67 research outputs found
An Efficient Opportunistic Cooperative Diversity Protocol for IEEE 802.11 Networks
Opportunistic cooperation promises to enhance the user experience when streaming media over wireless devices by improving wireless network reliability at the link level. This paper presents DAFMAC, an efficient cooperative diversity partner selection algorithm for IEEE 802.11 devices. Simulation results show DAFMAC provides a significantly higher transmission reliability in poor channel conditions than traditional ARQ techniques without modifying the device hardware. Further analysis shows the low overhead of DAFMAC makes it highly competitive with other proposed cooperative retransmission mechanisms in an ad-hoc network
Towards reliable geographic broadcasting in vehicular networks
In Vehicular ad hoc Networks (VANETs), safety-related messages are broadcasted amongst cars, helping to improve drivers' awareness of the road situation. VANETsâ reliability are highly affected by channel contention. This thesis first addresses the issue of channel use efficiency in geographical broadcasts (geocasts). Constant connectivity changes inside a VANET make the existing routing algorithms unsuitable. This thesis presents a geocast algorithm that uses a metric to estimate the ratio of useful to useless packet received. Simulations showed that this algorithm is more channel-efficient than the farthest-first strategy. It also exposes a parameter, allowing it to adapt to channel load. Second, this thesis presents a method of estimating channel load for providing feedback to moderate the offered load. A theoretical model showing the relationship between channel load and the idle time between transmissions is presented and used to estimate channel contention. Unsaturated stations on the network were shown to have small but observable effects on this relationship. In simulations, channel estimators based on this model show higher accuracy and faster convergence time than by observing packet collisions. These estimators are also less affected by unsaturated stations than by observing packet collisions. Third, this thesis couples the channel estimator to the geocast algorithm, producing a closed-loop load-reactive system that allows geocasts to adapt to instantaneous channel conditions. Simulations showed that this system is not only shown to be more efficient in channel use and be able to adapt to channel contention, but is also able to self-correct suboptimal retransmission decisions. Finally, this thesis demonstrates that all tested network simulators exhibit unexpected behaviours when simulating broadcasts. This thesis describes in depth the error in ns-3, leading to a set of workarounds that allows results from most versions of ns-3 to be interpreted correctly
MAC regenerative analysis of wireless Ad-Hoc networks
Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de
CiĂȘncias e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de
Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em
Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresThe IEEE 802.11 is a fast growing technology all over the world. This growth is essentially due to the increasing number of users in the network. Despite the increasing number of users, not all of them need the same quality of service. Thus, service differentiation is an important aspect that shall be considered in mathematical models that describe network performance. Moreover, users typically communicate using point-to-point connections(unicast transmission scheme) and point-to-multipoint connections (broadcast transmission scheme). The co-existence of unicast and broadcast traffic impacts the network performance and its importance cannot be neglected in the network performance evaluation. This motivates the work presented in this thesis, which characterizes the network accounting for these important parameters.
This thesis formulates a model to describe the behavior of the medium access control used in IEEE 802.11-based networks. This is the first step to develop a model that considers both different groups of users configured with different medium access control parameters and the co-existence of two different transmission schemes (unicast and broadcast).
The model also assumes a finite number of retransmissions for unicast packets and it is
confirmed that several models already proposed in other works are especial cases of the proposed model.
Finally, a theoretical validation of the model is done as well as some simulations to assess its accuracy and, some realistic network features are discussed
Experimenting with commodity 802.11 hardware: overview and future directions
The huge adoption of 802.11 technologies has triggered a vast amount of experimentally-driven research works. These works range from performance analysis to protocol enhancements, including the proposal of novel applications and services. Due to the affordability of the technology, this experimental research is typically based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices, and, given the rate at which 802.11 releases new standards (which are adopted into new, affordable devices), the field is likely to continue to produce results. In this paper, we review and categorise the most prevalent works carried out with 802.11 COTS devices over the past 15 years, to present a timely snapshot of the areas that have attracted the most attention so far, through a taxonomy that distinguishes between performance studies, enhancements, services, and methodology. In this way, we provide a quick overview of the results achieved by the research community that enables prospective authors to identify potential areas of new research, some of which are discussed after the presentation of the survey.This work has been partly supported by the European Community through the CROWD project (FP7-ICT-318115) and by the Madrid Regional Government through the TIGRE5-CM program (S2013/ICE-2919).Publicad
Analysis of broadcast strategies and network parameters in IEEE 802.11p VANETs using simple analytical models
International audienceâThis paper proposes and analyzes different broadcast strategies in IEEE 802.11p Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs). The first strategy is the default IEEE 802.11p strategy. Using a model derived from the Bianchi model, we provide the network performance in terms of throughput and success rate. The second strategy is to use an acknowledgment technique similar to the acknowledgment with point-to-point traffic. A node will send its broadcast packet as in the default case,but it requires an acknowledgment from a neighbor node. This node may be a random neighbor or may be selected according to precise rules. We analyze this second strategy in terms of throughput and success rate. Somewhat surprisingly, we show that this second strategy improves the delivery ratio of the transmitted packets but reduces the overall throughput. This means that if the CAM messages (Cooperative Awareness Messages) are broadcasted, the total number of packets actually delivered will be greater with the default strategy than with the improved strategy. We propose a third strategy which consists in using the default strategy for normal packets, but we add random redundant transmissions to ensure greater reliability for very important packets. We show that with this simple technique, not only do we obtain suitable reliability, but we also achieve larger global throughput than with the acknowledgment-oriented technique. Another contribution of this paper is to compute network performance in terms of throughput and success rate with respect to the network parameters and to analyze their impact on performances
Improving Multicast Communications Over Wireless Mesh Networks
In wireless mesh networks (WMNs) the traditional approach to shortest path tree based multicasting is to cater for the needs of the poorest performingnode i.e. the maximum permitted multicast line rate is limited to the lowest line rate used by the individual Child nodes on a branch. In general, this meansfixing the line rate to its minimum value and fixing the transmit power to its maximum permitted value. This simplistic approach of applying a single multicast rate for all nodes in the multicast group results in a sub-optimal trade-off between the mean network throughput and coverage area that does not allow for high bandwidth multimedia applications to be supported. By relaxing this constraint and allowing multiple line rates to be used, the mean network throughput can be improved. This thesis presents two methods that aim to increase the mean network throughput through the use of multiple line rates by the forwarding nodes. This is achieved by identifying the Child nodes responsible for reducing the multicast group rate. The first method identifies specific locations for the placement of relay nodes which allows for higher multicast branch line rates to be used. The second method uses a power control algorithm to tune the transmit power to allow for higher multicast branch line rates. The use of power control also helps to reduce the interference caused to neighbouring nodes.Through extensive computer simulation it can be shown that these two methods can lead to a four-fold gain in the mean network throughput undertypical WMN operating conditions compared with the single line rate case
A Markovian Analysis of IEEE 802.11 Broadcast Transmission Networks with Buffering
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the so-called back-off technique of
the IEEE 802.11 protocol in broadcast mode with waiting queues. In contrast to
existing models, packets arriving when a station (or node) is in back-off state
are not discarded, but are stored in a buffer of infinite capacity. As in
previous studies, the key point of our analysis hinges on the assumption that
the time on the channel is viewed as a random succession of transmission slots
(whose duration corresponds to the length of a packet) and mini-slots during
which the back-o? of the station is decremented. These events occur
independently, with given probabilities. The state of a node is represented by
a two-dimensional Markov chain in discrete-time, formed by the back-off counter
and the number of packets at the station. Two models are proposed both of which
are shown to cope reasonably well with the physical principles of the protocol.
The stabillity (ergodicity) conditions are obtained and interpreted in terms of
maximum throughput. Several approximations related to these models are also
discussed
Interference charecterisation, location and bandwidth estimation in emerging WiFi networks
Wireless LAN technology based on the IEEE 802.11 standard, commonly referred
to as WiFi, has been hugely successful not only for the last hop access to the Internet
in home, office and hotspot scenarios but also for realising wireless backhaul in mesh
networks and for point -to -point long- distance wireless communication. This success
can be mainly attributed to two reasons: low cost of 802.11 hardware from reaching
economies of scale, and operation in the unlicensed bands of wireless spectrum.The popularity of WiFi, in particular for indoor wireless access at homes and offices,
has led to significant amount of research effort looking at the performance issues
arising from various factors, including interference, CSMA/CA based MAC protocol
used by 802.11 devices, the impact of link and physical layer overheads on application
performance, and spatio-temporal channel variations. These factors affect the performance
of applications and services that run over WiFi networks. In this thesis, we
experimentally investigate the effects of some of the above mentioned factors in the
context of emerging WiFi network scenarios such as multi- interface indoor mesh networks,
802.11n -based WiFi networks and WiFi networks with virtual access points
(VAPs). More specifically, this thesis comprises of four experimental characterisation
studies: (i) measure prevalence and severity of co- channel interference in urban WiFi
deployments; (ii) characterise interference in multi- interface indoor mesh networks;
(iii) study the effect of spatio-temporal channel variations, VAPs and multi -band operation
on WiFi fingerprinting based location estimation; and (iv) study the effects of
newly introduced features in 802.11n like frame aggregation (FA) on available bandwidth
estimation.With growing density of WiFi deployments especially in urban areas, co- channel
interference becomes a major factor that adversely affects network performance. To
characterise the nature of this phenomena at a city scale, we propose using a new measurement
methodology called mobile crowdsensing. The idea is to leverage commodity
smartphones and the natural mobility of people to characterise urban WiFi co- channel
interference. Specifically, we report measurement results obtained for Edinburgh, a
representative European city, on detecting the presence of deployed WiFi APs via the
mobile crowdsensing approach. These show that few channels in 2.4GHz are heavily
used and there is hardly any activity in the 5GHz band even though relatively it
has a greater number of available channels. Spatial analysis of spectrum usage reveals
that co- channel interference among nearby APs operating in the same channel
can be a serious problem with around 10 APs contending with each other in many locations. We find that the characteristics of WiFi deployments at city -scale are similar
to those of WiFi deployments in public spaces of different indoor environments. We
validate our approach in comparison with wardriving, and also show that our findings
generally match with previous studies based on other measurement approaches. As
an application of the mobile crowdsensing based urban WiFi monitoring, we outline a
cloud based WiFi router configuration service for better interference management with
global awareness in urban areas.For mesh networks, the use of multiple radio interfaces is widely seen as a practical
way to achieve high end -to -end network performance and better utilisation of
available spectrum. However this gives rise to another type of interference (referred to
as coexistence interference) due to co- location of multiple radio interfaces. We show
that such interference can be so severe that it prevents concurrent successful operation
of collocated interfaces even when they use channels from widely different frequency
bands. We propose the use of antenna polarisation to mitigate such interference and
experimentally study its benefits in both multi -band and single -band configurations. In
particular, we show that using differently polarised antennas on a multi -radio platform
can be a helpful counteracting mechanism for alleviating receiver blocking and adjacent
channel interference phenomena that underlie multi -radio coexistence interference.
We also validate observations about adjacent channel interference from previous
studies via direct and microscopic observation of MAC behaviour.Location is an indispensable information for navigation and sensing applications.
The rapidly growing adoption of smartphones has resulted in a plethora of mobile
applications that rely on position information (e.g., shopping apps that use user position
information to recommend products to users and help them to find what they want
in the store). WiFi fingerprinting is a popular and well studied approach for indoor
location estimation that leverages the existing WiFi infrastructure and works based on
the difference in strengths of the received AP signals at different locations. However,
understanding the impact of WiFi network deployment aspects such as multi -band
APs and VAPs has not received much attention in the literature. We first examine the
impact of various aspects underlying a WiFi fingerprinting system. Specifically, we
investigate different definitions for fingerprinting and location estimation algorithms
across different indoor environments ranging from a multi- storey office building to
shopping centres of different sizes. Our results show that the fingerprint definition
is as important as the choice of location estimation algorithm and there is no single
combination of these two that works across all environments or even all floors of a given environment. We then consider the effect of WiFi frequency bands (e.g., 2.4GHz
and 5GHz) and the presence of virtual access points (VAPs) on location accuracy with
WiFi fingerprinting. Our results demonstrate that lower co- channel interference in the
5GHz band yields more accurate location estimation. We show that the inclusion of
VAPs has a significant impact on the location accuracy of WiFi fingerprinting systems;
we analyse the potential reasons to explain the findings.End -to -end available bandwidth estimation (ABE) has a wide range of uses, from
adaptive application content delivery, transport-level transmission rate adaptation and
admission control to traffic engineering and peer node selection in peer -to- peer /overlay
networks [ 1, 2]. Given its importance, it has been received much research attention in
both wired data networks and legacy WiFi networks (based on 802.11 a/b /g standards),
resulting in different ABE techniques and tools proposed to optimise different criteria
and suit different scenarios. However, effects of new MAC/PHY layer enhancements
in new and next generation WiFi networks (based on 802.11n and 802.11ac
standards) have not been studied yet. We experimentally find that among different
new features like frame aggregation, channel bonding and MIMO modes (spacial division
multiplexing), frame aggregation has the most harmful effect as it has direct
effect on ABE by distorting the measurement probing traffic pattern commonly used
to estimate available bandwidth. Frame aggregation is also specified in both 802.11n
and 802.1 lac standards as a mandatory feature to be supported. We study the effect of
enabling frame aggregation, for the first time, on the performance of the ABE using an
indoor 802.11n wireless testbed. The analysis of results obtained using three tools -
representing two main Probe Rate Model (PRM) and Probe Gap Model (PGM) based
approaches for ABE - led us to come up with the two key principles of jumbo probes
and having longer measurement probe train sizes to counter the effects of aggregating
frames on the performance of ABE tools. Then, we develop a new tool, WBest+ that
is aware of the underlying frame aggregation by incorporating these principles. The
experimental evaluation of WBest+ shows more accurate ABE in the presence of frame
aggregation.Overall, the contributions of this thesis fall in three categories - experimental
characterisation, measurement techniques and mitigation/solution approaches for performance
problems in emerging WiFi network scenarios. The influence of various factors
mentioned above are all studied via experimental evaluation in a testbed or real - world setting. Specifically, co- existence interference characterisation and evaluation
of available bandwidth techniques are done using indoor testbeds, whereas characterisation of urban WiFi networks and WiFi fingerprinting based location estimation are
carried out in real environments. New measurement approaches are also introduced
to aid better experimental evaluation or proposed as new measurement tools. These
include mobile crowdsensing based WiFi monitoring; MAC/PHY layer monitoring of
co- existence interference; and WBest+ tool for available bandwidth estimation. Finally,
new mitigation approaches are proposed to address challenges and problems
identified throughout the characterisation studies. These include: a proposal for crowd - based interference management in large scale uncoordinated WiFi networks; exploiting
antenna polarisation diversity to remedy the effects of co- existence interference
in multi -interface platforms; taking advantage of VAPs and multi -band operation for
better location estimation; and introducing the jumbo frame concept and longer probe
train sizes to improve performance of ABE tools in next generation WiFi networks
Energy-efficient wireless communication
In this chapter we present an energy-efficient highly adaptive network interface architecture and a novel data link layer protocol for wireless networks that provides Quality of Service (QoS) support for diverse traffic types. Due to the dynamic nature of wireless networks, adaptations in bandwidth scheduling and error control are necessary to achieve energy efficiency and an acceptable quality of service. In our approach we apply adaptability through all layers of the protocol stack, and provide feedback to the applications. In this way the applications can adapt the data streams, and the network protocols can adapt the communication parameters
Hidden Terminal Detection in Wide-Area 802.11 Wireless Networks
The hidden terminal problem is an important issue in wireless networks based on the CSMA medium access control scheme. Hidden terminals pose a complex challenge to network operators trying to identify the underlying cause of performance issues.
This thesis describes new methods for the detection and measurement of the hidden terminal problem in wireless networks based on commodity hardware and software platforms. These new methods allow network operators to identify areas of a network where hidden terminals are likely to exist; detect instances of the hidden terminal problem occurring; and estimate the total impact hidden terminals are having on the performance of the network.
A new framework for measurement of wireless networks is described which provides a new approach to wireless measurement on Linux based wireless routers. The new framework is used to implement the methods and they are deployed across an operational commercial wireless network and are shown to be useful
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