. Fig. 2 shows the
M 3 = ∑ t j max (0, t j )
1 (7)
demand node distributions representing prospective wireless n ∀j∈A
users in the service area. The service area considered is the
t j is a frequency channel adjust binary variable that
fourth floor of the School of Information Science (SIS4)
building at the University of Pittsburgh, spanning an area of
33 x 21 meters. The average user data rates are taken from TABLE II – β LEVEL AND ITS METRICS
Design phase Fault Response phase
observed network usage characteristics [8,9] and are
β Level # of AP M1 M2 M3
summarized in Table I. 100% 3 0,248 0,213 0
A survivability analysis measures the degree of 85% 3 0,213 0,181 0
functionality remaining in a system after a failure, and 70% 4 0,028 0,018 0,25
consists of evaluating metrics that quantify network 55% 5 0,012 0,005 0,40
40% 6 0,008 0,001 0,50
performance during failure scenarios as well as normal
operation. A variety of failure scenarios can be defined,
equals 1 if f j = f j' ; 0 otherwise. f j' ∈{F1 , F2 ,..., Fk } and
denotes the new frequency channel assigned to ap j in a
failure scenario.
According to results presented in Table II, high levels of
β (e.g. ≥ 85%) for the Design phase leads to low
survivability properties, as there is no power increasing
flexibility during an AP fault. For values of 40% ≤ β < 85%
we were able to find a solution in the Fault Response phase
that allows for M1 and M2 < 3%. Finally, variations of M1
and M2 in the scenarios where β = 55% and β = 40% are
inexpressive because in the last case although the power
increasing flexibility is larger, the SIR tends to be larger too
Fig. 2 - Demand node distribution for the 4th floor of the School of due to the close placement of APs.
Information Science

629
 As a preliminary result, we can say that 40% ≤ β < 85%
are good guesses for the Design phase, but M1 and M2 can
be evaluated for different designs and fault conditions in
order to establish the best available solution.
We have tested our proposed architecture in more
complex scenarios (e.g. multi-floor and larger building) and
the results lead us to the same β range. This is reasonably
expected as we are considering only one AP in failure at a
given period of time. We are currently testing multiple AP
failures and we intend to present the results for this research
in a future paper.
V. IMPLEMENTATION
One of the major characteristics of the proposed solution
resides in its ability to deal with currently deployed WLAN
networks in concordance with the established IEEE 802.11
standards and related management systems. The
ieee802dot11 MIB [12] provides useful variables to access
APs configuration (get/set): dot11FCSErrorCount,
ifInUcastPkts, dot11CurrentTxPowerLevel,
dot11CurrentChannel, and dot11StationID.
The first parameter dot11FCSErrorCount provides a view
of the number of Frame Check Sequence (FCS) error. This
parameter is used as indicator of the user quality, because
the number of FCS error is influenced by the user’s traffic,
the radio communication channel between the user and the
AP and the perturbation from other stations or AP if any. If
the number of FCS error provided by the
dot11FCSErrorCount parameter is above a chosen
threshold, a search for a better configuration is started.
...
Fig. 3 - Fault Tolerance Architecture
The number of FSC error provides only an absolute
value. A value relative to the amount of traffic and similar
to a percentage of error can be calculated from the
ifInUcastPkts parameter that gives the number of incoming
packets transmitted to the upper level. In correlation with
the dot11FCSErrorCount parameter, a perturbation rate can
be computed.
The use of standard MIB and SNMP allows for a cost-
effective implementation of the proposed architecture
running on centralized platform (Management Station -
MS), as illustrated in Fig. 3. In step (1), MS uses SNMP to
poll each AP, checking whether the performance of the
WLAN is under the perturbation rate and the AP still
connected or not. Whenever a failure is detected, MS start
the Fault Response phase calculation (2) to produce a
630
solution which aims to overcome the failure. Then, SM
again uses SMNP to set the new configuration to the still-
working APs (3). As soon as the new solution reaches a
steady state the architecture gets back to the monitor phase.
When the monitor phase identifies that the AP(s) breakdown
is solved, the designed solution, stored in MS, is setup
again.
VI. RELATED WORK
This section discusses related work in wireless
survivability and compares it with our approach. The
failures addressed for this works refers to solutions to deal
with possible infrastructure failures (link failures) but not
others.
Haas et al. [13] describe a technique to tolerate the failure
of the location database, which is a repository of the
locations of mobile stations at the mobile switching centers.
Dahlberg et al. [14] propose the notion of overlapping
coverage areas and dynamic load balancing as a way to
overcome infrastructure failures in PCS networks. More
recently, Chen et al. [15] describe a scheme for enhancing
the connection reliability in WLANs by “tolerating” the
existence of “shadow regions” through placement of
redundant APs. Their work mainly focuses on
communication between the primary AP and the redundant
AP. They present the details of implementing redundancy
by making enhancements to the basic 802.11 channel access
protocol and demonstrate improvement in connection
dependability. Albeit, this scheme works well for improving
dependability through redundancy, it deals with
“connection” survivability when a user moves from one AP
to the shadow regions. Our scheme is not based on
redundancy and does not require shadow APs. It focuses on
fault tolerance resulting from a network design criterion
rather than per user connection survivability resulting from
user mobility. Our method provides capacity redundancy
which brings us the advantage of preserves the capacity of
the system.
The problem of fault diagnosis in IEEE 802.11
infrastructure networks was first proposed by Adya et al
[16] in 2004. Their solution focuses primarily on the use of
enhanced clients to both detect and, to some extent, self-
diagnose failures and poor wireless performance, with the
assistance of a diagnosis server. While the general scope of
the problem is the same, our approach is different, and
triggered to the monitoring phase.
H.J. Pan and S. Keshav [17] present several algorithms
that detect an AP with a faulty wireless interface or whose
antenna has been accidentally shielded by online analysis of
AP usage logs. This work also presents a heuristics to
compute a path that a technician should take in order to
repair the faulty APs, but does not consider any action
during the fault moment as our proposal.
Yigal Bejerano and Seung-Jae Han [18] presents a new
technique that achieves load balancing by reducing the cell
size of congested APs, which is conceptually similar to the
so-called cell breathing methods in cellular networks. Like
our proposal, this scheme does not require any modification
at the user side neither the standard, but it only requires the
ability of dynamically changing the transmission power of
the AP beacon messages. Unlikely our scheme utilizes local
optimization heuristics to find the AP parameters.
Some Network Management Software provides a
complete solution to improve WLAN performance and
availability, but they are proprietary or focused in other
objectives, e.g Ciscoworks Wireless LAN Solution Engine
[19] and HiPath Wireless Controller from Siemens [20].
VII. CONCLUSIONS
In scenarios where we could not develop the Design
phase (i.e. WLAN already deployed) we can run the Fault
Response phase but there will be some limitations because
there may not be enough possibilities for power level
increasing in order to cope with failure situation as the fault
tolerance constraints may not be . Thus, the possibility of
raising the power level may not exist in some APs, making
the overall results less significant.
This architecture is based on tradeoffs that are part of the
WLAN networks. The wireless medium imposes limits on
propagation, interference, throughput, coverage area, and
etc. So, applying our architecture we design a fault tolerance
WLAN network which found a balance between over-
provisioning and co-channel interference respecting the
constraints that we define at first. The power level control
helps to manage the interference levels and the cost of this
procedure was the throughput. However, work with limited
power level brings us spare capacity to deal with bandwidth
starvation in failure scenarios. In this direction we can
design survivable WLAN networks adapting the β value and
maximize the fault tolerance architecture over minimum
tradeoffs. In addition, our implementation demonstrates that
the proposed architecture is feasible without large costs.
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