Adaptive Medium Access Control for Internet-of-Things Enabled Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

An Internet-of-Things (IoT) enabled mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self organized distributed wireless network, in which nodes can randomly move making the network traffic load vary with time. A medium access control (MAC) protocol, as a most important mechanism of radio resource management, is required in MANETs to coordinate nodes’ access to the wireless channel in a distributed way to satisfy their quality of service (QoS) requirements. However, the distinctive characteristics of IoT-enabled MANETs, i.e., distributed network operation, varying network traffic load, heterogeneous QoS demands, and increased interference level with a large number of nodes and extended communication distances, pose technical challenges on MAC. An efficient MAC solution should achieve consistently maximal QoS performance by adapting to the network traffic load variations, and be scalable to an increasing number of nodes in a multi-hop communication environment. In this thesis, we develop comprehensive adaptive MAC solutions for an IoT-enabled MANET with the consideration of different network characteristics. First, an adaptive MAC solution is proposed for a fully-connected network, supporting homogeneous best-effort data traffic. Based on the detection of current network traffic load condition, nodes can make a switching decision between IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) and dynamic time division multiple access (D-TDMA), when the network traffic load reaches a threshold, referred to as MAC switching point. The adaptive MAC solution determines the MAC switching point in an analytically tractable way to achieve consistently high network performance by adapting to the varying network traffic load. Second, when heterogeneous services are supported in the network, we propose an adaptive hybrid MAC scheme, in which a hybrid superframe structure is designed to accommodate the channel access from delay-sensitive voice traffic using time division multiple access (TDMA) and from best-effort data traffic using truncated carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (T-CSMA/CA). According to instantaneous voice and data traffic load conditions, the MAC exploits voice traffic multiplexing to increase the voice capacity by adaptively allocating TDMA time slots to active voice nodes, and maximizes the aggregate data throughput by adjusting the optimal contention window size for each data node. Lastly, we develop a scalable token-based adaptive MAC scheme for a two-hop MANET with an increasing number of nodes. In the network, nodes are partitioned into different one-hop node groups, and a TDMA-based superframe structure is proposed to allocate different TDMA time durations to different node groups to overcome the hidden terminal problem. A probabilistic token passing scheme is adopted for packet transmissions within different node groups, forming different token rings. An average end-to-end delay optimization framework is established to derive the set of optimal MAC parameters for a varying network load condition. With the optimal MAC design, the proposed adaptive MAC scheme achieves consistently minimal average end-to-end delay in an IoT-based two-hop environment with a high network traffic load. This research on adaptive MAC provides some insights in MAC design for performance improvement in different IoT-based network environments with different QoS requirements

Analysis and improvement of medium access control protocols in wireless networks. Performance modelling and Quality-of-Service enhancement of IEEE 802.11e MAC in wireless local area networks under heterogeneous multimedia traffic.

In order to efficiently utilize the scarce wireless resource as well as keep up with the ever-increasing demand for Quality-of-Service (QoS) of multimedia applications, wireless networks are undergoing rapid development and dramatic changes in the underlying technologies and protocols. The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol, which coordinates the channel access and data transmission of wireless stations, plays a pivotal role in wireless networks. Performance modelling and analysis has been and continues to be of great theoretical and practical importance in the design and development of wireless networks. This research is devoted to developing efficient and cost-effective analytical tools for the performance analysis and enhancement of MAC protocols in Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) under heterogeneous multimedia traffic. To support the MAC-layer QoS in WLANs, the IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) protocol has proposed three QoS differentiation schemes in terms of Arbitrary Inter-Frame Space (AIFS), Contention Window (CW), and Transmission Opportunity (TXOP). This research starts with the development of new analytical models for the TXOP scheme specified in the EDCA protocol under Poisson traffic. A dynamic TXOP scheme is then proposed to adjust the TXOP limits according to the status of the transmission queue. Theoretical analysis and simulation experiments show that the proposed dynamic scheme largely improves the performance of TXOP. To evaluate the TXOP scheme in the presence of ii heterogeneous traffic, a versatile analytical model is developed to capture the traffic heterogeneity and model the features of burst transmission. The performance results highlight the importance of taking into account the heterogeneous traffic for the accurate evaluation of the TXOP scheme in wireless multimedia networks. To obtain a thorough and deep understanding of the performance attributes of the EDCA protocol, a comprehensive analytical model is then proposed to accommodate the integration of the three QoS schemes of EDCA in terms of AIFS, CW, and TXOP under Poisson traffic. The performance results show that the TXOP scheme can not only support service differentiation but also improve the network performance, whereas the AIFS and CW schemes provide QoS differentiation only. Moreover, the results demonstrate that the MAC buffer size has considerable impact on the QoS performance of EDCA under Poisson traffic. To investigate the performance of EDCA in wireless multimedia networks, an analytical model is further developed for EDCA under heterogeneous traffic. The performance results demonstrate the significant effects of heterogeneous traffic on the total delay and frame losses of EDCA with different buffer sizes. Finally, an efficient admission control scheme is presented for the IEEE 802.11e WLANs based on analytical modelling and a game-theoretical approach. The admission control scheme can maintain the system operation at an optimal point where the utility of the Access Point (AP) is maximized with the QoS constraints of various users