Autonomous Gossiping: A self-organizing epidemic algorithm for selective information dissemination in mobile ad-hoc networks

We introduce autonomous gossiping (A/G), a new genre epidemic algorithm for selective dissemination of information in contrast to previous usage of epidemic algorithms which flood the whole network. A/G is a paradigm which suits well in a mobile ad-hoc networking (MANET) environment because it does not require any infrastructure or middleware like multicast tree and (un)subscription maintenance for publish/subscribe, but uses ecological and economic principles in a self-organizing manner in order to achieve its selectivity. The trade-off of using an infrastructure-less self-organizing mechanism like A/G is that it does not guarantee completeness deterministically as is one of the original objectives of alternate selective dissemination schemes like publish/subscribe. We argue that such incompleteness is not a problem in many non-critical real-life civilian application scenarios and realistic node mobility patterns, where the overhead of infrastructure maintenance may outweigh the benefits of completeness, more over, at present there exists no mechanism to realize publish/subscribe or other paradigms for selective dissemination in MANET environments. A/G's reliance and hence vulnerability on cooperation of mobile nodes is also much less as compared to other possible schemes using routing information, since it does not expect node philanthropy for forwarding/carrying information, but only cooperation to the extent that nodes already carrying the information pass it on to other suitable ones. Thus autonomous gossiping is expected to be a light-weight infrastructure-less information dissemination service for MANETs, and hence support any-to-many communication (flexible casting) without the need to establish and maintain separate routing information (e.g., multicast trees)

Security and Privacy in Molecular Communication and Networking: Opportunities and Challenges

International audienceMolecular Communication (MC) is an emerging andpromising communication paradigm for several multi-disciplinarydomains like bio-medical, industry and military. Differently to thetraditional communication paradigm, the information is encodedon the molecules, that are then used as carriers of information.Novel approaches related to this new communication paradigmhave been proposed, mainly focusing on architectural aspects andcategorization of potential applications. So far, security and privacyaspects related to the molecular communication systems havenot been investigated at all and represent an open question thatneed to be addressed. The main motivation of this paper lies onproviding some first insights about security and privacy aspects ofMC systems, by highlighting the open issues and challenges andabove all by outlining some specific directions of potential solutions.Existing cryptographicmethods and security approaches arenot suitable for MC systems since do not consider the pecific issuesand challenges, that need ad-hoc solutions.We will discuss directionsin terms of potential solutions by trying to highlight themain advantages and potential drawbacks for each direction considered.We will try to answer to the main questions: 1) why thissolution can be exploited in the MC field to safeguard the systemand its reliability? 2) which are the main issues related to the specificapproach

Autenticación de contenidos y control de acceso en redes peer-to-peer puras

Esta tesis doctoral se enmarca dentro del área de investigación de la seguridad en entornos Peer-to-Peer (P2P) totalmente descentralizados (también denominados puros.) En particular, el objetivo principal de esta tesis doctoral es definir, analizar e implementar un esquema para la distribución segura de los contenidos compartidos. En este trabajo de tesis se han realizado importantes avances e innovadoras aportaciones enfocadas a garantizar que el contenido compartido es auténtico; es decir, que no ha sido alterado, incluso tratándose de una réplica del original. Además, se propone un mecanismo de control de acceso orientado a proporcionar servicios de autorización en un entorno que no cuenta con una jerarquía de autoridades de certificación. A continuación, se resume la metodología seguida, las principales aportaciones de esta tesis y, finalmente, se muestran las conclusiones más importantes. __________________________________________The study and analysis of the state-of-the-art on security in Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks gives us many important insights regarding the lack of practical security mechanisms in such fully decentralized and highly dynamic networks. The major problems range from the absence of content authentication mechanisms, which address and assure the authenticity and integrity of the resources shared by networking nodes, to access control proposals, which provide authorization services. In particular, the combination of both, authentication and access control, within well-known P2P file sharing systems may involve several advances in the content replication and distribution processes. The aim of this thesis is to define, develop and evaluate a secure P2P content distribution scheme for file sharing scenarios. The proposal will be based on the use of digital certificates, similar to those used in the provision of public key authenticity. To carry out this proposal in such an environment, which does not count on a hierarchy of certification authorities, we will explore the application of non-conventional techniques, such as Byzantine agreement protocols and schemes based on “proof-of-work.” We then propose a content authentication protocol for pure P2P file sharing systems. Under certain restrictions, our scheme provides guarantees that a content is authentic, i.e. it has not been altered, even if it is a replica of the original and the source has lost control over it. Moreover, we extend our initial work by showing how digital certificates can be modified to provide authorization capabilities for self-organizing peers. The entire scheme is first theoretically analyzed, and also implemented in C and Java in order to evaluate its performance. This document is presented as Ph.D. Thesis within the 2007–08 Ph.D. in Computer Science Program at Carlos III University of Madrid

Energy Efficient Routing Algorithms for Wireless Sensor Networks and Performance Evaluation of Quality of Service for IEEE 802.15.4 Networks

The popularity of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) have increased tremendously in recent time due to growth in Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) technology. WSN has the potentiality to connect the physical world with the virtual world by forming a network of sensor nodes. Here, sensor nodes are usually battery-operated devices, and hence energy saving of sensor nodes is a major design issue. To prolong the network‘s lifetime, minimization of energy consumption should be implemented at all layers of the network protocol stack starting from the physical to the application layer including cross-layer optimization. In this thesis, clustering based routing protocols for WSNs have been discussed. In cluster-based routing, special nodes called cluster heads form a wireless backbone to the sink. Each cluster heads collects data from the sensors belonging to its cluster and forwards it to the sink. In heterogeneous networks, cluster heads have powerful energy devices in contrast to homogeneous networks where all nodes have uniform and limited resource energy. So, it is essential to avoid quick depletion of cluster heads. Hence, the cluster head role rotates, i.e., each node works as a cluster head for a limited period of time. Energy saving in these approaches can be obtained by cluster formation, cluster-head election, data aggregation at the cluster-head nodes to reduce data redundancy and thus save energy. The first part of this thesis discusses methods for clustering to improve energy efficiency of homogeneous WSN. It also proposes Bacterial Foraging Optimization (BFO) as an algorithm for cluster head selection for WSN. The simulation results show improved performance of BFO based optimization in terms of total energy dissipation and no of alive nodes of the network system over LEACH, K-Means and direct methods. IEEE 802.15.4 is the emerging next generation standard designed for low-rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPAN). The second part of the work reported here in provides performance evaluation of quality of service parameters for WSN based on IEEE 802.15.4 star and mesh topology. The performance studies have been evaluated for varying traffic loads using MANET routing protocol in QualNet 4.5. The data packet delivery ratio, average end-to-end delay, total energy consumption, network lifetime and percentage of time in sleep mode have been used as performance metrics. Simulation results show that DSR (Dynamic Source Routing) performs better than DYMO (Dynamic MANET On-demand) and AODV (Ad–hoc On demand Distance Vector) routing protocol for varying traffic loads rates

Spectrum and transmission range aware clustering for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

Cognitive radio network (CRN) is a promising technology to overcome the problem of spectrum shortage by enabling the unlicensed users to access the underutilization spectrum bands in an opportunistic manner. On the other hand, the hardness of establishing a fixed infrastructure in specific situations such as disaster recovery, and battlefield communication imposes the network to have an ad hoc structure. Thus, the emerging of Cognitive Radio Ad Hoc Network (CRAHN) has accordingly become imperative. However, the practical implementation of CRAHN faced many challenges such as control channel establishment and the scalability problems. Clustering that divides the network into virtual groups is a reliable solution to handle these issues. However, previous clustering methods for CRAHNs seem to be impractical due to issues regarding the high number of constructed clusters and unfair load distribution among the clusters. Additionally, the homogeneous channel model was considered in the previous work despite channel heterogeneity is the CRN features. This thesis addressed these issues by proposing two clustering schemes, where the heterogeneous channel is considered in the clustering process. First, a distributed clustering algorithm called Spectrum and Transmission Range Aware Clustering (STRAC) which exploits the heterogeneous channel concept is proposed. Here, a novel cluster head selection function is formulated. An analytical model is derived to validate the STRAC outcomes. Second, in order to improve the bandwidth utilization, a Load Balanced Spectrum and Transmission Range Aware Clustering (LB-STRAC) is proposed. This algorithm jointly considers the channel heterogeneity and load balancing concepts. Simulation results show that on average, STRAC reduces the number of constructed clusters up to 51% compared to conventional clustering technique, Spectrum Opportunity based Clustering (SOC). In addition, STRAC significantly reduces the one-member cluster ratio and re-affiliation ratio in comparison to non-heterogeneity channel consideration schemes. LB-STRAC further improved the clustering performance by outperforming STRAC in terms of uniformity and equality of the traffic load distribution among all clusters with fair spectrum allocation. Moreover, LB-STRAC has been shown to be very effective in improving the bandwidth utilization. For equal traffic load scenario, LB-STRAC on average improves the bandwidth utilization by 24.3% compared to STRAC. Additionally, for varied traffic load scenario, LB-STRAC improves the bandwidth utilization by 31.9% and 25.4% on average compared with STRAC for non-uniform slot allocation and for uniform slot allocation respectively. Thus, LB-STRAC is highly recommended for multi-source scenarios such as continuous monitoring applications or situation awareness applications

Routage adaptatif et stabilité dans les réseaux maillés sans fil

Grâce à leur flexibilité et à leur facilité d’installation, les réseaux maillés sans fil (WMNs) permettent un déploiement d’une infrastructure à faible coût. Ces réseaux étendent la couverture des réseaux filaires permettant, ainsi, une connexion n’importe quand et n’importe où. Toutefois, leur performance est dégradée par les interférences et la congestion. Ces derniers causent des pertes de paquets et une augmentation du délai de transmission d’une façon drastique. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons au routage adaptatif et à la stabilité dans ce type de réseaux. Dans une première partie de la thèse, nous nous intéressons à la conception d’une métrique de routage et à la sélection des passerelles permettant d’améliorer la performance des WMNs. Dans ce contexte nous proposons un protocole de routage à la source basé sur une nouvelle métrique. Cette métrique permet non seulement de capturer certaines caractéristiques des liens tels que les interférences inter-flux et intra-flux, le taux de perte des paquets mais également la surcharge des passerelles. Les résultats numériques montrent que la performance de cette métrique est meilleure que celle des solutions proposées dans la littérature. Dans une deuxième partie de la thèse, nous nous intéressons à certaines zones critiques dans les WMNs. Ces zones se trouvent autour des passerelles qui connaissent une concentration plus élevé du trafic ; elles risquent de provoquer des interférences et des congestions. À cet égard, nous proposons un protocole de routage proactif et adaptatif basé sur l’apprentissage par renforcement et qui pénalise les liens de mauvaise qualité lorsqu’on s’approche des passerelles. Un chemin dont la qualité des liens autour d’une passerelle est meilleure sera plus favorisé que les autres chemins de moindre qualité. Nous utilisons l’algorithme de Q-learning pour mettre à jour dynamiquement les coûts des chemins, sélectionner les prochains nœuds pour faire suivre les paquets vers les passerelles choisies et explorer d’autres nœuds voisins. Les résultats numériques montrent que notre protocole distribué, présente de meilleurs résultats comparativement aux protocoles présentés dans la littérature. Dans une troisième partie de cette thèse, nous nous intéressons aux problèmes d’instabilité des réseaux maillés sans fil. En effet, l’instabilité se produit à cause des changements fréquents des routes qui sont causés par les variations instantanées des qualités des liens dues à la présence des interférences et de la congestion. Ainsi, après une analyse de l’instabilité, nous proposons d’utiliser le nombre de variations des chemins dans une table de routage comme indicateur de perturbation des réseaux et nous utilisons la fonction d’entropie, connue dans les mesures de l’incertitude et du désordre des systèmes, pour sélectionner les routes stables. Les résultats numériques montrent de meilleures performances de notre protocole en comparaison avec d’autres protocoles dans la littérature en termes de débit, délai, taux de perte des paquets et l’indice de Gini.Thanks to their flexibility and their simplicity of installation, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) allow a low cost deployment of network infrastructure. They can be used to extend wired networks coverage allowing connectivity anytime and anywhere. However, WMNs may suffer from drastic performance degradation (e.g., increased packet loss ratio and delay) because of interferences and congestion. In this thesis, we are interested in adaptive routing and stability in WMNs. In the first part of the thesis, we focus on defining new routing metric and gateway selection scheme to improve WMNs performance. In this context, we propose a source routing protocol based on a new metric which takes into account packet losses, intra-flow interferences, inter-flow interferences and load at gateways together to select best paths to best gateways. Simulation results show that the proposed metric improves the network performance and outperforms existing metrics in the literature. In the second part of the thesis, we focus on critical zones, in WMNs, that consist of mesh routers which are located in neighborhoods of gateways where traffic concentration may occur. This traffic concentration may increase congestion and interferences excessively on wireless channels around the gateways. Thus, we propose a proactive and adaptive routing protocol based on reinforcement learning which increasingly penalizes links with bad quality as we get closer to gateways. We use Q-learning algorithm to dynamically update path costs and to select the next hop each time a packet is forwarded toward a given gateway; learning agents in each mesh router learn the best link to forward an incoming packet and explore new alternatives in the future. Simulation results show that our distributed routing protocol is less sensitive to interferences and outperforms existing protocols in the literature. In the third part of this thesis, we focus on the problems of instability in WMNs. Instability occurs when routes flapping are frequent. Routes flapping are caused by the variations of link quality due to interferences and congestion. Thus, after analyzing factors that may cause network instability, we propose to use the number of path variations in routing tables as an indicator of network instability. Also, we use entropy function, usually used to measure uncertainty and disorder in systems, to define node stability, and thus, select the most stable routes in the WMNs. Simulation results show that our stability-based routing protocol outperforms existing routing protocols in the literature in terms of throughput, delay, loss rate, and Gini index