PACE: Simple Multi-hop Scheduling for Single-radio 802.11-based Stub Wireless Mesh Networks

IEEE 802.11-based Stub Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are a cost-effective and flexible solution to extend wired network infrastructures. Yet, they suffer from two major problems: inefficiency and unfairness. A number of approaches have been proposed to tackle these problems, but they are too restrictive, highly complex, or require time synchronization and modifications to the IEEE 802.11 MAC. PACE is a simple multi-hop scheduling mechanism for Stub WMNs overlaid on the IEEE 802.11 MAC that jointly addresses the inefficiency and unfairness problems. It limits transmissions to a single mesh node at each time and ensures that each node has the opportunity to transmit a packet in each network-wide transmission round. Simulation results demonstrate that PACE can achieve optimal network capacity utilization and greatly outperforms state of the art CSMA/CA-based solutions as far as goodput, delay, and fairness are concerned

Optimal scheduling and fair servicepolicy for STDMA in underwater networks with acoustic communications

In this work, a multi-hop string network with a single sink node is analyzed. A periodic optimal scheduling for TDMA operation that considers the characteristic long propagation delay of the underwater acoustic channel is presented. This planning of transmissions is obtained with the help of a new geometrical method based on a 2D lattice in the space-time domain. In order to evaluate the performance of this optimal scheduling, two service policies have been compared: FIFO and Round-Robin. Simulation results, including achievable throughput, packet delay, and queue length, are shown. The network fairness has also been quantified with the Gini index

Evolving SDN for Low-Power IoT Networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) offers a flexible and scalable architecture that abstracts decision making away from individual devices and provides a programmable network platform. However, implementing a centralized SDN architecture within the constraints of a low-power wireless network faces considerable challenges. Not only is controller traffic subject to jitter due to unreliable links and network contention, but the overhead generated by SDN can severely affect the performance of other traffic. This paper addresses the challenge of bringing high-overhead SDN architecture to IEEE 802.15.4 networks. We explore how traditional SDN needs to evolve in order to overcome the constraints of low-power wireless networks, and discuss protocol and architectural optimizations necessary to reduce SDN control overhead - the main barrier to successful implementation. We argue that interoperability with the existing protocol stack is necessary to provide a platform for controller discovery and coexistence with legacy networks. We consequently introduce {\mu}SDN, a lightweight SDN framework for Contiki, with both IPv6 and underlying routing protocol interoperability, as well as optimizing a number of elements within the SDN architecture to reduce control overhead to practical levels. We evaluate {\mu}SDN in terms of latency, energy, and packet delivery. Through this evaluation we show how the cost of SDN control overhead (both bootstrapping and management) can be reduced to a point where comparable performance and scalability is achieved against an IEEE 802.15.4-2012 RPL-based network. Additionally, we demonstrate {\mu}SDN through simulation: providing a use-case where the SDN configurability can be used to provide Quality of Service (QoS) for critical network flows experiencing interference, and we achieve considerable reductions in delay and jitter in comparison to a scenario without SDN

Multi-channel Wireless Networks with Infrastructure Support: Capacity and Delay

In this paper, we propose a novel multi-channel network with infrastructure support, called an \textit{MC-IS} network, which has not been studied in the literature. To the best of our knowledge, we are the first to study such an \textit{MC-IS} network. Our \textit{MC-IS} network is equipped with a number of infrastructure nodes which can communicate with common nodes using a number of channels where a communication between a common node and an infrastructure node is called an infrastructure communication and a communication between two common nodes is called an ad-hoc communication. Our proposed \textit{MC-IS} network has a number of advantages over three existing conventional networks, namely a single-channel wireless ad hoc network (called an \textit{SC-AH} network), a multi-channel wireless ad hoc network (called an \textit{MC-AH} network) and a single-channel network with infrastructure support (called an \textit{SC-IS} network). In particular, the \textit{network capacity} of our proposed \textit{MC-IS} network is $\sqrt{n \log n}$ times higher than that of an \textit{SC-AH} network and an \textit{MC-AH} network and the same as that of an \textit{SC-IS} network, where $n$ is the number of nodes in the network. The \textit{average delay} of our \textit{MC-IS} network is $\sqrt{\log n/n}$ times lower than that of an \textit{SC-AH} network and an \textit{MC-AH} network, and $\min(C_I,m)$ times lower than the average delay of an \textit{SC-IS} network, where $C_I$ and $m$ denote the number of channels dedicated for infrastructure communications and the number of interfaces mounted at each infrastructure node, respectively.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figures, 3 table