Routing UAVs to Co-Optimize Mission Effectiveness and Network Performance with Dynamic Programming

In support of the Air Force Research Laboratory\u27s (AFRL) vision of the layered sensing operations center, command and control intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (C2ISR) more focus must be placed on architectures that support information systems, rather than just the information systems themselves. By extending the role of UAVs beyond simply intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations and into a dual-role with networking operations we can better utilize our information assets. To achieve the goal of dual-role UAVs, a concrete approach to planning must be taken. This research defines a mathematical model and a non-trivial deterministic algorithmic approach to determining UAV placement to support ad-hoc network capability, while maintaining the valuable service of surveillance activities

Model-based provisioning and management of adaptive distributed communication in mobile cooperative systems

Adaptation of communication is required to maintain the reliable connection and to ensure the minimum quality in collaborative activities. Within the framework of wireless environment, how can host entities be handled in the event of a sudden unexpected change in communication and reliable sources? This challenging issue is addressed in the context of Emergency rescue system carried out by mobile devices and robots during calamities or disaster. For this kind of scenario, this book proposes an adaptive middleware to support reconfigurable, reliable group communications. Here, the system structure has been viewed at two different states, a control center with high processing power and uninterrupted energy level is responsible for global task and entities like autonomous robots and firemen owning smart devices act locally in the mission. Adaptation at control center is handled by semantic modeling whereas at local entities, it is managed by a software module called communication agent (CA). Modeling follows the well-known SWRL instructions which establish the degree of importance of each communication link or component. Providing generic and scalable solutions for automated self-configuration is driven by rule-based reconfiguration policies. To perform dynamically in changing environment, a trigger mechanism should force this model to take an adaptive action in order to accomplish a certain task, for example, the group chosen in the beginning of a mission need not be the same one during the whole mission. Local entity adaptive mechanisms are handled by CA that manages internal service APIs to configure, set up, and monitors communication services and manages the internal resources to satisfy telecom service requirements

Fighting the network: MANET management in support of littoral operations

Advances in computer processing and communications capabilities have contributed to the recent explosion of mesh network technologies. These technologies’ operational benefits are of particular interest for those operating in the littorals. The dynamic complexities of the littorals force tactical decision-makers to adapt to a constantly changing battlespace in a constrained temporal and spatial environment. Ongoing research into the integration of unmanned systems and sensors as mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) nodes highlights the significant potential to improve situational awareness and force efficiency in the littoral environment. However, difficulties associated with tactical network operations and management make the littorals particularly challenging. There remains a need for a unified approach to managing these networks in a coherent and effective manner. The complexity of the littorals emphasizes the inherent interconnectedness of MANET management and command and control (C2). As a result, new and innovative approaches to C2 are also required. This thesis explores the value of modern network management systems as they contribute to the richness of the human-network interface, as well as the integration of network management and maneuver at the tactical level. The result is a proposal for a novel framework for littoral MANET management and C2 as a corollary of cyber-physical maneuver.http://archive.org/details/fightingnetworkm1094548561Outstanding ThesisLieutenant, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Energy-Aware Topology Control Strategy for Human-Centric Wireless Sensor Networks

The adoption of mobile and ubiquitous solutions that involve participatory or opportunistic sensing increases every day. This situation has highlighted the relevance of optimizing the energy consumption of these solutions, because their operation depends on the devices’ battery lifetimes. This article presents a study that intends to understand how the prediction of topology control messages in human-centric wireless sensor networks can be used to help reduce the energy consumption of the participating devices. In order to do that, five research questions have been defined and a study based on simulations was conducted to answer these questions. The obtained results help identify suitable mobile computing scenarios where the prediction of topology control messages can be used to save energy of the network nodes. These results also allow estimating the percentage of energy saving that can be expected, according to the features of the work scenario and the participants behavior. Designers of mobile collaborative applications that involve participatory or opportunistic sensing, can take advantage of these findings to increase the autonomy of their solutions.Fil: Meseguer, Roc . Universidad Politecnica de Catalunya; EspañaFil: Molina, Carlos. Universitat Rovira I Virgili; EspañaFil: Ochoa, Sergio F.. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Santos, Rodrigo Martin. Universidad Nacional del Sur. Departamento de Ingenieria Electrica y de Computadoras. Laboratorio de Sistemas Digitales; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Bahía Blanca. Instituto de Investigación en Ingeniería Eléctrica; Argentin

Multimedia delivery in the future internet

The term “Networked Media” implies that all kinds of media including text, image, 3D graphics, audio and video are produced, distributed, shared, managed and consumed on-line through various networks, like the Internet, Fiber, WiFi, WiMAX, GPRS, 3G and so on, in a convergent manner [1]. This white paper is the contribution of the Media Delivery Platform (MDP) cluster and aims to cover the Networked challenges of the Networked Media in the transition to the Future of the Internet. Internet has evolved and changed the way we work and live. End users of the Internet have been confronted with a bewildering range of media, services and applications and of technological innovations concerning media formats, wireless networks, terminal types and capabilities. And there is little evidence that the pace of this innovation is slowing. Today, over one billion of users access the Internet on regular basis, more than 100 million users have downloaded at least one (multi)media file and over 47 millions of them do so regularly, searching in more than 160 Exabytes1 of content. In the near future these numbers are expected to exponentially rise. It is expected that the Internet content will be increased by at least a factor of 6, rising to more than 990 Exabytes before 2012, fuelled mainly by the users themselves. Moreover, it is envisaged that in a near- to mid-term future, the Internet will provide the means to share and distribute (new) multimedia content and services with superior quality and striking flexibility, in a trusted and personalized way, improving citizens’ quality of life, working conditions, edutainment and safety. In this evolving environment, new transport protocols, new multimedia encoding schemes, cross-layer inthe network adaptation, machine-to-machine communication (including RFIDs), rich 3D content as well as community networks and the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) overlays are expected to generate new models of interaction and cooperation, and be able to support enhanced perceived quality-of-experience (PQoE) and innovative applications “on the move”, like virtual collaboration environments, personalised services/ media, virtual sport groups, on-line gaming, edutainment. In this context, the interaction with content combined with interactive/multimedia search capabilities across distributed repositories, opportunistic P2P networks and the dynamic adaptation to the characteristics of diverse mobile terminals are expected to contribute towards such a vision. Based on work that has taken place in a number of EC co-funded projects, in Framework Program 6 (FP6) and Framework Program 7 (FP7), a group of experts and technology visionaries have voluntarily contributed in this white paper aiming to describe the status, the state-of-the art, the challenges and the way ahead in the area of Content Aware media delivery platforms

Routing in Large Scale tactical mobile ad hoc Networks

The current Transformation of the military networks adopts the MANET as a main component of the tactical domain. Indeed, a MANET is the right solution to enable highly mobile, highly reactive and quickly deployable tactical networks. Many applications such as the Situational Awareness rely on group communications, underlying the need for a multicast service within the tactical environment where the MANET is employed as a transit network. The purpose of this thesis is to study the setting up of an optimal multicast service within this tactical environment. We firstly focus on defining the protocol architecture to carry out within the tactical network paying particular attention to the MANET. This network is interconnected with different types of networks based on IP technologies and implementing potentially heterogeneous multicast protocols. The tactical MANET is supposed to be made of several hundred of mobile nodes, which implies that the scalability is crucial in the multicast protocol architecture choice. Since the concept of clustering proposes interesting scalability features, we consider that the MANET is a clustered network. Thereby, we define two multicast routing protocols adapted to the MANET: firstly STAMP that is in charge of the multicast communications within each cluster and secondly SAFIR that handles multicast flows between the clusters. These two protocols that can be implemented independently, act in concert to provide an efficient and scalable multicast service for the tactical MANET. Then, we study the interoperability of these multicast protocols employed within the MANET with those employed in the heterogeneous networks that it is interconnected with in order to guarantee end-to-end seamless multicast services to users. Finally, since the multicast protocols proposed in this thesis rely on underlying unicast routing protocols, we propose, in the last chapter, a scalable unicast routing protocol based on OLS

Ensuring consensus on trust issues in capability-limited node networks with Blockchain technology

Σε αυτή τη διπλωματική εργασία, εξετάζουμε πώς θα μπορούσε να εφαρμοστεί το πρωτόκολλο blockchain, ώστε να διασφαλιστεί η συναίνεση των κόμβων του δικτύου σε θέματα εμπιστοσύνης, λαμβάνοντας παράλληλα υπόψη τους περιορισμένους πόρους των κόμβων. Αρχικά, θα παρουσιάσουμε το σύστημα στο οποίο θα εργαστούμε, ένα Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) το οποίο χρησιμοποιεί ένα σχήμα ομαδοποίησης, βασισμένο στην έννοια του κόστους ανάλυσης/επεξεργασίας, μαζί με έναν μηχανισμό εμπιστοσύνης που από κοινού έχουν ως αποτέλεσμα τη διαρκή και γρήγορη ανακάλυψη κακόβουλων κόμβων. Στη συνέχεια, θα παρουσιάσουμε το πρωτόκολλο blockchain και τις κύριες έννοιές του. Μια ανασκόπηση της σχετικής εργασίας θα διεξαχθεί για να αξιολογηθούν οι διάφορες προσεγγίσεις που χρησιμοποιούνται από άλλους για την ενσωμάτωση του πρωτοκόλλου blockchain στα αντίστοιχα συστήματά τους. Στη συνέχεια, θα παρουσιαστεί αναλυτικά το Hyperledger Fabric framework, το οποίο θα βοηθήσει στην εφαρμογή του προτεινόμενου συστήματος. Τέλος, θα παρουσιαστεί το προτεινόμενο σύστημα, το οποίο συγχωνεύει τη δεδομένη προσομοίωση MANET με την τεχνολογία blockchain μέσα από το Hyperledger Fabric και θα συζητηθούν τα αποτελέσματά του. Η ανάλυσή μας θα περιλαμβάνει, επίσης, αξιολόγηση της αποτελεσματικότητάς του στην διασφάλιση της συναίνεσης των κόμβων σε θέματα εμπιστοσύνης και πιθανές μελλοντικές βελτιώσεις.In this thesis, we review how the blockchain protocol could be applied so as to ensure the consensus of the network nodes on matters of trust, while taking into account the limited resources of the nodes. First, we will present the system we will be working on, a Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) which uses a clustering scheme, based on the cost of analysis/processing concept, along with a trust mechanism that together result in cluster persistence and quick discovery of malicious nodes. Then, we will introduce the blockchain protocol and its main concepts. A review of related work will be conducted to assess the various approaches utilized by others in incorporating the blockchain protocol into their respective systems. Subsequently, the Hyperledger Fabric framework, which shall aid in the implementation of the proposed system, shall be presented in detail. Finally, the proposed system, which merges the given MANET simulation with the blockchain technology enabled by Hyperledger Fabric, will be presented, and its results discussed. Our analysis will also include an evaluation of its effectiveness in addressing consensus on trust issues, and possible avenues for future enhancements

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of-the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

A cross-layer approach for optimizing the efficiency of wireless sensor and actor networks

Recent development has lead to the emergence of distributed Wireless Sensor and Actor Networks (WSAN), which are capable of observing the physical environment, processing the data, making decisions based on the observations and performing appropriate actions. WSANs represent an important extension of Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) and may comprise a large number of sensor nodes and a smaller number of actor nodes. The sensor nodes are low-cost, low energy, battery powered devices with restricted sensing, computational and wireless communication capabilities. Actor nodes are resource richer with superior processing capabilities, higher transmission powers and a longer battery life. A basic operational scenario of a typical WSAN application follows the following sequence of events. The physical environment is periodically sensed and evaluated by the sensor nodes. The sensed data is then routed towards an actor node. Upon receiving sensed data, an actor node performs an action upon the physical environment if necessary, i.e. if the occurrence of a disturbance or critical event has been detected. The specific characteristics of sensor and actor nodes combined with some stringent application constraints impose unique requirements for WSANs. The fundamental challenges for WSANs are to achieve low latency, high energy efficiency and high reliability. The latency and energy efficiency requirements are in a trade-off relationship. The communication and coordination inside WSANs is managed via a Communication Protocol Stack (CPS) situated on every node. The requirements of low latency and energy efficiency have to be addressed at every layer of the CPS to ensure overall feasibility of the WSAN. Therefore, careful design of protocol layers in the CPS is crucial in attempting to meet the unique requirements and handle the abovementioned trade-off relationship in WSANs. The traditional CPS, comprising the application, network, medium access control and physical layer, is a layered protocol stack with every layer, a predefined functional entity. However, it has been found that for similar types of networks with similar stringent network requirements, the strictly layered protocol stack approach performs at a sub-optimal level with regards to network efficiency. A modern cross-layer paradigm, which proposes the employment of interactions between layers in the CPS, has recently attracted a lot of attention. The cross-layer approach promotes network efficiency optimization and promises considerable performance gains. It is found that in literature, the adoption of this cross-layer paradigm has not yet been considered for WSANs. In this dissertation, a complete cross-layer enabled WSAN CPS is developed that features the adoption of the cross-layer paradigm towards promoting optimization of the network efficiency. The newly proposed cross-layer enabled CPS entails protocols that incorporate information from other layers into their local decisions. Every protocol layer provides information identified as beneficial to another layer(s) in the CPS via a newly proposed Simple Cross-Layer Framework (SCLF) for WSANs. The proposed complete cross-layer enabled WSAN CPS comprises a Cross-Layer enabled Network-Centric Actuation Control with Data Prioritization (CL-NCAC-DP) application layer (APPL) protocol, a Cross-Layer enabled Cluster-based Hierarchical Energy/Latency-Aware Geographic Routing (CL-CHELAGR) network layer (NETL) protocol and a Cross-Layer enabled Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Minimum Preamble Sampling and Duty Cycle Doubling (CL-CSMA-MPS-DCD) medium access control layer (MACL) protocol. Each of these protocols builds on an existing simple layered protocol that was chosen as a basis for development of the cross-layer enabled protocols. It was found that existing protocols focus primarily on energy efficiency to ensure maximum network lifetime. However, most WSAN applications require latency minimization to be considered with the same importance. The cross-layer paradigm provides means of facilitating the optimization of both latency and energy efficiency. Specifically, a solution to the latency versus energy trade-off is given in this dissertation. The data generated by sensor nodes is prioritised by the APPL and depending on the delay-sensitivity, handled in a specialised manor by every layer of the CPS. Delay-sensitive data packets are handled in order to achieve minimum latency. On the other hand, delay-insensitive non critical data packets are handled in such a way as to achieve the highest energy efficiency. In effect, either latency minimization or energy efficiency receives an elevated precedence according to the type of data that is to be handled. Specifically, the cross-layer enabled APPL protocol provides information pertaining to the delay-sensitivity of sensed data packets to the other layers. Consequently, when a data packet is detected as highly delay-sensitive, the cross-layer enabled NETL protocol changes its approach from energy efficient routing along the maximum residual energy path to routing along the fastest path towards the cluster-head actor node for latency minimizing of the specific packet. This is done by considering information (contained in the SCLF neighbourhood table) from the MACL that entails wakeup schedules and channel utilization at neighbour nodes. Among the added criteria, the next-hop node is primarily chosen based on the shortest time to wakeup. The cross-layer enabled MACL in turn employs a priority queue and a temporary duty cycle doubling feature to enable rapid relaying of delay-sensitive data. Duty cycle doubling is employed whenever a sensor node’s APPL state indicates that it is part of a critical event reporting route. When the APPL protocol state (found in the SCLF information pool) indicates that the node is not part of the critical event reporting route anymore, the MACL reverts back to promoting energy efficiency by disengaging duty cycle doubling and re-employing a combination of a very low duty cycle and preamble sampling. The APPL protocol conversely considers the current queue size of the MACL and temporarily halts the creation of data packets (only if the sensed value is non critical) to prevent a queue overflow and ease congestion at the MACL By simulation it was shown that the cross-layer enabled WSAN CPS consistently outperforms the layered CPS for various network conditions. The average end-to-end latency of delay-sensitive critical data packets is decreased substantially. Furthermore, the average end-to-end latency of delay-insensitive data packets is also decreased. Finally, the energy efficiency performance is decreased by a tolerable insignificant minor margin as expected. The trivial increase in energy consumption is overshadowed by the high margin of increase in latency performance for delay-sensitive critical data packets. The newly proposed cross-layer CPS achieves an immense latency performance increase for WSANs, while maintaining excellent energy efficiency. It has hence been shown that the adoption of the cross-layer paradigm by the WSAN CPS proves hugely beneficial with regards to the network efficiency performance. This increases the feasibility of WSANs and promotes its application in more areas.Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2009.Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineeringunrestricte