Joint Adaptive Modulation-Coding and Cooperative ARQ for Wireless Relay Networks

This paper presents a cross-layer approach to jointly design adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) at the physical layer and cooperative truncated automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol at the data link layer. We first derive an exact closed form expression for the spectral efficiency of the proposed joint AMC-cooperative ARQ scheme. Aiming at maximizing this system performance measure, we then optimize an AMC scheme which directly satisfies a prescribed packet loss rate constraint at the data-link layer. The results indicate that utilizing cooperative ARQ as a retransmission strategy, noticeably enhances the spectral efficiency compared with the system that employs AMC alone at the physical layer. Moreover, the proposed adaptive rate cooperative ARQ scheme outperforms the fixed rate counterpart when the transmission modes at the source and relay are chosen based on the channel statistics. This in turn quantifies the possible gain achieved by joint design of AMC and ARQ in wireless relay networks.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, To appear in the Proceedings of the 2008 IEEE International Symposium on Wireless Communication Systems (ISWCS), Rykevick, Island, Oct 200

Wireless industrial monitoring and control networks: the journey so far and the road ahead

While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks

On the benefits of Cross Layer Feedback in Multi-hop Wireless Networks

Wireless networks operate under harsh and time-varying channel conditions. In wireless networks the time varying channel conditions lead to variable SINR and high BER. The wireless channel is distinct from and more unpredictable than the far more reliable wireline channel. {\em Cross layer feedback} is a mechanism where layers provide {\em selective} information to other layers to boost the performance of wireless networks. {\em Cross layer feedback} can lead to a tremendous increase in the performance of the TCP/IP stack in wireless networks, and an increase in the user's satisfaction level. However, it is possible that naive feedbacks (or optimizations) can work non-coherently; therefore, these can negatively effect the performance of the TCP/IP stack. In this paper, we holistically analyze each layer of the TCP/IP stack, and propose possible Cross layer feedbacks which work coherently. The proposed Cross layer feedbacks can greatly enhance the performance of the TCP/IP stack in wireless networks