Minimizing Flow Time in the Wireless Gathering Problem

We address the problem of efficient data gathering in a wireless network through multi-hop communication. We focus on the objective of minimizing the maximum flow time of a data packet. We prove that no polynomial time algorithm for this problem can have approximation ratio less than \Omega(m^{1/3) when $m$ packets have to be transmitted, unless $P = NP$. We then use resource augmentation to assess the performance of a FIFO-like strategy. We prove that this strategy is 5-speed optimal, i.e., its cost remains within the optimal cost if we allow the algorithm to transmit data at a speed 5 times higher than that of the optimal solution we compare to

Latency Optimal Broadcasting in Noisy Wireless Mesh Networks

In this paper, we adopt a new noisy wireless network model introduced very recently by Censor-Hillel et al. in [ACM PODC 2017, CHHZ17]. More specifically, for a given noise parameter $p\in [0,1],$ any sender has a probability of $p$ of transmitting noise or any receiver of a single transmission in its neighborhood has a probability $p$ of receiving noise. In this paper, we first propose a new asymptotically latency-optimal approximation algorithm (under faultless model) that can complete single-message broadcasting task in $D+O(\log^2 n)$ time units/rounds in any WMN of size $n,$ and diameter $D$. We then show this diameter-linear broadcasting algorithm remains robust under the noisy wireless network model and also improves the currently best known result in CHHZ17 by a $\Theta(\log\log n)$ factor. In this paper, we also further extend our robust single-message broadcasting algorithm to $k$ multi-message broadcasting scenario and show it can broadcast $k$ messages in $O(D+k\log n+\log^2 n)$ time rounds. This new robust multi-message broadcasting scheme is not only asymptotically optimal but also answers affirmatively the problem left open in CHHZ17 on the existence of an algorithm that is robust to sender and receiver faults and can broadcast $k$ messages in $O(D+k\log n + polylog(n))$ time rounds.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1705.07369 by other author

Improving sensor network performance with wireless energy transfer

Through recent technology advances in the field of wireless energy transmission Wireless Rechargeable Sensor Networks have emerged. In this new paradigm for wireless sensor networks a mobile entity called mobile charger (MC) traverses the network and replenishes the dissipated energy of sensors. In this work we first provide a formal definition of the charging dispatch decision problem and prove its computational hardness. We then investigate how to optimise the trade-offs of several critical aspects of the charging process such as: a) the trajectory of the charger; b) the different charging policies; c) the impact of the ratio of the energy the Mobile Charger may deliver to the sensors over the total available energy in the network. In the light of these optimisations, we then study the impact of the charging process to the network lifetime for three characteristic underlying routing protocols; a Greedy protocol, a clustering protocol and an energy balancing protocol. Finally, we propose a mobile charging protocol that locally adapts the circular trajectory of the MC to the energy dissipation rate of each sub-region of the network. We compare this protocol against several MC trajectories for all three routing families by a detailed experimental evaluation. The derived findings demonstrate significant performance gains, both with respect to the no charger case as well as the different charging alternatives; in particular, the performance improvements include the network lifetime, as well as connectivity, coverage and energy balance properties

Performance optimization of wireless sensor networks for remote monitoring

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have gained worldwide attention in recent years because of their great potential for a variety of applications such as hazardous environment exploration, military surveillance, habitat monitoring, seismic sensing, and so on. In this thesis we study the use of WSNs for remote monitoring, where a wireless sensor network is deployed in a remote region for sensing phenomena of interest while its data monitoring center is located in a metropolitan area that is geographically distant from the monitored region. This application scenario poses great challenges since such kind of monitoring is typically large scale and expected to be operational for a prolonged period without human involvement. Also, the long distance between the monitored region and the data monitoring center requires that the sensed data must be transferred by the employment of a third-party communication service, which incurs service costs. Existing methodologies for performance optimization of WSNs base on that both the sensor network and its data monitoring center are co-located, and therefore are no longer applicable to the remote monitoring scenario. Thus, developing new techniques and approaches for severely resource-constrained WSNs is desperately needed to maintain sustainable, unattended remote monitoring with low cost. Specifically, this thesis addresses the key issues and tackles problems in the deployment of WSNs for remote monitoring from the following aspects. To maximize the lifetime of large-scale monitoring, we deal with the energy consumption imbalance issue by exploring multiple sinks. We develop scalable algorithms which determine the optimal number of sinks needed and their locations, thereby dynamically identifying the energy bottlenecks and balancing the data relay workload throughout the network. We conduct experiments and the experimental results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms significantly prolong the network lifetime. To eliminate imbalance of energy consumption among sensor nodes, a complementary strategy is to introduce a mobile sink for data gathering. However, the limited communication time between the mobile sink and nodes results in that only part of sensed data will be collected and the rest will be lost, for which we propose the concept of monitoring quality with the exploration of sensed data correlation among nodes. We devise a heuristic for monitoring quality maximization, which schedules the sink to collect data from selected nodes, and uses the collected data to recover the missing ones. We study the performance of the proposed heuristic and validate its effectiveness in improving the monitoring quality. To strive for the fine trade-off between two performance metrics: throughput and cost, we investigate novel problems of minimizing cost with guaranteed throughput, and maximizing throughput with minimal cost. We develop approximation algorithms which find reliable data routing in the WSN and strategically balance workload on the sinks. We prove that the delivered solutions are fractional of the optimum. We finally conclude our work and discuss potential research topics which derive from the studies of this thesis

Gossiping with interference in radio chain networks

International audienceIn this paper, we study the problem of gossiping with interference constraint in radio chain networks. Gossiping (or total exchange information) is a protocol where each node in the network has a message and wants to distribute its own message to every other node in the network. The gossiping problem consists in finding the minimum running time (makespan) of a gossiping protocol and efficient algorithms that attain this makespan