Local heuristic for the refinement of multi-path routing in wireless mesh networks

We consider wireless mesh networks and the problem of routing end-to-end traffic over multiple paths for the same origin-destination pair with minimal interference. We introduce a heuristic for path determination with two distinguishing characteristics. First, it works by refining an extant set of paths, determined previously by a single- or multi-path routing algorithm. Second, it is totally local, in the sense that it can be run by each of the origins on information that is available no farther than the node's immediate neighborhood. We have conducted extensive computational experiments with the new heuristic, using AODV and OLSR, as well as their multi-path variants, as underlying routing methods. For two different CSMA settings (as implemented by 802.11) and one TDMA setting running a path-oriented link scheduling algorithm, we have demonstrated that the new heuristic is capable of improving the average throughput network-wide. When working from the paths generated by the multi-path routing algorithms, the heuristic is also capable to provide a more evenly distributed traffic pattern

On the performance of STDMA Link Scheduling and Switched Beamforming Antennas in Wireless Mesh Networks

Projecte final de carrera realitzat en col.laboració amb King's College LondonWireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) aim to revolutionize Internet connectivity due to its high throughput, cost-e ectiveness and ease deployment by providing last mile connectivity and/or backhaul support to di erent cellular networks. In order not to jeopardize their successful deployment, several key issues must be investigated and overcome to fully realize its potential. For WMNs that utilize Spatial Reuse TDMA as the medium access control, link scheduling still requires further enhancements. The rst main contribution of this thesis is a fast randomized parallel link swap based packing (RSP) algorithm for timeslot allocation in a spatial time division multiple access (STDMA) wireless mesh network. The proposed randomized algorithm extends several greedy scheduling algorithms that utilize the physical interference model by applying a local search that leads to a substantial improvement in the spatial timeslot reuse. Numerical simulations reveal that compared to previously scheduling schemes the proposed randomized algorithm can achieve a performance gain of up to 11%. A signi cant bene t of the proposed scheme is that the computations can be parallelized and therefore can e ciently utilize commoditized and emerging multi-core and/or multi-CPU processors. Furthermore, the use of selectable multi-beam directional antennas in WMNs, such as beam switched phase array antennas, can assist to signi cantly enhance the overall reuse of timeslots by reducing interference levels across the network and thereby increasing the spectral e ciency of the system. To perform though a switch on the antenna beam it may require up to 0.25 ms in practical deployed networks, while at the same time very frequent beam switchings can a ect frame acquisition and overall reliability of the deployed mesh network. The second key contribution of this thesis is a set of algorithms that minimize the overall number of required beam switchings in the mesh network without penalizing the spatial reuse of timeslots, i.e., keeping the same overall frame length in the network. Numerical investigations reveal that the proposed set of algorithms can reduce the number of beam switchings by almost 90% without a ecting the frame length of the network

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

Modified Greedy Physical Link Scheduling Algorithm for Improving Wireless Mesh Network Performance

The algorithm to allocate mesh active link to radio resource timeslot in wireless mesh network (WMN) is investigated. This paper proposes the novel method to allocate multiple links in one timeslot for improving the wireless mesh network throughput via spatial time division multiple access (STDMA) protocol. The throughput improvement is obtained by modifying greedy based algorithm that is widely known as a low complexity algorithm. We propose and investigate new parameters in the greedy based algorithm that can be used as scheduling control parameters, i.e. interference weight, scheduling weight, and the sum of link’s degree. Simulation results indicate that this approximation increases network performance in throughput and length of scheduling performance closed to the upper bound performance that is achieved by the algorithm that uses the physical interference model.

Application-aware scheduling for VoIP in Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are seen as a means to provide last mile connections in Next Generation Networks (NGNs). Because of their auto configuration capabilities and the low deployment cost WMNs are considered to be an efficient solution for the support of multiple voice, video and data services in NGNs. This paper looks at the optimal provision of resources in WMNs for Voice over IP (VoIP) traffic, which has strict performance requirements in terms of delay, jitter and packet loss. In WMNs, because of the challenges introduced by wireless multi hop transmissions and limited resources, providing performance quality for VoIP comparable to the voice quality in the traditional circuit switched networks is a major challenge. This paper analyses different scheduling mechanisms for TDMA based access control in mesh networks as specified in the IEEE 802.16 2004 WiMAX standard. The performance of the VoIP applications when different scheduling mechanisms are deployed is analysed on a variety of topologies using ns 2 simulation and mathematical analysis. The paper concludes that on demand scheduling of VoIP traffic typically deployed in 802.11 based WMNs is not able to provide the required VoIP quality in realistic mesh WiMAX network scenarios and is therefore not optimal from a network operator’s point of view. Instead, it is shown, that continuous scheduling is much better suited to serve VoIP traffic. The paper then proposes a new VoIP aware resource coordination scheme and shows, through simulation, that the new scheme is scalable and provides good quality for VoIP service in a wide range of network scenarios. The results shown in the paper prove that the new scheme is resilient to increasing hop count, increasing number of simultaneous VoIP sessions and the background traffic load in the network. Compared to other resource coordination schemes the VoIP aware scheduler significantly increases the number of supported calls