Dynamic Queue Utilization Based MAC for multi-hop Ad Hoc networks

The end-to-end throughput in single flow multi-hop Ad Hoc networks decays rapidly with path length. Along the path, the success rate of delivering packets towards the destination decreases due to higher contention, interference, limited buffer size and limited shared bandwidth constraints. In such environments the queues fill up faster in nodes closer to the source than in the nodes nearer the destination. In order to reduce buffer overflow and improve throughput for a saturated network, this paper introduces a new MAC protocol named Dynamic Queue Utilization Based Medium Access Control (DQUB-MAC). The protocol aims to prioritise access to the channel for queues with higher utilization and helps in achieving higher throughput by rapidly draining packets towards the destination. The proposed MAC enhances the performance of an end-to-end data flow by up to 30% for a six hop transmission in a chain topology and is demonstrated to remain competitive for other network topologies and for a variety of packet sizes

Hop-Based dynamic fair scheduler for wireless Ad-Hoc networks

In a typical multihop Ad-Hoc network, interference and contention increase when flows transit each node towards destination, particularly in the presence of cross-traffic. This paper observes the relationship between throughput and path length, self-contention and interference and it investigates the effect of multiple data rates over multiple data flows in the network. Drawing from the limitations of the 802.11 specification, the paper proposes a scheduler named Hop Based Multi Queue (HBMQ), which is designed to prioritise traffic based on the hop count of packets in order to provide fairness across different data flows. The simulation results demonstrate that HBMQ performs better than a Single Drop Tail Queue (SDTQ) scheduler in terms of providing fairness. Finally, the paper concludes with a number of possible directions for further research, focusing on cross-layer implementation to ensure the fairness is also provided at the MAC layer. © 2013 IEEE

Improving Fairness and Utilisation in Ad Hoc Networks

Ad hoc networks represent the current de-facto alternative for infrastructure-less environments, due to their self-configuring and resilience characteristics. Ad hoc networks flexibility benefits, such as unrestrained computing, lack of centralisation, and ease of deployment at low costs, are tightly bound with relevant deficiencies such as limited resources and management difficulty. Ad hoc networks witnessed high attention from the research community due to the numerous challenges faced when deploying such a technology in real scenarios. Starting with the nature of the wireless environment, which raises significant transmission issues when compared with the wired counterpart, ad hoc networks require a different approach when addressing the data link problems. Further, the high packet loss due to wireless contention, independent of network congestion, requires a different approach when considering quality of service degradation and unfair channel resources distribution among competing flows. Although these issues have already been considered to some extent by researchers, there is still room to improve quality of service by reducing the effect of packet loss and fairly distributing the medium access among competing nodes. The aim of this thesis is to propose a set of mechanisms to alleviate the effect of packet loss and to improve fairness in ad hoc networks. A transport layer algorithm has been proposed to overcome the effects of hidden node collisions and to reduce the impact of wireless link contention by estimating the four hop delay and pacing packet transmissions accordingly. Furthermore, certain topologies have been identified, in which the standard IEEE 802.11 faces degradation in channel utilisation and unfair bandwidth allocation. Three link layer mechanisms have been proposed to tackle the challenges the IEEE 802.11 faces in the identified scenarios to impose fairness in ad hoc networks through fairly distributing channel resources between competing nodes. These mechanisms are based on monitoring the collision rate and penalising the greedy nodes where no competing nodes can be detected but interference exists, monitoring traffic at source nodes to police access to the channel where only source nodes are within transmission range of each other, and using MAC layer acknowledgements to flag unfair bandwidth allocation in topologies where only the receivers are within transmission range of each other. The proposed mechanisms have been integrated into a framework designed to adapt and to dynamically select which mechanism to adopt, depending on the network topology. It is important to note that the proposed mechanisms and framework are not alternatives to the standard MAC protocol but are an enhancement and are triggered by the failure of the IEEE 802.11 protocol to distribute the channel resources fairly. All the proposed mechanisms have been validated through simulations and the results obtained from the experiments show that the proposed schemes fairly distribute channel resources fairly and outperform the performance of the IEEE 802.11 protocol in terms of channel utilisation as well as fairness

Improving multiple broadcasting of multimedia traffic in wireless ad-hoc networks

The increasing use of multimedia streaming applications in addition with advent of internet television and radio, demands from today's wireless networks to handle with reliability multiple broadcasting and multicasting sources. However, the way that 802.11 standard, which is the primary technology in wireless networking, handle this type of traffic raises a series of problems mainly related to the lack of an effective feedback mechanism. This lack in turn, limits the capability of random backoff process to eliminate collisions and reduce reliability and fairness. This inherited drawback of the standard is affecting the way broadcast and multicast traffic is transmitted as well as the overall performance of the network. In this paper initially we are highlighting the drawback of the IEEE 802.11 MAC algorithm in handling multiple stations “media type” data broadcasting in an ad-hoc wireless network. Then, we propose two different approaches in alleviating these problems. The first approach is the simple linear increase of the contention window (CW) while the second propose a linear increase of the CW implementing an exclusive backoff number allocation (EBNA) algorithm. In addition we are modifying the 802.11 medium access control (MAC) algorithm to use the clear to send to self (CTS-to-Self) protection mechanism prior to every transmission. Both the above techniques are simulated and compared with the classic 802.11 MAC. The results show that the overall performance of the network can be improved using these alternative MAC methods

TCP-Aware Backpressure Routing and Scheduling

In this work, we explore the performance of backpressure routing and scheduling for TCP flows over wireless networks. TCP and backpressure are not compatible due to a mismatch between the congestion control mechanism of TCP and the queue size based routing and scheduling of the backpressure framework. We propose a TCP-aware backpressure routing and scheduling that takes into account the behavior of TCP flows. TCP-aware backpressure (i) provides throughput optimality guarantees in the Lyapunov optimization framework, (ii) gracefully combines TCP and backpressure without making any changes to the TCP protocol, (iii) improves the throughput of TCP flows significantly, and (iv) provides fairness across competing TCP flows