Cross-layer aided energy-efficient routing design for ad hoc networks

In this treatise, we first review some basic routing protocols conceived for ad hoc networks, followed by some design examples of cross-layer operation aided routing protocols. Specifically, cross-layer operation across the PHYsical layer (PHY), the Data Link layer (DL) and even the NETwork layer (NET) is exemplified for improving the energy efficiency of the entire system. Moreover, the philosophy of Opportunistic Routing (OR) is reviewed for the sake of further reducing the system's energy dissipation with the aid of optimized Power Allocation (PA). The system's end-to-end throughput is also considered in the context of a design example

D-DSC: Decoding Delay-based Distributed Source Coding for Internet of Sensing Things.

Spatial correlation between densely deployed sensor nodes in a wireless sensor network (WSN) can be exploited to reduce the power consumption through a proper source coding mechanism such as distributed source coding (DSC). In this paper, we propose the Decoding Delay-based Distributed Source Coding (D-DSC) to improve the energy efficiency of the classical DSC by employing the decoding delay concept which enables the use of the maximum correlated portion of sensor samples during the event estimation. In D-DSC, network is partitioned into clusters, where the clusterheads communicate their uncompressed samples carrying the side information, and the cluster members send their compressed samples. Sink performs joint decoding of the compressed and uncompressed samples and then reconstructs the event signal using the decoded sensor readings. Based on the observed degree of the correlation among sensor samples, the sink dynamically updates and broadcasts the varying compression rates back to the sensor nodes. Simulation results for the performance evaluation reveal that D-DSC can achieve reliable and energy-efficient event communication and estimation for practical signal detection/estimation applications having massive number of sensors towards the realization of Internet of Sensing Things (IoST)

QUALITY-DRIVEN CROSS LAYER DESIGN FOR MULTIMEDIA SECURITY OVER RESOURCE CONSTRAINED WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS

The strong need for security guarantee, e.g., integrity and authenticity, as well as privacy and confidentiality in wireless multimedia services has driven the development of an emerging research area in low cost Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs). Unfortunately, those conventional encryption and authentication techniques cannot be applied directly to WMSNs due to inborn challenges such as extremely limited energy, computing and bandwidth resources. This dissertation provides a quality-driven security design and resource allocation framework for WMSNs. The contribution of this dissertation bridges the inter-disciplinary research gap between high layer multimedia signal processing and low layer computer networking. It formulates the generic problem of quality-driven multimedia resource allocation in WMSNs and proposes a cross layer solution. The fundamental methodologies of multimedia selective encryption and stream authentication, and their application to digital image or video compression standards are presented. New multimedia selective encryption and stream authentication schemes are proposed at application layer, which significantly reduces encryption/authentication complexity. In addition, network resource allocation methodologies at low layers are extensively studied. An unequal error protection-based network resource allocation scheme is proposed to achieve the best effort media quality with integrity and energy efficiency guarantee. Performance evaluation results show that this cross layer framework achieves considerable energy-quality-security gain by jointly designing multimedia selective encryption/multimedia stream authentication and communication resource allocation

Design and performance of CDMA codes for multiuser communications

Walsh and Gold sequences are fixed power codes and are widely used in multiuser CDMA communications. Their popularity is due to the ease of implementation. Availability of these code sets is limited because of their generating kernels. Emerging radio applications like sensor networks or multiple service types in mobile and peer-to-peer communications networks might benefit from flexibilities in code lengths and possible allocation methodologies provided by large set of code libraries. Walsh codes are linear phase and zero mean with unique number of zero crossings for each sequence within the set. DC sequence is part of the Walsh code set. Although these features are quite beneficial for source coding applications, they are not essential for spread spectrum communications. By relaxing these unnecessary constraints, new sets of orthogonal binary user codes (Walsh-like) for different lengths are obtained with comparable BER performance to standard code sets in all channel conditions. Although fixed power codes are easier to implement, mathematically speaking, varying power codes offer lower inter- and intra-code correlations. With recent advances in RF power amplifier design, it might be possible to implement multiple level orthogonal spread spectrum codes for an efficient direct sequence CDMA system. A number of multiple level integer codes have been generated by brute force search method for different lengths to highlight possible BER performance improvement over binary codes. An analytical design method has been developed for multiple level (variable power) spread spectrum codes using Karhunen-Loeve Transform (KLT) technique. Eigen decomposition technique is used to generate spread spectrum basis functions that are jointly spread in time and frequency domains for a given covariance matrix or power spectral density function. Since this is a closed form solution for orthogonal code set design, many options are possible for different code lengths. Design examples and performance simulations showed that spread spectrum KLT codes outperform or closely match with the standard codes employed in present CDMA systems. Hybrid (Kronecker) codes are generated by taking Kronecker product of two spreading code families in a two-stage orthogonal transmultiplexer structure and are judiciously allocated to users such that their inter-code correlations are minimized. It is shown that, BER performance of hybrid codes with a code selection and allocation algorithm is better than the performance of standard Walsh or Gold code sets for asynchronous CDMA communications. A redundant spreading code technique is proposed utilizing multiple stage orthogonal transmultiplexer structure where each user has its own pre-multiplexer. Each data bit is redundantly spread in the pre-multiplexer stage of a user with odd number of redundancy, and at the receiver, majority logic decision is employed on the detected redundant bits to obtain overall performance improvement. Simulation results showed that redundant spreading method improves BER performance significantly at low SNR channel conditions

Aggregation with fragment retransmission for very high-speed WLANs

In upcoming very high-speed WLANs the physical layer (PHY) rate may reach 600 Mbps. To achieve high efficiency at the medium access control (MAC) layer, we identify fundamental properties that must be satisfied by any CSMA/CA based MAC layer and develop a novel scheme called Aggregation with Fragment Retransmission (AFR). In the AFR scheme, multiple packets are aggregated into and transmitted in a single large frame. If errors happen during the transmission, only the corrupted fragments of the large frame are retransmitted. An analytic model is developed to evaluate the throughput and delay performance of AFR over a noisy channel, and to compare AFR with competing schemes in the literature. Optimal frame and fragment sizes are calculated using this model. Transmission delays are minimised by using a zero-waiting mechanism where frames are transmitted immediately once the MAC wins a transmission opportunity. We prove that zero waiting can achieve maximum throughput. As a complement to the theoretical analysis, we investigate by simulations the impact of AFR on the performance of realistic application traffic with diverse requirements. We have implemented the AFR scheme in the NS-2 simulator and present detailed results for TCP, VoIP and HDTV traffic. The AFR scheme described was developed as part of the 802.11n working group work. The analysis presented here is general enough to be extended to the proposed scheme in the upcoming 802.11n standard. Trends indicated by our simulation results should extend to any well-designed aggregation scheme

Low-Latency Broadcast in Multirate Wireless Mesh Networks

Special Issue on “Multi-Hop Wireless Mesh Networks”</p

Correlation-aware Resource Allocation in Multi-Cell Networks

We propose a cross-layer strategy for resource allocation between spatially correlated sources in the uplink of multi-cell FDMA networks. Our objective is to find the optimum power and channel to sources, in order to minimize the maximum distortion achieved by any source in the network. Given that the network is multi-cell, the inter-cell interference must also be taken into consideration. This resource allocation problem is NP-hard and the optimal solution can only be found by exhaustive search over the entire solution space, which is not computationally feasible. We propose a three step method to be performed separately by the scheduler in each cell, which finds cross-layer resource allocation in simple steps. The three- step algorithm separates the problem into inter-cell resource management, grouping of sources for joint decoding, and intra- cell channel assignment. For each of the steps we propose allocation methods that satisfy different design constraints. In the simulations we compare methods for each step of the algorithm. We also demonstrate the overall gain of using correlation-aware resource allocation for a typical multi-cell network of Gaussian sources. We show that, while using correlation in compression and joint decoding can achieve 25% loss in distortion over independent decoding, this loss can be increased to 37% when correlation is also utilized in resource allocation method. This significant distortion loss motivates further work in correlation-aware resource allocation. Overall, we find that our method achieves a 60% decrease in 5 percentile distortion compared to independent methods

LINK ADAPTATION IN WIRELESS NETWORKS: A CROSS-LAYER APPROACH

Conventional Link Adaptation Techniques in wireless networks aim to overcome harsh link conditions caused by physical environmental properties, by adaptively regulating modulation, coding and other signal and protocol specific parameters. These techniques are essential for the overall performance of the networks, especially for environments where the ambient noise level is high or the noise level changes rapidly. Link adaptation techniques answer the questions of What to change? and When to change? in order to improve the present layer performance. Once these decisions are made, other layers are expected to function perfectly with the new communication channel conditions. In our work, we have shown that this assumption does not always hold; and provide two mechanisms that lessen the negative outcomes caused by these decisions. Our first solution, MORAL, is a MAC layer link adaptation technique which utilizes the physical transmission information in order to create differentiation between wireless users with different communication capabilities. MORAL passively collects information from its neighbors and re-aligns the MAC layer parameters according to the observed conditions. MORAL improves the fairness and total throughput of the system through distributing the mutually shared network assets to the wireless users in a fairer manner, according to their capabilities. Our second solution, Data Rate and Fragmentation Aware Ad-hoc Routing protocol, is a network layer link adaptation technique which utilizes the physical transmission information in order to differentiate the wireless links according to their communication capabilities. The proposed mechanism takes the physical transmission parameters into account during the path creation process and produces energy-efficient network paths. The research demonstrated in this dissertation contributes to our understanding of link adaptation techniques and broadens the scope of such techniques beyond simple, one-step physical parameter adjustments. We have designed and implemented two cross-layer mechanisms that utilize the physical layer information to better adapt to the varying channel conditions caused by physical link adaptation mechanisms. These mechanisms has shown that even though the Link Adaptation concept starts at the physical layer, its effects are by no means restricted to this layer; and the wireless networks can benefit considerably by expanding the scope of this concept throughout the entire network stack