Protecting informative messages over burst error channels in chain-based wireless sensor networks

Regardless of the application, the way that data and information are disseminated is an important aspect in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). The wireless data dissemination protocol should often guarantee a minimum reliability requirement. In this regard and to well-balance the energy and reliability, the more important packets should be protected by more powerful error control codes than the less important ones. This information-aware capability allows a system to deliver critical information with high reliability but potentially at a higher resource cost. In this paper, we first find and evaluate the factors that may influence the importance level of a packet and then design an error control approach by adaptively selecting codes for each individual links which experience long-term-fading and for each individual packet at run-time instead of applying network-wide settings prior to deployment. Moreover, we target the poor-explored chain-based topology that is of interest for many applications (e.g. monitoring bridge, tunnel, etc.). Simulation results validate the superiority of our approach compared with a number of Reed-Solomon-based error control approaches

Studies on the performance of some ARQ schemes

This thesis consists of a summary part and seven published articles. All the articles are about performance analysis of ARQ schemes. Two of the publications study the performance of an ARQ scheme with packet combining, called the EARQ (extended ARQ) scheme. In the packet combining algorithm, the bitwise modulo-2 sum of two erroneous copies of a packet is computed to locate the errors. The packet combining algorithm involves a straightforward search procedure, the computational complexity of which easily becomes prohibitive. As a solution to this, a modified scheme is proposed, where the search procedure is attempted only when there are at most Nmax 1s at the output of the modulo-2 adder. In one article, time diversity was utilized, whereas space diversity reception was considered in the other work. The remaining five publications study the throughput performance of adaptive selective-repeat and go-back-N ARQ schemes, where the switching between the transmission modes is done based on the simple algorithm proposed by Y.-D. Yao in 1995. In this method, α contiguous NACKs or β contiguous ACKs indicate changes from 'good' to 'bad' or from 'bad' to 'good' channel conditions, respectively. The numbers α and β are the two design parameters of the adaptive scheme. The time-varying forward channel is modelled by two-state Markov chains, known as Gilbert-Elliott channel models. The states are characterized by bit error rates, packet error rates or fading parameters. The performance of the adaptive ARQ scheme is measured by its average throughput over all states of the system model, which is a Markov chain. A useful upper bound for the achievable average throughput is provided by the performance of an (assumed) ideal adaptive scheme which is always in the 'correct' transmission mode. The optimization of α and β is done based on minimizing the mean-square distance between the actual and the ideal performance curves. Methods of optimizing the packet size(s) used in the adaptive selective-repeat scheme are also proposed.reviewe

Resource allocation issues in broadband wireless networks with OFDM signaling

Wireless broadband technologies are anticipated to flourish in thenext few years, due to the increasing demand for wireless connectivityand the need to support enhanced services and applications in local-or wide-area environments. The primary goal in a communications systemis Quality of service (QoS) provisioning to users, which depends onprocedures that span several communication layers. Although independentconsideration of different layers simplifies system design, it oftenturns out to be insufficient for wireless networks. Cochannelinterference between users that reuse the limited spectrum and theresulting impact of local adaptation actions on overall network performance impose layer interactions in wireless systems. The purposeof this work is to identify and study some of the issues that arisefrom the synergy between the physical and the MAC layer in the contextof multiple access schemes with orthogonal channels. Using the essential feature of channel orthogonality as a baseline,our approach places emphasis on Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing(OFDM), which is an emerging multiple access and signaling method for futurewireless broadband networks. In OFDM, the broadband spectrum isdivided into orthogonal, narrow-band subcarriers and user symbols aresplit into subsymbols, which are transmitted in parallel over thosevariable-quality subcarriers. OFDM transmission reduces the effectivesymbol transmission rate, simplifies equalization at the receiver andprovides high immunity to inter-symbol interference and delay spread.Furthermore, it defines a framework for flexible adaptation to varyingchannel conditions, by allowing transmission parameter control foreach subcarrier. We first address the joint problem of channel allocation withsimultaneous adaptation of modulation level and transmission power ina multi-cell OFDM network. We study the impact of those parameters oncochannel interference and channel reuse and present two classes ofcentralized heuristic algorithms to perform the allocation. Next, we focus on a single-cell multi-user system with modulationcontrol and study the problem of subcarrier assignment to userssubject to time resource constraints. We study and compare integral andfractional user assignment, whereby a user is assigned to one subcarrieror can be partially assigned to multiple subcarriers. In addition, weconsider the synergy between link-layer ARQ protocols and physicallayer parameter adaptation. We consider a simple channel monitoringmethod which is based on counting received ACKs and NACKs. For asingle subcarrier, we show that the adaptation policy which maximizeslong-term average throughput per unit time is of threshold type. Wealso expand our policy to the multiple-subcarrier case with similar ordifferent channel qualities.In the sequel, we study the impact of smart antennas and SpaceDivision Multiple Access (SDMA) on MAC layer channel allocation for a single-cell multi-user system. Our approach encompasses multipleaccess schemes with orthogonal channels, such as OFDM. We first considerthe case of unlimited transceiver resources, where a separate beam canbe formed for each user of a spatially separable cochannel user set ina subcarrier. We present heuristic algorithms to allocate subcarriersto users and adjust down-link beam patterns, transmission powers andrates with the objective to increase total achievable system rate andprovide QoS to users in the form of minimum rate guarantees. Then, we consider the allocation problem forlimited transceiver resources, which arises whenever certainreasons impose limitations on the number of beams that can beformed. We propose meaningful heuristic algorithms to jointly formbeams from corresponding transceivers and assign subcarriers andtransceivers to users, such that the total achievable system rate isincreased