Performance modelling and enhancement of wireless communication protocols

In recent years, Wireless Local Area Networks(WLANs) play a key role in the data communications and networking areas, having witnessed significant research and development. WLANs are extremely popular being almost everywhere including business,office and home deployments.In order to deal with the modem Wireless connectivity needs,the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE) has developed the 802.11 standard family utilizing mainly radio transmission techniques, whereas the Infrared Data Association (IrDA) addressed the requirement for multipoint connectivity with the development of the Advanced Infrared(Alr) protocol stack. This work studies the collision avoidance procedures of the IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) protocol and suggests certain protocol enhancements aiming at maximising performance. A new, elegant and accurate analysis based on Markov chain modelling is developed for the idealistic assumption of unlimited packet retransmissions as well as for the case of finite packet retry limits. Simple equations are derived for the through put efficiency, the average packet delay, the probability of a packet being discarded when it reaches the maximum retransmission limit, the average time to drop such a packet and the packet inter-arrival time for both basic access and RTS/CTS medium access schemes.The accuracy of the mathematical model is validated by comparing analytical with OPNET simulation results. An extensive and detailed study is carried out on the influence of performance of physical layer, data rate, packet payload size and several backoff parameters for both medium access mechanisms. The previous mathematical model is extended to take into account transmission errors that can occur either independently with fixed Bit Error Rate(BER) or in bursts. The dependency of the protocol performance on BER and other factors related to independent and burst transmission errors is explored. Furthermore, a simple-implement appropriate tuning of the back off algorithm for maximizing IEEE 802-11 protocol performance is proposed depending on the specific communication requirements. The effectiveness of the RTS/CTS scheme in reducing collision duration at high data rates is studied and an all-purpose expression for the optimal use of the RTS/CTS reservation scheme is derived. Moreover, an easy-to-implement backoff algorithm that significantly enhances performance is introduced and an alternative derivation is developed based on elementary conditional probability arguments rather than bi-dimensional Markov chains. Finally, an additional performance improvement scheme is proposed by employing packet bursting in order to reduce overhead costs such as contention time and RTS/CTSex changes. Fairness is explored in short-time and long-time scales for both the legacy DCF and packet bursting cases. AIr protocol employs the RTS/CTS medium reservation scheme to cope with hidden stations and CSMA/CA techniques with linear contention window (CW) adjustment for medium access. A 1-dimensional Markov chain model is constructed instead of the bi-dimensional model in order to obtain simple mathematical equations of the average packet delay.This new approach greatly simplifies previous analyses and can be applied to any CSMA/CA protocol.The derived mathematical model is validated by comparing analytical with simulation results and an extensive Alr packet delay evaluation is carried out by taking into account all the factors and parameters that affect protocol performance. Finally, suitable values for both backoff and protocol parameters are proposed that reduce average packet delay and, thus, maximize performance

Design and optimization of QoS-based medium access control protocols for next-generation wireless LANs

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.In recent years, there have been tremendous advances in wireless & mobile communications, including wireless radio techniques, networking protocols, and mobile devices. It is expected that different broadband wireless access technologies, e.g., WiFi (IEEE 802.11) and WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) will coexist in the future. In the meantime, multimedia applications have experienced an explosive growth with increasing user demands. Nowadays, people expect to receive high-speed video, audio, voice and web services even when being mobile. The key question that needs to be answered, then, is how do we ensure that users always have the "best" network performance with the "lowest" costs in such complicated situations? The latest IEEE 802.11n standards attains rates of more than 100 Mbps by introducing innovative enhancements at the PHY and MAC layer, e.g. MIMO and Frame Aggregation, respectively. However, in this thesis we demonstrate that frame aggregation's performance adheres due to the EDCA scheduler's priority mechanism and consequently resulting in the network's poor overall performance. Short waiting times for high priority flows into the aggregation queue resolves to poor channel utilization. A Delayed Channel Access algorithm was designed to intentionally postpone the channel access procedure so that the number of packets in a formed frame can be increased and so will the network's overall performance. However, in some cases, the DCA algorithm has a negative impact on the applications that utilize the TCP protocol, especially the when small TCP window sizes are engaged. So, the TCP process starts to refrain from sending data due to delayed acknowledgements and the overall throughput drops. In this thesis, we address the above issues by firstly demonstrating the potential performance benefits of frame aggregation over the next generation wireless networks. The efficiency and behaviour of frame aggregation within a single queue, are mathematically analysed with the aid of a M=G[a;b]=1=K model. Results show that a trade-off choice has to be taken into account over minimizing the waiting time or maximizing utilization. We also point out that there isn't an optimum batch collection rule which can be assumed as generally valid but individual cases have to be considered separately. Secondly, we demonstrate through extensive simulations that by introducing a method, the DCA algorithm, which dynamically determines and adapts batch collections based upon the traffic's characteristics, QoS requirements and server's maximum capacity, also improves e ciency. Thirdly, it is important to understand the behaviour of the TCP ows over the WLAN and the influence that DCA has over the degrading performance of the TCP protocol. We investigate the cause of the problem and provide the foundations of designing and implementing possible solutions. Fourthly, we introduce two innovative proposals, one amendment and one extension to the original DCA algorithm, called Adaptive DCA and Selective DCA, respectively. Both solutions have been implemented in OPNET and extensive simulation runs over a wide set of scenarios show their effectiveness over the network's overall performance, each in its own way.This study was supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)

Performance modelling and enhancement of wireless communication protocols

In recent years, Wireless Local Area Networks(WLANs) play a key role in the data communications and networking areas, having witnessed significant research and development. WLANs are extremely popular being almost everywhere including business,office and home deployments.In order to deal with the modem Wireless connectivity needs,the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers(IEEE) has developed the 802.11 standard family utilizing mainly radio transmission techniques, whereas the Infrared Data Association (IrDA) addressed the requirement for multipoint connectivity with the development of the Advanced Infrared(Alr) protocol stack. This work studies the collision avoidance procedures of the IEEE 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) protocol and suggests certain protocol enhancements aiming at maximising performance. A new, elegant and accurate analysis based on Markov chain modelling is developed for the idealistic assumption of unlimited packet retransmissions as well as for the case of finite packet retry limits. Simple equations are derived for the through put efficiency, the average packet delay, the probability of a packet being discarded when it reaches the maximum retransmission limit, the average time to drop such a packet and the packet inter-arrival time for both basic access and RTS/CTS medium access schemes.The accuracy of the mathematical model is validated by comparing analytical with OPNET simulation results. An extensive and detailed study is carried out on the influence of performance of physical layer, data rate, packet payload size and several backoff parameters for both medium access mechanisms. The previous mathematical model is extended to take into account transmission errors that can occur either independently with fixed Bit Error Rate(BER) or in bursts. The dependency of the protocol performance on BER and other factors related to independent and burst transmission errors is explored. Furthermore, a simple-implement appropriate tuning of the back off algorithm for maximizing IEEE 802-11 protocol performance is proposed depending on the specific communication requirements. The effectiveness of the RTS/CTS scheme in reducing collision duration at high data rates is studied and an all-purpose expression for the optimal use of the RTS/CTS reservation scheme is derived. Moreover, an easy-to-implement backoff algorithm that significantly enhances performance is introduced and an alternative derivation is developed based on elementary conditional probability arguments rather than bi-dimensional Markov chains. Finally, an additional performance improvement scheme is proposed by employing packet bursting in order to reduce overhead costs such as contention time and RTS/CTSex changes. Fairness is explored in short-time and long-time scales for both the legacy DCF and packet bursting cases. AIr protocol employs the RTS/CTS medium reservation scheme to cope with hidden stations and CSMA/CA techniques with linear contention window (CW) adjustment for medium access. A 1-dimensional Markov chain model is constructed instead of the bi-dimensional model in order to obtain simple mathematical equations of the average packet delay.This new approach greatly simplifies previous analyses and can be applied to any CSMA/CA protocol.The derived mathematical model is validated by comparing analytical with simulation results and an extensive Alr packet delay evaluation is carried out by taking into account all the factors and parameters that affect protocol performance. Finally, suitable values for both backoff and protocol parameters are proposed that reduce average packet delay and, thus, maximize performance.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Improving Performance for CSMA/CA Based Wireless Networks

Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) based wireless networks are becoming increasingly ubiquitous. With the aim of supporting rich multimedia applications such as high-definition television (HDTV, 20Mbps) and DVD (9.8Mbps), one of the technology trends is towards increasingly higher bandwidth. Some recent IEEE 802.11n proposals seek to provide PHY rates of up to 600 Mbps. In addition to increasing bandwidth, there is also strong interest in extending the coverage of CSMA/CA based wireless networks. One solution is to relay traffic via multiple intermediate stations if the sender and the receiver are far apart. The so called “mesh” networks based on this relay-based approach, if properly designed, may feature both “high speed” and “large coverage” at the same time. This thesis focusses on MAC layer performance enhancements in CSMA/CA based networks in this context. Firstly, we observe that higher PHY rates do not necessarily translate into corresponding increases in MAC layer throughput due to the overhead of the CSMA/CA based MAC/PHY layers. To mitigate the overhead, we propose a novel MAC scheme whereby transported information is partially acknowledged and retransmitted. Theoretical analysis and extensive simulations show that the proposed MAC approach can achieve high efficiency (low MAC overhead) for a wide range of channel variations and realistic traffic types. Secondly, we investigate the close interaction between the MAC layer and the buffer above it to improve performance for real world traffic such as TCP. Surprisingly, the issue of buffer sizing in 802.11 wireless networks has received little attention in the literature yet it poses fundamentally new challenges compared to buffer sizing in wired networks. We propose a new adaptive buffer sizing approach for 802.11e WLANs that maintains a high level of link utilisation, while minimising queueing delay. Thirdly, we highlight that gross unfairness can exist between competing flows in multihop mesh networks even if we assume that orthogonal channels are used in neighbouring hops. That is, even without inter-channel interference and hidden terminals, multi-hop mesh networks which aim to offer a both “high speed” and “large coverage” are not achieved. We propose the use of 802.11e’s TXOP mechanism to restore/enfore fairness. The proposed approach is implementable using off-the-shelf devices and fully decentralised (requires no message passing)

Optimization of the interoperability and dynamic spectrum management in mobile communications systems beyond 3G

The future wireless ecosystem will heterogeneously integrate a number of overlapped Radio Access Technologies (RATs) through a common platform. A major challenge arising from the heterogeneous network is the Radio Resource Management (RRM) strategy. A Common RRM (CRRM) module is needed in order to provide a step toward network convergence. This work aims at implementing HSDPA and IEEE 802.11e CRRM evaluation tools. Innovative enhancements to IEEE 802.11e have been pursued on the application of cross-layer signaling to improve Quality of Service (QoS) delivery, and provide more efficient usage of radio resources by adapting such parameters as arbitrary interframe spacing, a differentiated backoff procedure and transmission opportunities, as well as acknowledgment policies (where the most advised block size was found to be 12). Besides, the proposed cross-layer algorithm dynamically changes the size of the Arbitration Interframe Space (AIFS) and the Contention Window (CW) duration according to a periodically obtained fairness measure based on the Signal to Interference-plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) and transmission time, a delay constraint and the collision rate of a given machine. The throughput was increased in 2 Mb/s for all the values of the load that have been tested whilst satisfying more users than with the original standard. For the ad hoc mode an analytical model was proposed that allows for investigating collision free communications in a distributed environment. The addition of extra frequency spectrum bands and an integrated CRRM that enables spectrum aggregation was also addressed. RAT selection algorithms allow for determining the gains obtained by using WiFi as a backup network for HSDPA. The proposed RAT selection algorithm is based on the load of each system, without the need for a complex management system. Simulation results show that, in such scenario, for high system loads, exploiting localization while applying load suitability optimization based algorithm, can provide a marginal gain of up to 450 kb/s in the goodput. HSDPA was also studied in the context of cognitive radio, by considering two co-located BSs operating at different frequencies (in the 2 and 5 GHz bands) in the same cell. The system automatically chooses the frequency to serve each user with an optimal General Multi-Band Scheduling (GMBS) algorithm. It was shown that enabling the access to a secondary band, by using the proposed Integrated CRRM (iCRRM), an almost constant gain near 30 % was obtained in the throughput with the proposed optimal solution, compared to a system where users are first allocated in one of the two bands and later not able to handover between the bands. In this context, future cognitive radio scenarios where IEEE 802.11e ad hoc modes will be essential for giving access to the mobile users have been proposed

An analytical model of IEEE 80211 DCF for multi-hop wireless networks and its application to goodput and energy analysis

Ankara : The Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering and the Institute of Engineering and Sciences of Bilkent University, 2010.Thesis (Ph. D.) -- Bilkent University, 2010.Includes bibliographical references leaves 168-181.In this thesis, we present an analytical model for the IEEE 802.11 DCF in multihop networks that considers hidden terminals and works for a large range of traffic loads. A goodput model which considers rate reduction due to collisions, retransmissions and hidden terminals, and an energy model, which considers energy consumption due to collisions, retransmissions, exponential backoff and freezing mechanisms, and overhearing of nodes, are proposed and used to analyze the goodput and energy performance of various routing strategies in IEEE 802.11 DCF based multi-hop wireless networks. Moreover, an adaptive routing algorithm which determines the optimum routing strategy adaptively according to the network and traffic conditions is suggested. Viewed from goodput aspect the results are as follows: Under light traf- fic, arrival rate of packets is dominant, making any routing strategy equivalently optimum. Under moderate traffic, concurrent transmissions dominate and multihop transmissions become more advantageous. At heavy traffic, multi-hoppingbecomes unstable due to increased packet collisions and excessive traffic congestion, and direct transmission increases goodput. From a throughput aspect, it is shown that throughput is topology dependent rather than traffic load dependent, and multi-hopping is optimum for large networks whereas direct transmissions may increase the throughput for small networks. Viewed from energy aspect similar results are obtained: Under light traf- fic, energy spent during idle mode dominates in the energy model, making any routing strategy nearly optimum. Under moderate traffic, energy spent during idle and receive modes dominates and multi-hop transmissions become more advantageous as the optimum hop number varies with processing power consumed at intermediate nodes. At the very heavy traffic conditions, multi-hopping becomes unstable due to increased collisions and direct transmission becomes more energy-efficient.The choice of hop-count in routing strategy is observed to affect energyefficiency and goodput more for large and homogeneous networks where it is possible to use shorter hops each covering similar distances. The results indicate that a cross-layer routing approach, which takes energy expenditure due to MAC contentions into account and dynamically changes the routing strategy according to the network traffic load, can increase goodput by at least 18% and save energy by at least 21% in a realistic wireless network where the network traffic load changes in time. The goodput gain increases up to 222% and energy saving up to 68% for denser networks where multi-hopping with much shorter hops becomes possible.Aydoğdu, CananPh.D

Coding in 802.11 WLANs

Forward error correction (FEC) coding is widely used in communication systems to correct transmis- sion errors. In IEEE 802.11a/g transmitters, convolutional codes are used for FEC at the physical (PHY) layer. As is typical in wireless systems, only a limited choice of pre-speci¯ed coding rates is supported. These are implemented in hardware and thus di±cult to change, and the coding rates are selected with point to point operation in mind. This thesis is concerned with using FEC coding in 802.11 WLANs in more interesting ways that are better aligned with application requirements. For example, coding to support multicast tra±c rather than simple point to point tra±c; coding that is cognisant of the multiuser nature of the wireless channel; and coding which takes account of delay requirements as well as losses. We consider layering additional coding on top of the existing 802.11 PHY layer coding, and investigate the tradeo® between higher layer coding and PHY layer modulation and FEC coding as well as MAC layer scheduling. Firstly we consider the joint multicast performance of higher-layer fountain coding concatenated with 802.11a/g OFDM PHY modulation/coding. A study on the optimal choice of PHY rates with and without fountain coding is carried out for standard 802.11 WLANs. We ¯nd that, in contrast to studies in cellular networks, in 802.11a/g WLANs the PHY rate that optimizes uncoded multicast performance is also close to optimal for fountain-coded multicast tra±c. This indicates that in 802.11a/g WLANs cross-layer rate control for higher-layer fountain coding concatenated with physical layer modulation and FEC would bring few bene¯ts. Secondly, using experimental measurements taken in an outdoor environment, we model the chan- nel provided by outdoor 802.11 links as a hybrid binary symmetric/packet erasure channel. This hybrid channel o®ers capacity increases of more than 100% compared to a conventional packet erasure channel (PEC) over a wide range of RSSIs. Based upon the established channel model, we further consider the potential performance gains of adopting a binary symmetric channel (BSC) paradigm for multi-destination aggregations in 802.11 WLANs. We consider two BSC-based higher-layer coding approaches, i.e. superposition coding and a simpler time-sharing coding, for multi-destination aggre- gated packets. The performance results for both unicast and multicast tra±c, taking account of MAC layer overheads, demonstrate that increases in network throughput of more than 100% are possible over a wide range of channel conditions, and that the simpler time-sharing approach yields most of these gains and have minor loss of performance. Finally, we consider the proportional fair allocation of high-layer coding rates and airtimes in 802.11 WLANs, taking link losses and delay constraints into account. We ¯nd that a layered approach of separating MAC scheduling and higher-layer coding rate selection is optimal. The proportional fair coding rate and airtime allocation (i) assigns equal total airtime (i.e. airtime including both successful and failed transmissions) to every station in a WLAN, (ii) the station airtimes sum to unity (ensuring operation at the rate region boundary), and (iii) the optimal coding rate is selected to maximise goodput (treating packets decoded after the delay deadline as losses)

Energy efficiency in wireless communications for mobile user devices

Mención Internacional en el título de doctorMobile user devices’ market has experi-enced an exponential growth worldwide over the last decade, and wireless communications are the main driver for the next generation of 5G networks. The ubiquity of battery-powered connected devices makes energy efficiency a major research issue. While most studies assumed that network interfaces dominate the energy consumption of wireless communications, a recent work unveils that the frame processing carried out by the device could drain as much energy as the interface itself for many devices. This discovery poses doubts on prior energy models for wireless communications and forces us to reconsider existing energy-saving schemes. From this standpoint, this thesis is de-voted to the study of the energy efficiency of mobile user devices at multiple layers. To that end, we assemble a comprehensive en-ergy measurement framework, and a robust methodology, to be able to characterise a wide range of mobile devices, as well as individual parts of such devices. Building on this, we first delve into the en-ergy consumption of frame processing within the devices’ protocol stack. Our results identify the CPU as the leading cause of this energy consumption. Moreover, we discover that the characterisation of the energy toll ascribed to the device is much more complex than the previous work showed. Devices with complex CPUs (several frequencies and sleep states) require novel methodologies and models to successfully characterise their consumption. We then turn our attention to lower levels of the communication stack by investigating the behaviour of idle WiFi interfaces. Due to the design of the 802.11 protocol, together with the growing trend of network densification, WiFi devices spend a long time receiving frames addressed to other devices when they might be dormant. In order to mitigate this issue, we study the timing constraints of a commercial WiFi card, which is developed into a standard-compliant algorithm that saves energy during such transmissions. At a higher level, rate adaptation and power control techniques adapt data rate and output power to the channel conditions. However, these have been typically studied with other metrics rather than energy efficiency in mind (i.e., performance figures such as throughput and capacity). In fact, our analyses and sim-ulations unveil an inherent trade-off between throughput and energy efficiency maximisa-tion in 802.11. We show that rate adaptation and power control techniques may incur inef-ficiencies at mode transitions, and we provide energy-aware heuristics to make such decisions following a conservative approach. Finally, our research experience on simula-tion methods pointed us towards the need for new simulation tools commited to the middle-way approach: less specificity than complex network simulators in exchange for easier and faster prototyping. As a result, we developed a process-oriented and trajectory-based discrete-event simulation package for the R language, which is designed as a easy-to-use yet pow-erful framework with automatic monitoring capabilities. The use of this simulator in net-working is demonstrated through the energy modelling of an Internet-of-Things scenario with thousands of metering devices in just a few lines of code.El mercado de los dispositivos de usuario móviles ha experimentado un crecimiento exponencial a nivel mundial en la última década, y las comunicaciones inalámbricas son el principal motor de la siguiente generación de redes 5G. La ubicuidad de estos dispos-itivos alimentados por baterías hace de la eficiencia energética un importante tema de investigación. Mientras muchos estudios asumían que la interfaz de red domina el consumo energético de las comuni-caciones inalámbricas, un trabajo reciente revela que el procesado de tramas que se lleva a cabo en el disposi-tivo podría gastar tanta energía como la propia interfaz para muchos dispositivos. Este descubrimiento plantea dudas sobre los anteriores modelos energéticos para comunicaciones inalámbricas y nos obliga a reconsid-erar los esquemas de ahorro energético existentes. Desde este punto de vista, esta tesis está dedicada al estudio de la eficiencia energética de dispositivos de usuario móviles en múltiples capas. Para ello, se construye un completo sistema de medida de energía, y una metodología robusta, capaz de caracterizar un amplio rango de dispositivos móviles, así como partes individuales de tales dispositivos. A partir de esto, en primer lugar se profundiza en el consumo energético del procesamiento de tramas en la pila de protocolos de los dispositivos. Nuestros resul-tados identifican a la CPU como principal causa de tal consumo. Además, se descubre que la caracterización de la cuota energética adscrita al dispositivo es mucho más compleja que lo mostrado por el trabajo ante-rior. Los dispositivos con CPU complejas (múltiples frecuencias y modos de apagado) requieren nuevas metodologías y modelos para caracterizar su consumo de manera existosa. En este punto, volvemos nuestra atención hacia niveles más bajos de la pila de comunicaciones para investigar el comportamiento de las interfaces WiFi en estado inactivo. Debido al diseño del protocolo 802.11, junto con la tendencia creciente hacia la densifi-cación de las redes, los dispositivos WiFi pasan mucho tiempo recibiendo tramas destinadas a otros dispos-itivos cuando podrían estar apagados. Para mitigar este problema, se estudian las limitaciones temporales de una tarjeta WiFi comercial, lo que posteriormente se utiliza para desarrollar un algoritmo conforme con el estándar que es capaz de ahorrar energía durante dichas transmisiones. A un nivel más alto, las técnicas de adaptación de tasa y control de potencia adaptan la tasa de datos y la potencia de salida a las condiciones del canal. No obstante, estas técnicas han sido típicamente es-tudiadas con otras métricas en mente (i.e., figuras de rendimiento como la tasa total y la capacidad). De hecho, nuestros análisis y simulaciones desvelan un conflicto entre la maximización de la tasa total y la efi-ciencia energética en 802.11. Se muestra que las técni-cas de adaptación de tasa y control de potencia pueden incurrir en ineficiencias en los cambios de modo, y se proporcionan heurísticos para tomar tales decisiones de un modo conservador y eficiente energéticamente. Finalmente, nuestra experiencia investigadora en métodos de simulación nos hizo conscientes de la necesidad de nuevas herramientas de simulación comprometidas con un enfoque intermedio: menos especificidad que los complejos simuladores de re-des a cambio de facilidad y rapidez en el prototipado. Como resultado, se desarrolló un paquete de simu-lación por eventos discretos para el lenguaje R orien-tado a procesos y basado en trayectorias, el cual está diseñado como una herramienta fácil de utilizar a la par que potente con capacidad de monitorización au-tomática integrada. El uso de este simulador en redes se demuestra mediante el modelado en energía de un escenario de la Internet de las Cosas con miles de dis-positivos de medida en tan solo unas pocas líneas de código.Programa Oficial de Doctorado en Ingeniería TelemáticaPresidente: Juan Manuel López Soler.- Secretario: Francisco Valera Pintor.- Vocal: Paul Horatiu Patra

Design of rate-adaptive MAC and medium aware routing protocols for multi-rate, multi-hop wireless networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The IEEE 802.11 standard conformant wireless communication stations have multi-rate transmission capability. To achieve greater communication efficiency, multi-rate capable stations use rateadaptation to select appropriate transmission rate according to variations in the channel quality. The thesis presents two rate-adaptation schemes, each belonging to one of the two classes of rateadaptation schemes i.e.(1) the frame-transmission statistics based schemes, and (2) Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) based, closed loop schemes. The SNR-based rate-adaptation scheme, proposed in this thesis uses a novel mechanism of delivering a receiver’s feedback to a transmitter; without requiring any modification in the standard frames as suggested by existing research. The frame-transmissionstatistics based rate adaptation solution uses an on-demand incremental strategy for selecting a rate-selection threshold. This solution is based on a cross-layer communication framework, where the rate-adaptation module uses information to/from the Application layer along with relevant information from the Medium Access Control (MAC) sub-layer. The proposed solutions are highly responsive when compared with existing rate-adaptation schemes; responsiveness is one of the key factors in the design of such protocols. The novel feedback mechanism makes it possible to achieve frame-loss differentiation with just three frames, avoiding the use of Request To Send/ Clear To Send (RTS/CTS) frames and further delays in this process. Performance tests have affirmed that the proposed rate-adaptation schemes are energy efficient; with efficiency up to 19% in specific test scenarios. In terms of throughput and frame loss-differentiation mechanisms, the proposed schemes have shown significantly better performance.Routing protocols for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) use broadcast frames during the route discovery process. The 802.11 mandates the use of different transmission rates for broadcast and unicast (data-) frames. In many cases it causes creation of communication gray zones, where stations which are marked as ‘reachable neighbours’ using the broadcast frames (using lower transmission rate) are not accessible during normal, unicast communication (mainly at a higher rate). Similarly, higher device density, interference and mobility cause variable medium access delays. The IEEE 802.11e introduces four different MAC level queues for four access categories, maintaining service priority within the queues; which implies that frames from a higher priority queue are serviced more frequently than those belonging to lower priority queues. Such an enhancement at the MAC sub-layer introduces uneven queuing delays. Conventional routing protocols are unaware of such MAC specific constraints and as a result these factors are not considered which result in severe performance deterioration. To meet such challenges, the thesis presents a medium aware distance vector (MADV) routing protocol for MANETs. MADV uses MAC and physical layer (PHY) specific information in the route metric and maintains a separate route per-AC-per-destination in its routing tables. The MADV-metric can be incorporated into various routing rotocols and its applicability is determined by the possibility of provision of MAC dependent arameters that are used to determine the hop-by-hop MADV-metric values. Simulation tests and omparison with existing MANET protocols demonstrate the effectiveness of incorporating the medium dependent parameters and show that MADV is significantly better in terms of end-to-end delay and throughput