Self-organized backpressure routing for the wireless mesh backhaul of small cells

The ever increasing demand for wireless data services has given a starring role to dense small cell (SC) deployments for mobile networks, as increasing frequency re-use by reducing cell size has historically been the most effective and simple way to increase capacity. Such densification entails challenges at the Transport Network Layer (TNL), which carries packets throughout the network, since hard-wired deployments of small cells prove to be cost-unfeasible and inflexible in some scenarios. The goal of this thesis is, precisely, to provide cost-effective and dynamic solutions for the TNL that drastically improve the performance of dense and semi-planned SC deployments. One approach to decrease costs and augment the dynamicity at the TNL is the creation of a wireless mesh backhaul amongst SCs to carry control and data plane traffic towards/from the core network. Unfortunately, these lowcost SC deployments preclude the use of current TNL routing approaches such as Multiprotocol Label Switching Traffic Profile (MPLS-TP), which was originally designed for hard-wired SC deployments. In particular, one of the main problems is that these schemes are unable to provide an even network resource consumption, which in wireless environments can lead to a substantial degradation of key network performance metrics for Mobile Network Operators. The equivalent of distributing load across resources in SC deployments is making better use of available paths, and so exploiting the capacity offered by the wireless mesh backhaul formed amongst SCs. To tackle such uneven consumption of network resources, this thesis presents the design, implementation, and extensive evaluation of a self-organized backpressure routing protocol explicitly designed for the wireless mesh backhaul formed amongst the wireless links of SCs. Whilst backpressure routing in theory promises throughput optimality, its implementation complexity introduces several concerns, such as scalability, large end-to-end latencies, and centralization of all the network state. To address these issues, we present a throughput suboptimal yet scalable, decentralized, low-overhead, and low-complexity backpressure routing scheme. More specifically, the contributions in this thesis can be summarized as follows: We formulate the routing problem for the wireless mesh backhaul from a stochastic network optimization perspective, and solve the network optimization problem using the Lyapunov-driftplus-penalty method. The Lyapunov drift refers to the difference of queue backlogs in the network between different time instants, whereas the penalty refers to the routing cost incurred by some network utility parameter to optimize. In our case, this parameter is based on minimizing the length of the path taken by packets to reach their intended destination. Rather than building routing tables, we leverage geolocation information as a key component to complement the minimization of the Lyapunov drift in a decentralized way. In fact, we observed that the combination of both components helps to mitigate backpressure limitations (e.g., scalability,centralization, and large end-to-end latencies). The drift-plus-penalty method uses a tunable optimization parameter that weight the relative importance of queue drift and routing cost. We find evidence that, in fact, this optimization parameter impacts the overall network performance. In light of this observation, we propose a self-organized controller based on locally available information and in the current packet being routed to tune such an optimization parameter under dynamic traffic demands. Thus, the goal of this heuristically built controller is to maintain the best trade-off between the Lyapunov drift and the penalty function to take into account the dynamic nature of semi-planned SC deployments. We propose low complexity heuristics to address problems that appear under different wireless mesh backhaul scenarios and conditions..

Socio-economic aware data forwarding in mobile sensing networks and systems

The vision for smart sustainable cities is one whereby urban sensing is core to optimising city operation which in turn improves citizen contentment. Wireless Sensor Networks are envisioned to become pervasive form of data collection and analysis for smart cities but deployment of millions of inter-connected sensors in a city can be cost-prohibitive. Given the ubiquity and ever-increasing capabilities of sensor-rich mobile devices, Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Phones (WSN-MP) provide a highly flexible and ready-made wireless infrastructure for future smart cities. In a WSN-MP, mobile phones not only generate the sensing data but also relay the data using cellular communication or short range opportunistic communication. The largest challenge here is the efficient transmission of potentially huge volumes of sensor data over sometimes meagre or faulty communications networks in a cost-effective way. This thesis investigates distributed data forwarding schemes in three types of WSN-MP: WSN with mobile sinks (WSN-MS), WSN with mobile relays (WSN-HR) and Mobile Phone Sensing Systems (MPSS). For these dynamic WSN-MP, realistic models are established and distributed algorithms are developed for efficient network performance including data routing and forwarding, sensing rate control and and pricing. This thesis also considered realistic urban sensing issues such as economic incentivisation and demonstrates how social network and mobility awareness improves data transmission. Through simulations and real testbed experiments, it is shown that proposed algorithms perform better than state-of-the-art schemes.Open Acces

Contention techniques for opportunistic communication in wireless mesh networks

Auf dem Gebiet der drahtlosen Kommunikation und insbesondere auf den tieferen Netzwerkschichten sind gewaltige Fortschritte zu verzeichnen. Innovative Konzepte und Technologien auf der physikalischen Schicht (PHY) gehen dabei zeitnah in zelluläre Netze ein. Drahtlose Maschennetzwerke (WMNs) können mit diesem Innovationstempo nicht mithalten. Die Mehrnutzer-Kommunikation ist ein Grundpfeiler vieler angewandter PHY Technologien, die sich in WMNs nur ungenügend auf die etablierte Schichtenarchitektur abbilden lässt. Insbesondere ist das Problem des Scheduling in WMNs inhärent komplex. Erstaunlicherweise ist der Mehrfachzugriff mit Trägerprüfung (CSMA) in WMNs asymptotisch optimal obwohl das Verfahren eine geringe Durchführungskomplexität aufweist. Daher stellt sich die Frage, in welcher Weise das dem CSMA zugrunde liegende Konzept des konkurrierenden Wettbewerbs (engl. Contention) für die Integration innovativer PHY Technologien verwendet werden kann. Opportunistische Kommunikation ist eine Technik, die die inhärenten Besonderheiten des drahtlosen Kanals ausnutzt. In der vorliegenden Dissertation werden CSMA-basierte Protokolle für die opportunistische Kommunikation in WMNs entwickelt und evaluiert. Es werden dabei opportunistisches Routing (OR) im zustandslosen Kanal und opportunistisches Scheduling (OS) im zustandsbehafteten Kanal betrachtet. Ziel ist es, den Durchsatz von elastischen Paketflüssen gerecht zu maximieren. Es werden Modelle für Überlastkontrolle, Routing und konkurrenzbasierte opportunistische Kommunikation vorgestellt. Am Beispiel von IEEE 802.11 wird illustriert, wie der schichtübergreifende Entwurf in einem Netzwerksimulator prototypisch implementiert werden kann. Auf Grundlage der Evaluationsresultate kann der Schluss gezogen werden, dass die opportunistische Kommunikation konkurrenzbasiert realisierbar ist. Darüber hinaus steigern die vorgestellten Protokolle den Durchsatz im Vergleich zu etablierten Lösungen wie etwa DCF, DSR, ExOR, RBAR und ETT.In the field of wireless communication, a tremendous progress can be observed especially at the lower layers. Innovative physical layer (PHY) concepts and technologies can be rapidly assimilated in cellular networks. Wireless mesh networks (WMNs), on the other hand, cannot keep up with the speed of innovation at the PHY due to their flat and decentralized architecture. Many innovative PHY technologies rely on multi-user communication, so that the established abstraction of the network stack does not work well for WMNs. The scheduling problem in WMNs is inherent complex. Surprisingly, carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) in WMNs is asymptotically utility-optimal even though it has a low computational complexity and does not involve message exchange. Hence, the question arises whether CSMA and the underlying concept of contention allows for the assimilation of advanced PHY technologies into WMNs. In this thesis, we design and evaluate contention protocols based on CSMA for opportunistic communication in WMNs. Opportunistic communication is a technique that relies on multi-user diversity in order to exploit the inherent characteristics of the wireless channel. In particular, we consider opportunistic routing (OR) and opportunistic scheduling (OS) in memoryless and slow fading channels, respectively. We present models for congestion control, routing and contention-based opportunistic communication in WMNs in order to maximize both throughput and fairness of elastic unicast traffic flows. At the instance of IEEE 802.11, we illustrate how the cross-layer algorithms can be implemented within a network simulator prototype. Our evaluation results lead to the conclusion that contention-based opportunistic communication is feasible. Furthermore, the proposed protocols increase both throughput and fairness in comparison to state-of-the-art approaches like DCF, DSR, ExOR, RBAR and ETT

A Novel Communication Approach For Wireless Mobile Smart Objects

Tez (Doktora) -- İstanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Fen Bilimleri Enstitüsü, 2007Thesis (PhD) -- İstanbul Technical University, Institute of Science and Technology, 2007Telsiz ağlar gezgin kullanıcılara nerede olduklarına bağlı olmadan her yerde iletişim kurma ve bilgiye erişim imkanı sağlar. Hiçbir sabit altyapıya gerek duymadan bu imkanı sağlayan tasarsız ağların zaman içinde gelişmesiyle, askeri, ticari ve özel maksatlar için tercih edilir hale gelmiştir. Diğer yandan, bilimsel ve teknolojik gelişmeler ağ elemanlarını daha küçük ve ucuz hale getirdikçe birçok uygulamanın vazgeçilmez parçaları olmuşlardır. Bu ağ elemanları, taşıyıcılara (örneğin gemiler, uçaklar, büyük araçlar, arabalar, insanlar, hayvanlar, vb.) monteli nesneler veya kendi taşıyıcısı olan (aktörler, duyargalar) nesneler olabilir. Fakat bu ağ elemanları ve uygulamalarında bir takım zorluklar yaşanmaktadır. Bu tezde, gezgin tasarsız ve duyarga ağlardaki yaşanan zorlukları ve beklentileri dikkate alarak, gezgin tasarsız ve duyarga ağlar için yeni bir özgün, durumsuz veri akış yaklaşımı ve yönlendirme algoritması önerilmektedir. Durumsuz Ağırlıklı Yönlendirme (DAY, “Stateless Weighted Routing – SWR”) algoritması olarak adlandırdığımız bu algoritma, diğer yöntemlere göre daha az yönlendirme yükü, daha az enerji tüketimi, daha az yol oluşturma gecikmesi sağlamaktadır. Veri, varışa doğru, çoklu yollar üzerinden taşınmaktadır. Çoklu yol oluşturma, güvenirliği sağlamakta, boşluk problemini büyük oranda çözmekte ve en kısa yolu da içeren daha gürbüz yollar oluşmasını sağlamaktadır. DAY aynı zamanda büyük ölçekli ağlarda da uygulanabilir. Bu amaçla, birden fazla veri toplanma düğümü (sink) içeren sürümü olan Çoklu Veri Toplanma Düğümlü- Durumsuz Ağırlıklı Yönlendirme (ÇVTD-DAY - “Multiple Sink-Stateless Weighted Routing - MS-SWR”) yöntemi de büyük ölçekli tasarsız ve duyarga ağları için önerilmiştir. ÇVTD-DAY yöntemi, DAY yönteminde herhangi bir yöntemsel ve algoritmik değişiklik yapmadan birden fazla veri toplanma düğümünün olduğu ağlarda uygulanabilir. Hem DAY, hem ÇVTD-DAY’nin başarımı benzetimler ile ölçüldü. Elde edilen sonuçlar, DAY ‘nin gezgin tasarsız ve duyarga ağlar için istenenleri karşıladığını, karşılaştırılan diğer yöntemlere göre üstün olduğunu ve olası en iyi çözüme yakınlığını, öte yandan ÇVTD-DAY‘nin de büyük ölçekli ağlarda uygulanabilir olduğunu göstermektedir.Wireless networks provide mobile user with ubiquitous communication capability and information access regardless of location. Mobile ad hoc networks, that manage it without a need to infrastructure networks, as evolved in time, become more preferable for military, commercial and special purposes. On the other hand, technological advances made network components smaller and cheaper. These network components involves a wide variety of objects such as objects mounted on crafts/platforms (e.g. ships, aircrafts, trucks, cars, humans, animals), and objects that have their own platforms (e.g. actuators, sensor nodes). However, these network components and their involved applications exhibit some challenges to implement. By considering the challenges and expectations of mobile ad hoc networks and sensor network, we propose a novel stateless data flow approach and routing algorithm namely Stateless Weighted Routing (SWR) for mobile ad hoc and sensor networks. The SWR has low routing overhead providing very low energy consumption, and has low route construction delay than other proposed schemes. Multiple paths to the destination are established for data transmission. Constructing multiple paths provides reliability, eliminates the void problem substantially, and provides more robust routes including the shortest path. The SWR is applicable to large scale networks. We propose the multiple-sink version of the SWR that is namely MS-SWR, to be used in large scale ad hoc and sensor networks with multiple sinks. The MS-SWR can be used with multiple sinks without any functional and algorithmic modification in the SWR protocol. The performance of the SWR and the MS-SWR are evaluated by simulations. The performance of the system shows that the SWR satisfies the requirements of mobile ad hoc networks and outperforms the existing algorithms. The SWR is also tested against a hypothetic routing scheme that finds the shortest available path with no cost in order to compare the performance of the SWR against such an ideal case. Tests also indicate that MS-SWR is scalable for large scale networks.DoktoraPh

The use of computational intelligence for security in named data networking

Information-Centric Networking (ICN) has recently been considered as a promising paradigm for the next-generation Internet, shifting from the sender-driven end-to-end communication paradigma to a receiver-driven content retrieval paradigm. In ICN, content -rather than hosts, like in IP-based design- plays the central role in the communications. This change from host-centric to content-centric has several significant advantages such as network load reduction, low dissemination latency, scalability, etc. One of the main design requirements for the ICN architectures -since the beginning of their design- has been strong security. Named Data Networking (NDN) (also referred to as Content-Centric Networking (CCN) or Data-Centric Networking (DCN)) is one of these architectures that are the focus of an ongoing research effort that aims to become the way Internet will operate in the future. Existing research into security of NDN is at an early stage and many designs are still incomplete. To make NDN a fully working system at Internet scale, there are still many missing pieces to be filled in. In this dissertation, we study the four most important security issues in NDN in order to defense against new forms of -potentially unknown- attacks, ensure privacy, achieve high availability, and block malicious network traffics belonging to attackers or at least limit their effectiveness, i.e., anomaly detection, DoS/DDoS attacks, congestion control, and cache pollution attacks. In order to protect NDN infrastructure, we need flexible, adaptable and robust defense systems which can make intelligent -and real-time- decisions to enable network entities to behave in an adaptive and intelligent manner. In this context, the characteristics of Computational Intelligence (CI) methods such as adaption, fault tolerance, high computational speed and error resilient against noisy information, make them suitable to be applied to the problem of NDN security, which can highlight promising new research directions. Hence, we suggest new hybrid CI-based methods to make NDN a more reliable and viable architecture for the future Internet.Information-Centric Networking (ICN) ha sido recientemente considerado como un paradigma prometedor parala nueva generación de Internet, pasando del paradigma de la comunicación de extremo a extremo impulsada por el emisora un paradigma de obtención de contenidos impulsada por el receptor. En ICN, el contenido (más que los nodos, como sucede en redes IPactuales) juega el papel central en las comunicaciones. Este cambio de "host-centric" a "content-centric" tiene varias ventajas importantes como la reducción de la carga de red, la baja latencia, escalabilidad, etc. Uno de los principales requisitos de diseño para las arquitecturas ICN (ya desde el principiode su diseño) ha sido una fuerte seguridad. Named Data Networking (NDN) (también conocida como Content-Centric Networking (CCN) o Data-Centric Networking (DCN)) es una de estas arquitecturas que son objetode investigación y que tiene como objetivo convertirse en la forma en que Internet funcionará en el futuro. Laseguridad de NDN está aún en una etapa inicial. Para hacer NDN un sistema totalmente funcional a escala de Internet, todavía hay muchas piezas que faltan por diseñar. Enesta tesis, estudiamos los cuatro problemas de seguridad más importantes de NDN, para defendersecontra nuevas formas de ataques (incluyendo los potencialmente desconocidos), asegurar la privacidad, lograr una alta disponibilidad, y bloquear los tráficos de red maliciosos o al menos limitar su eficacia. Estos cuatro problemas son: detección de anomalías, ataques DoS / DDoS, control de congestión y ataques de contaminación caché. Para solventar tales problemas necesitamos sistemas de defensa flexibles, adaptables y robustos que puedantomar decisiones inteligentes en tiempo real para permitir a las entidades de red que se comporten de manera rápida e inteligente. Es por ello que utilizamos Inteligencia Computacional (IC), ya que sus características (la adaptación, la tolerancia a fallos, alta velocidad de cálculo y funcionamiento adecuado con información con altos niveles de ruido), la hace adecuada para ser aplicada al problema de la seguridad ND