CapEst: A Measurement-based Approach to Estimating Link Capacity in Wireless Networks

Estimating link capacity in a wireless network is a complex task because the available capacity at a link is a function of not only the current arrival rate at that link, but also of the arrival rate at links which interfere with that link as well as of the nature of interference between these links. Models which accurately characterize this dependence are either too computationally complex to be useful or lack accuracy. Further, they have a high implementation overhead and make restrictive assumptions, which makes them inapplicable to real networks. In this paper, we propose CapEst, a general, simple yet accurate, measurement-based approach to estimating link capacity in a wireless network. To be computationally light, CapEst allows inaccuracy in estimation; however, using measurements, it can correct this inaccuracy in an iterative fashion and converge to the correct estimate. Our evaluation shows that CapEst always converged to within 5% of the correct value in less than 18 iterations. CapEst is model-independent, hence, is applicable to any MAC/PHY layer and works with auto-rate adaptation. Moreover, it has a low implementation overhead, can be used with any application which requires an estimate of residual capacity on a wireless link and can be implemented completely at the network layer without any support from the underlying chipset

Max-min Fairness in 802.11 Mesh Networks

In this paper we build upon the recent observation that the 802.11 rate region is log-convex and, for the first time, characterise max-min fair rate allocations for a large class of 802.11 wireless mesh networks. By exploiting features of the 802.11e/n MAC, in particular TXOP packet bursting, we are able to use this characterisation to establish a straightforward, practically implementable approach for achieving max-min throughput fairness. We demonstrate that this approach can be readily extended to encompass time-based fairness in multi-rate 802.11 mesh networks

Insights into the Design of Congestion Control Protocols for Multi-Hop Wireless Mesh Networks

The widespread deployment of multi-hop wireless mesh networks will depend on the performance seen by the user. Unfortunately, the most predominant transport protocol, TCP, performs poorly over such networks, even leading to starvation in some topologies. In this work, we characterize the root causes of starvation in 802.11 scheduled multi-hop wireless networks via simulations. We analyze the performance of three categories of transport protocols. (1) end-to-end protocols that require implicit feedback (TCP SACK), (2) Explicit feedback based protocols (XCP and VCP) and (3) Open-loop protocol (UDP). We ask and answer the following questions in relation to these protocols: (a) Why does starvation occur in different topologies? Is it intrinsic to TCP or, in general, to feedback-based protocols? or does it also occur in the case of open-loop transfers such as CBR over UDP? (a) What is the role of application behavior on transport layer performance in multi-hop wireless mesh networks? (b) Is sharing congestion in the wireless neighborhood essential for avoiding starvation? (c) For explicit feedback based transport protocols, such as XCP and VCP, what performance can be expected when their capacity estimate is inaccurate? Based on the insights derived from the above analysis, we design a rate-based protocol called VRate that uses the two ECN bits for conveying load feedback information. VRate achieves near optimal rates when configured with the correct capacity estimate

PACE: Simple Multi-hop Scheduling for Single-radio 802.11-based Stub Wireless Mesh Networks

IEEE 802.11-based Stub Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are a cost-effective and flexible solution to extend wired network infrastructures. Yet, they suffer from two major problems: inefficiency and unfairness. A number of approaches have been proposed to tackle these problems, but they are too restrictive, highly complex, or require time synchronization and modifications to the IEEE 802.11 MAC. PACE is a simple multi-hop scheduling mechanism for Stub WMNs overlaid on the IEEE 802.11 MAC that jointly addresses the inefficiency and unfairness problems. It limits transmissions to a single mesh node at each time and ensures that each node has the opportunity to transmit a packet in each network-wide transmission round. Simulation results demonstrate that PACE can achieve optimal network capacity utilization and greatly outperforms state of the art CSMA/CA-based solutions as far as goodput, delay, and fairness are concerned

Cross-layer design of multi-hop wireless networks

MULTI -hop wireless networks are usually defined as a collection of nodes equipped with radio transmitters, which not only have the capability to communicate each other in a multi-hop fashion, but also to route each others’ data packets. The distributed nature of such networks makes them suitable for a variety of applications where there are no assumed reliable central entities, or controllers, and may significantly improve the scalability issues of conventional single-hop wireless networks. This Ph.D. dissertation mainly investigates two aspects of the research issues related to the efficient multi-hop wireless networks design, namely: (a) network protocols and (b) network management, both in cross-layer design paradigms to ensure the notion of service quality, such as quality of service (QoS) in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) for backhaul applications and quality of information (QoI) in wireless sensor networks (WSNs) for sensing tasks. Throughout the presentation of this Ph.D. dissertation, different network settings are used as illustrative examples, however the proposed algorithms, methodologies, protocols, and models are not restricted in the considered networks, but rather have wide applicability. First, this dissertation proposes a cross-layer design framework integrating a distributed proportional-fair scheduler and a QoS routing algorithm, while using WMNs as an illustrative example. The proposed approach has significant performance gain compared with other network protocols. Second, this dissertation proposes a generic admission control methodology for any packet network, wired and wireless, by modeling the network as a black box, and using a generic mathematical 0. Abstract 3 function and Taylor expansion to capture the admission impact. Third, this dissertation further enhances the previous designs by proposing a negotiation process, to bridge the applications’ service quality demands and the resource management, while using WSNs as an illustrative example. This approach allows the negotiation among different service classes and WSN resource allocations to reach the optimal operational status. Finally, the guarantees of the service quality are extended to the environment of multiple, disconnected, mobile subnetworks, where the question of how to maintain communications using dynamically controlled, unmanned data ferries is investigated

Towards Optimal Distributed Node Scheduling in a Multihop Wireless Network through Local Voting

In a multihop wireless network, it is crucial but challenging to schedule transmissions in an efficient and fair manner. In this paper, a novel distributed node scheduling algorithm, called Local Voting, is proposed. This algorithm tries to semi-equalize the load (defined as the ratio of the queue length over the number of allocated slots) through slot reallocation based on local information exchange. The algorithm stems from the finding that the shortest delivery time or delay is obtained when the load is semi-equalized throughout the network. In addition, we prove that, with Local Voting, the network system converges asymptotically towards the optimal scheduling. Moreover, through extensive simulations, the performance of Local Voting is further investigated in comparison with several representative scheduling algorithms from the literature. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves better performance than the other distributed algorithms in terms of average delay, maximum delay, and fairness. Despite being distributed, the performance of Local Voting is also found to be very close to a centralized algorithm that is deemed to have the optimal performance

Optimal Joint Routing and Scheduling in Millimeter-Wave Cellular Networks

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication is a promising technology to cope with the expected exponential increase in data traffic in 5G networks. mmWave networks typically require a very dense deployment of mmWave base stations (mmBS). To reduce cost and increase flexibility, wireless backhauling is needed to connect the mmBSs. The characteristics of mmWave communication, and specifically its high directional- ity, imply new requirements for efficient routing and scheduling paradigms. We propose an efficient scheduling method, so-called schedule-oriented optimization, based on matching theory that optimizes QoS metrics jointly with routing. It is capable of solving any scheduling problem that can be formulated as a linear program whose variables are link times and QoS metrics. As an example of the schedule-oriented optimization, we show the optimal solution of the maximum throughput fair scheduling (MTFS). Practically, the optimal scheduling can be obtained even for networks with over 200 mmBSs. To further increase the runtime performance, we propose an efficient edge-coloring based approximation algorithm with provable performance bound. It achieves over 80% of the optimal max-min throughput and runs 5 to 100 times faster than the optimal algorithm in practice. Finally, we extend the optimal and approximation algorithms for the cases of multi-RF-chain mmBSs and integrated backhaul and access networks.Comment: To appear in Proceedings of INFOCOM '1