IF-MANET: Interoperable framework for heterogeneous mobile ad hoc networks

The advances in low power micro-processors, wireless networks and embedded systems have raised the need to utilize the significant resources of mobile devices. These devices for example, smart phones, tablets, laptops, wearables, and sensors are gaining enormous processing power, storage capacity and wireless bandwidth. In addition, the advancement in wireless mobile technology has created a new communication paradigm via which a wireless network can be created without any priori infrastructure called mobile ad hoc network (MANET). While progress is being made towards improving the efficiencies of mobile devices and reliability of wireless mobile networks, the mobile technology is continuously facing the challenges of un-predictable disconnections, dynamic mobility and the heterogeneity of routing protocols. Hence, the traditional wired, wireless routing protocols are not suitable for MANET due to its unique dynamic ad hoc nature. Due to the reason, the research community has developed and is busy developing protocols for routing in MANET to cope with the challenges of MANET. However, there are no single generic ad hoc routing protocols available so far, which can address all the basic challenges of MANET as mentioned before. Thus this diverse range of ever growing routing protocols has created barriers for mobile nodes of different MANET taxonomies to intercommunicate and hence wasting a huge amount of valuable resources. To provide interaction between heterogeneous MANETs, the routing protocols require conversion of packets, meta-model and their behavioural capabilities. Here, the fundamental challenge is to understand the packet level message format, meta-model and behaviour of different routing protocols, which are significantly different for different MANET Taxonomies. To overcome the above mentioned issues, this thesis proposes an Interoperable Framework for heterogeneous MANETs called IF-MANET. The framework hides the complexities of heterogeneous routing protocols and provides a homogeneous layer for seamless communication between these routing protocols. The framework creates a unique Ontology for MANET routing protocols and a Message Translator to semantically compare the packets and generates the missing fields using the rules defined in the Ontology. Hence, the translation between an existing as well as newly arriving routing protocols will be achieved dynamically and on-the-fly. To discover a route for the delivery of packets across heterogeneous MANET taxonomies, the IF-MANET creates a special Gateway node to provide cluster based inter-domain routing. The IF-MANET framework can be used to develop different middleware applications. For example: Mobile grid computing that could potentially utilise huge amounts of aggregated data collected from heterogeneous mobile devices. Disaster & crises management applications can be created to provide on-the-fly infrastructure-less emergency communication across organisations by utilising different MANET taxonomies

Autoconfiguration, Registration and Mobility Management for Pervasive Computing

Special Issue of Pervasive Computing</p

Efficient address auto-configutation in ad hoc networks - protocol & algorithms

Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) are an important part of mobile communications as they allow communications without the presence of an infrastructure. A MANET consists of an autonomous system of mobile devices. In contrast with infrastructure networks, MANET nodes act as hosts as well as routers. In the Internet, multi-hop communications are supported by the network layer, i.e. the Internet Protocol (IP). However, this requires the availability of a unique IP address. Due to the dynamic and decentralized nature of MANETs, and especially due to the mobility of nodes, providing and maintaining this unique IP address automatically in a decentralized way is a challenge addressed by auto-configuration protocols as part of the network layer. Several protocols to support this in fully decentralized environments as present in MANETs have been developed, e.g., the MANETConf, Buddy and Prophet protocols. However, they fail to solve the problem efficiently in scenarios where the nodes are highly mobile, e.g., as is the case with typical car-to-car applications. This thesis presents an address auto-configuration protocol that efficiently supports highly dynamic mobile ad hoc networks. This protocol, the Logical Hierarchical Addressing (LHA) protocol, focuses on the fast assigning of IP addresses to new nodes joining a MANET while minimizing the signaling overhead. Besides this, LHA introduces a solution for the merging problem ensuring, the uniqueness of IP addresses in the network when two previously independent MANETs merge. LHA is based on the idea that the address assignments can be achieved locally by the neigh-boring nodes of a requester, which in turn leads to a fast address assignment. Basically, in LHA, each configured node in a MANET is able to select, allocate and assign a unique address to a new node requesting an address that is free. By dividing the address space logically among configured nodes LHA is able to build a number of hierarchical structures of IP addresses. By this means, LHA solves efficiently the merging problem. Furthermore, the utilization of a certain assignment algorithm and specific address data structures is the key that LHA is able to solve the problem of missing IP addresses due to the departure of nodes. Because LHA is less dependent on unicast connections it reduces the signaling overhead and achieves fast address assignment. This in turn makes LHA highly suitable to the use in a wide range of scenarios, especially in those which are high mobility.Mobile Ad-Hoc-Netzwerke (MANETs) sind ein bedeutender Teil der Mobilkommunikation, da sie Kommunikation ohne das Vorhandensein von Infrastruktur erlauben. Ein MANET besteht aus einem autonomen System von mobilen Geräten. Im Gegensatz zu Infrastruktur-Netzwerken agieren MANET-Knoten als Host, ebenso wie als Router. Im Internet werden Multi-Hop-Kommunikationen durch den Netzwerk-Layer unterstützt, z.B. das Internet Protokoll (IP). Dies verlangt jedoch die Verfügbarkeit einer eindeutigen IP-Adresse. Wegen der dynamischen und dezentralen Natur von MANETs und besonders wegen der Mobilität der Knoten, ist die automatische, dezentrale Bereitstellung und Verwaltung dieser eindeutigen IP-Adresse eine Herausforderung, die durch Autokonfigurationsprotokolle als Teil des Netzwerk-Layers gelöst werden soll. Zur Unterstützung dieser dezentralen Umgebung, die durch MANET repräsentiert werden, wurden verschiedene Protokolle entwickelt, wie MANETConf, Buddy und Prophet. Allerdings verfehlen sie eine effiziente Lösung des Problems in Szenarien mit hoch-mobilen Knoten, wie z.B. bei typischen "Auto-zu-Auto"-Anwendungen. Die vorgestellte Arbeit präsentiert ein Adressenautokonfigurationsprotokoll, das hoch dynamische mobile Ad-Hoc-Netzwerke unterstützt. Dieses Protokoll, genannt "Logical Hierarchical Addressing (LHA)", konzentriert sich auf die schnelle Zuweisung von IP-Adressen für neue Knoten, die einem MANET beitreten, und minimiert gleichzeitig den Signal-Overhead. Zusätzlich stellt LHA eine Lösung zum Vereinigungsproblem von Netzwerken vor und sichert die Eindeutigkeit von IP-Adressen, wenn sich 2 vorher unabhängige MANETs vereinigen. LHA basiert auf der Idee, dass die Adresszuweisung lokal durch jeden benachbarten Knoten eines anfragenden Knotens durchgeführt werden kann, was zusätzlich zu einer schnelleren Adresszuweisung führt. In LHA kann jeder konfigurierte Knoten in einem MANET für einen neuen Knoten eine eindeutige, freie Adresse auswählen und zuweisen. Durch die logische Aufteilung des Adressbereiches zwischen den konfigurierten Knoten kann LHA eine Anzahl hierarchischer Strukturen von IP-Adressen aufbauen, wodurch LHA das Vereinigungsproblem effektiv löst. Des Weiteren ist der Einsatz eines speziellen Zuweisungsalgorithmus und spezieller Adressdatenstrukturen der Schlüssel dafür, das LHA das Problem der durch das Verschwinden von Knoten fehlenden IP-Adressen lösen kann. Da LHA weniger abhängig von Unicast-Verbindungen ist, reduziert es den Signal-Overhead und erreicht eine schnelle Adresszuweisung. Dieser Effekt bewirkt die hohe Eignung von LHA für eine Vielzahl von Szenarien, insbesondere hoch mobile Umgebungen

Cross-layer Peer-to-Peer Computing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The future information society is expected to rely heavily on wireless technology. Mobile access to the Internet is steadily gaining ground, and could easily end up exceeding the number of connections from the fixed infrastructure. Picking just one example, ad hoc networking is a new paradigm of wireless communication for mobile devices. Initially, ad hoc networking targeted at military applications as well as stretching the access to the Internet beyond one wireless hop. As a matter of fact, it is now expected to be employed in a variety of civilian applications. For this reason, the issue of how to make these systems working efficiently keeps the ad hoc research community active on topics ranging from wireless technologies to networking and application systems. In contrast to traditional wire-line and wireless networks, ad hoc networks are expected to operate in an environment in which some or all the nodes are mobile, and might suddenly disappear from, or show up in, the network. The lack of any centralized point, leads to the necessity of distributing application services and responsibilities to all available nodes in the network, making the task of developing and deploying application a hard task, and highlighting the necessity of suitable middleware platforms. This thesis studies the properties and performance of peer-to-peer overlay management algorithms, employing them as communication layers in data sharing oriented middleware platforms. The work primarily develops from the observation that efficient overlays have to be aware of the physical network topology, in order to reduce (or avoid) negative impacts of application layer traffic on the network functioning. We argue that cross-layer cooperation between overlay management algorithms and the underlying layer-3 status and protocols, represents a viable alternative to engineer effective decentralized communication layers, or eventually re-engineer existing ones to foster the interconnection of ad hoc networks with Internet infrastructures. The presented approach is twofold. Firstly, we present an innovative network stack component that supports, at an OS level, the realization of cross-layer protocol interactions. Secondly, we exploit cross-layering to optimize overlay management algorithms in unstructured, structured, and publish/subscribe platforms

On secure communication in integrated internet and heterogeneous multi-hop wireless networks.

Integration of the Internet with a Cellular Network, WMAN, WLAN, and MANET presents an exceptional promise by having co-existence of conventional WWANs/WMANs/WLANs with wireless ad hoc networks to provide ubiquitous communication. We call such integrated networks providing internet accessibility for mobile users as heterogeneous multi-hop wireless networks where the Internet and wireless infrastructure such as WLAN access points (APs) and base stations (BSs) constitute the backbone for various emerging wireless networks (e.g., multi-hop WLAN and ad hoc networks. Earlier approaches for the Internet connectivity either provide only unidirectional connectivity for ad hoc hosts or cause high overhead as well as delay for providing full bi-directional connections. In this dissertation, a new protocol is proposed for integrated Internet and ad hoc networks for supporting bi-directional global connectivity for ad hoc hosts. In order to provide efficient mobility management for mobile users in an integrated network, a mobility management protocol called multi-hop cellular IP (MCIP) has been proposed to provide a micro-mobility management framework for heterogeneous multi-hop network. The micro-mobility is achieved by differentiating the local domain from the global domain. At the same time, the MCIP protocol extends Mobile IP protocol for providing macro-mobility support between local domains either for single hop MSs or multi-hop MSs. In the MCIP protocol, new location and mobility management approaches are developed for tracking mobile stations, paging, and handoff management. This dissertation also provides a security protocol for integrated Internet and MANET to establish distributed trust relationships amongst mobile infrastructures. This protocol protects communication between two mobile stations against the attacks either from the Internet side or from wireless side. Moreover, a secure macro/micro-mobility protocol (SM3P) have been introduced and evaluated for preventing mobility-related attacks either for single-hop MSs or multi-hop MSs. In the proposed SM3P, mobile IP security has been extended for supporting macro-mobility across local domains through the process of multi-hop registration and authentication. In a local domain, a certificate-based authentication achieves the effective routing and micro-mobility protection from a range of potential security threats

Integration of unidirectional technologies into wireless back-haul architecture

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Docter of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.Back-haul infrastructures of today's wireless operators must support the triple-play services demanded by the market or regulatory bodies. To cope with increasing capacity demand, the EU FP7 project CARMEN has developed a cost-effective heterogeneous multi-radio wireless back-haul architecture, which may also leverage the native multicast capabilities of broadcast technologies such as DVB-T to off-load high-bandwidth broadcast content delivery. However, the integration of such unidirectional technologies into a packet-switched architecture requires careful considerations. The contribution of this thesis is the investigation, design and evaluation of protocols and mechanisms facilitating the integration of such unidirectional technologies into the wireless back-haul architecture so that they can be configured and utilized by the spectrum and capacity optimization modules. This integration mainly concerns the control plane and, in particular, the aspects related to resource and capability descriptions, neighborhood, link and Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) Label-Switched Path (LSP) monitoring, unicast and multicast LSP signalling as well as topology forming and maintenance. During the course of this study we have analyzed the problem space, proposed solutions to the resulting research questions and evaluated our approach. Our results show that the now Unidirectional Technology (UDT)-aware architecture can readily consider Unidirectional Technologies (UDTs) to distribute, for example, broadcast content

MANETs: Internet Connectivity and Transport Protocols

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of mobile nodes connected together over a wireless medium, which self-organize into an autonomous multi-hop wireless network. This kind of networks allows people and devices to seamlessly internetwork in areas with no pre-existing communication infrastructure, e.g., disaster recovery environments. Ad hoc networking is not a new concept, having been around in various forms for over 20 years. However, in the past only tactical networks followed the ad hoc networking paradigm. Recently, the introduction of new technologies such as IEEE 802.11, are moved the application field of MANETs to a more commercial field. These evolutions have been generating a renewed and growing interest in the research and development of MANETs. It is widely recognized that a prerequisite for the commercial penetration of the ad hoc networking technologies is the integration with existing wired/wireless infrastructure-based networks to provide an easy and transparent access to the Internet and its services. However, most of the existing solutions for enabling the interconnection between MANETs and the Internet are based on complex and inefficient mechanisms, as Mobile-IP and IP tunnelling. This thesis describes an alternative approach to build multi-hop and heterogeneous proactive ad hoc networks, which can be used as flexible and low-cost extensions of traditional wired LANs. The proposed architecture provides transparent global Internet connectivity and address autocofiguration capabilities to mobile nodes without requiring configuration changes in the pre-existing wired LAN, and relying on basic layer-2 functionalities. This thesis also includes an experimental evaluation of the proposed architecture and a comparison between this architecture with a well-known alternative NAT-based solution. The experimental outcomes confirm that the proposed technique ensures higher per-connection throughputs than the NAT-based solution. This thesis also examines the problems encountered by TCP over multi-hop ad hoc networks. Research on efficient transport protocols for ad hoc networks is one of the most active topics in the MANET community. Such a great interest is basically motivated by numerous observations showing that, in general, TCP is not able to efficiently deal with the unstable and very dynamic environment provided by multi-hop ad hoc networks. This is because some assumptions, in TCP design, are clearly inspired by the characteristics of wired networks dominant at the time when it was conceived. More specifically, TCP implicitly assumes that packet loss is almost always due to congestion phenomena causing buffer overflows at intermediate routers. Furthermore, it also assumes that nodes are static (i.e., they do not change their position over time). Unfortunately, these assumptions do not hold in MANETs, since in this kind of networks packet losses due to interference and link-layer contentions are largely predominant, and nodes may be mobile. The typical approach to solve these problems is patching TCP to fix its inefficiencies while preserving compatibility with the original protocol. This thesis explores a different approach. Specifically, this thesis presents a new transport protocol (TPA) designed from scratch, and address TCP interoperability at a late design stage. In this way, TPA can include all desired features in a neat and coherent way. This thesis also includes an experimental, as well as, a simulative evaluation of TPA, and a comparison between TCP and TPA performance (in terms of throughput, number of unnecessary transmissions and fairness). The presented analysis considers several of possible configurations of the protocols parameters, different routing protocols, and various networking scenarios. In all the cases taken into consideration TPA significantly outperforms TCP

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Guiding readers through the basics of these rapidly emerging networks to more advanced concepts and future expectations, Mobile Ad hoc Networks: Current Status and Future Trends identifies and examines the most pressing research issues in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs). Containing the contributions of leading researchers, industry professionals, and academics, this forward-looking reference provides an authoritative perspective of the state of the art in MANETs. The book includes surveys of recent publications that investigate key areas of interest such as limited resources and the mobility of mobile nodes. It considers routing, multicast, energy, security, channel assignment, and ensuring quality of service. Also suitable as a text for graduate students, the book is organized into three sections: Fundamentals of MANET Modeling and Simulation—Describes how MANETs operate and perform through simulations and models Communication Protocols of MANETs—Presents cutting-edge research on key issues, including MAC layer issues and routing in high mobility Future Networks Inspired By MANETs—Tackles open research issues and emerging trends Illustrating the role MANETs are likely to play in future networks, this book supplies the foundation and insight you will need to make your own contributions to the field. It includes coverage of routing protocols, modeling and simulations tools, intelligent optimization techniques to multicriteria routing, security issues in FHAMIPv6, connecting moving smart objects to the Internet, underwater sensor networks, wireless mesh network architecture and protocols, adaptive routing provision using Bayesian inference, and adaptive flow control in transport layer using genetic algorithms