An Open Wireless Mesh Testbed Architecture with Data Collection and Software Distribution Platform

Abstract—A Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a fast growing network, which is now a popular technology for providing wireless internet connection to industry as well as community. A WMN is a collection of nodes (usually a computer with one or more wireless Network Interface Cards (NICs)) that are connected to one another with single or multiple hop ad hoc links forming a mesh backbone network. Ad hoc links are popular in mesh connectivity as they are self-configuring and self-healing. In this paper, we discuss WMN design and deployment issues with reference to our WiSEMesh testbed. WiSEMesh has 56 nodes deployed in the campus area providing internet connection for over 1000 users. Each node consists of a small form factor computer with three wireless NICs. We developed the WiSEMesh node software stack that contains unix based operating system, wireless NIC drivers, tools such as DHCP server, NAT etc

Concept and design of the hybrid distributed embedded systems testbed

Wireless mesh networks are an emerging and versatile communication technology. The most common application of these networks is to provide access of any number of users to the world wide Internet. They can be set up by Internet service providers or even individuals joined in communities. Due to the wireless medium that is shared by all participants, effects like short-time fading, or the multi-hop property of the network topology many issues are still in the focus of research. Testbeds are a powerful tool to study wireless mesh networks as close as possible to real world application scenarios. In this technical report we describe the design, architecture, and implementation of our work-in-progress wireless testbed at Freie Universität Berlin consisting of 100 mesh routers that span multiple buildings. The testbed is hybrid as it combines wireless mesh network routers with a wireless sensor network

Investigating optimal internet data collection in low resource networks

Community networks have been proposed by many networking experts and researchers as a way to bridge the connectivity gaps in rural and remote areas of the world. Many community networks are built with low-capacity computing devices and low-capacity links. Such community networks are examples of low resource networks. The design and implementation of computer networks using limited hardware and software resources has been studied extensively in the past, but scheduling strategies for conducting measurements on these networks remains an important area to be explored. In this study, the design of a Quality of Service monitoring system is proposed, focusing on performance of scheduling of network measurement jobs in different topologies of a low-resource network. We also propose a virtual network testbed and perform evaluations of the system under varying measurement specifications. Our results show that the system is capable of completing almost 100% of the measurements that are launched by users. Additionally, we found that the error due to contention for network resources among measurements stays constant at approximately 34% with increasing number of measurement nodes

PluralisMAC: a generic multi-MAC framework for heterogeneous, multiservice wireless networks, applied to smart containers

Developing energy-efficient MAC protocols for lightweight wireless systems has been a challenging task for decades because of the specific requirements of various applications and the varying environments in which wireless systems are deployed. Many MAC protocols for wireless networks have been proposed, often custom-made for a specific application. It is clear that one MAC does not fit all the requirements. So, how should a MAC layer deal with an application that has several modes (each with different requirements) or with the deployment of another application during the lifetime of the system? Especially in a mobile wireless system, like Smart Monitoring of Containers, we cannot know in advance the application state (empty container versus stuffed container). Dynamic switching between different energy-efficient MAC strategies is needed. Our architecture, called PluralisMAC, contains a generic multi-MAC framework and a generic neighbour monitoring and filtering framework. To validate the real-world feasibility of our architecture, we have implemented it in TinyOS and have done experiments on the TMote Sky nodes in the w-iLab.t testbed. Experimental results show that dynamic switching between MAC strategies is possible with minimal receive chain overhead, while meeting the various application requirements (reliability and low-energy consumption)

Software Defined Networks based Smart Grid Communication: A Comprehensive Survey

The current power grid is no longer a feasible solution due to ever-increasing user demand of electricity, old infrastructure, and reliability issues and thus require transformation to a better grid a.k.a., smart grid (SG). The key features that distinguish SG from the conventional electrical power grid are its capability to perform two-way communication, demand side management, and real time pricing. Despite all these advantages that SG will bring, there are certain issues which are specific to SG communication system. For instance, network management of current SG systems is complex, time consuming, and done manually. Moreover, SG communication (SGC) system is built on different vendor specific devices and protocols. Therefore, the current SG systems are not protocol independent, thus leading to interoperability issue. Software defined network (SDN) has been proposed to monitor and manage the communication networks globally. This article serves as a comprehensive survey on SDN-based SGC. In this article, we first discuss taxonomy of advantages of SDNbased SGC.We then discuss SDN-based SGC architectures, along with case studies. Our article provides an in-depth discussion on routing schemes for SDN-based SGC. We also provide detailed survey of security and privacy schemes applied to SDN-based SGC. We furthermore present challenges, open issues, and future research directions related to SDN-based SGC.Comment: Accepte

Advances in wireless community networks with the community-lab testbed

Beyond traditional telecom providers, citizens and organizations pool their own resources and coordinate in order to build local network infrastructures to address the digital divide in many parts of the world. These crowdsourced network infrastructures can be self-organized and shared by a community for the collective benefit of its members. Several of these networks have developed open, free, and neutral agreements, and are governed as a common-pool resource: community networks. These are built using a variety of commodity wireless hardware (e.g., Wi-Fi long-range point-to-point links, Wi-Fi and GSM access points, and mesh networks), sometimes optical fiber links, heterogeneous nodes, routing protocols, and applications. A group of researchers, developers, and community networks developed the Community-Lab testbed, and for the last five years have worked together to overcome obstacles, improve the technologies, tools, and operational models being used, as well as model best practices for more effective and sustainable community networks. This article presents the challenges for experimentation, the testbeds built, results, lessons learned, and the impact of that work to place wireless community networks as one sustainable way toward an Internet accessible to all.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A heterogeneous peer-to-peer network testbed

In this paper, we describe a heterogeneous peer-to-peer network testbed, which is developed as part of a joint research project to investigate novel resource discovery and content distribution protocols in a heterogeneous wired/wireless environment. We describe the testbed requirements, the testbed architecture, the multi-functional wireless node, and the software architecture. We also describe some of the proposed protocols to be developed and tested on the testbed. © 2009 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 1st International Conference on Ubiquitous and Future Networks (ICUFN 2009), Hong Kong, 7-9 June 2009. In Proceedings of the 1st ICUFN, 2009, p. 46-5