Airborne Directional Networking: Topology Control Protocol Design

This research identifies and evaluates the impact of several architectural design choices in relation to airborne networking in contested environments related to autonomous topology control. Using simulation, we evaluate topology reconfiguration effectiveness using classical performance metrics for different point-to-point communication architectures. Our attention is focused on the design choices which have the greatest impact on reliability, scalability, and performance. In this work, we discuss the impact of several practical considerations of airborne networking in contested environments related to autonomous topology control modeling. Using simulation, we derive multiple classical performance metrics to evaluate topology reconfiguration effectiveness for different point-to-point communication architecture attributes for the purpose of qualifying protocol design elements

A Socio-inspired CALM Approach to Channel Assignment Performance Prediction and WMN Capacity Estimation

A significant amount of research literature is dedicated to interference mitigation in Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), with a special emphasis on designing channel allocation (CA) schemes which alleviate the impact of interference on WMN performance. But having countless CA schemes at one's disposal makes the task of choosing a suitable CA for a given WMN extremely tedious and time consuming. In this work, we propose a new interference estimation and CA performance prediction algorithm called CALM, which is inspired by social theory. We borrow the sociological idea of a "sui generis" social reality, and apply it to WMNs with significant success. To achieve this, we devise a novel Sociological Idea Borrowing Mechanism that facilitates easy operationalization of sociological concepts in other domains. Further, we formulate a heuristic Mixed Integer Programming (MIP) model called NETCAP which makes use of link quality estimates generated by CALM to offer a reliable framework for network capacity prediction. We demonstrate the efficacy of CALM by evaluating its theoretical estimates against experimental data obtained through exhaustive simulations on ns-3 802.11g environment, for a comprehensive CA test-set of forty CA schemes. We compare CALM with three existing interference estimation metrics, and demonstrate that it is consistently more reliable. CALM boasts of accuracy of over 90% in performance testing, and in stress testing too it achieves an accuracy of 88%, while the accuracy of other metrics drops to under 75%. It reduces errors in CA performance prediction by as much as 75% when compared to other metrics. Finally, we validate the expected network capacity estimates generated by NETCAP, and show that they are quite accurate, deviating by as low as 6.4% on an average when compared to experimentally recorded results in performance testing

A Topology Control-Based Self-Organisation in Wireless Mesh Networks

An algorithm for self-organisation that assigns the channels intelligently in multi-radio wireless mesh networks (MR-WMN) is important for the proper operation of MR-WMN. The aim of the self-organisation algorithm is to reduce the overall interference and increase the aggregate capacity of the network. In this paper, we have first proposed a generic self-organisation algorithm that addresses these two challenges. The basic approach is that of a distributed, light-weight, cooperative multiagent system that guarantees scalability. Second, we have evaluated the performance of the proposed self-organisation algorithm for two sets of initialisation schemes. The initialisation process results in a topology control of MR-WMN by way of spatial distribution of connectivity between the mesh nodes. The results have been obtained for realistic scenarios of MR-WMN node densities and topologies. We have shown in addition the need to develop non-transmit power control based algorithms to achieve a further increase in system capacity

Effective Provisioning in Multi-Interface Multi-Channel Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) is a network communication technology that can provide high coverage and consistency using multihop communication features. Operating various applications in parallel on WMNs implies the need for improvement in the network’s performance, where capacity is one of the most significant factors. Multi-Interface Multi-Channel (MIMC) networks, a type of WMN, can increase overall network capacity by using several interfaces and channels simultaneously. However, employing many channels at once poses the problem of selecting suitable channels and interfaces for links while avoiding interference and efficiently utilizing the resources. The majority of MIMC WMN used the same type of wireless technology as their interfaces and a limited number of non-overlapping channels to reduce the likelihood of network interference. This thesis investigates the MIMC WMN provisioning problem by using three widely used wireless technologies: WiFi, Bluetooth, and Zigbee, with all their channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum. To assess interference among links, we use a conflict graph for all channels of the three technologies. Furthermore, we formulate a joint interference-aware routing, Interface Assignment (IA), and Channel Assignment (CA) scheme using Integer Linear Programming (ILP) for both static and dynamic traffic, aiming to maximize the overall throughput considering bandwidth and latency requirements of requests. We use the Gurobi solver to implement the models and conduct a series of experiments in both cases. The numerical studies demonstrate that using various wireless technologies and properly managing channels leads to improved performance in terms of throughput while preventing interference and transmitting heavy real-time data