Hybrid performance modelling of opportunistic networks

We demonstrate the modelling of opportunistic networks using the process algebra stochastic HYPE. Network traffic is modelled as continuous flows, contact between nodes in the network is modelled stochastically, and instantaneous decisions are modelled as discrete events. Our model describes a network of stationary video sensors with a mobile ferry which collects data from the sensors and delivers it to the base station. We consider different mobility models and different buffer sizes for the ferries. This case study illustrates the flexibility and expressive power of stochastic HYPE. We also discuss the software that enables us to describe stochastic HYPE models and simulate them.Comment: In Proceedings QAPL 2012, arXiv:1207.055

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

A mobile agent and message ferry mechanism based routing for delay tolerant network

Delay Tolerant Network (DTN) is a class of networks characterized by long delays, frequent disconnections and partitioning of communication paths between network nodes. Due to the frequent disconnection and network partitioning, the overall performance of the network will be deteriorated sharply. The problem is how to make the network fairly connected to optimize data routing and enhance the performance of a network. The aim of this study is to improve the performance of DTN by minimizing end-to-end delivery time and increasing message delivery ratio. Therefore, this research tackles the problem of intermittent connectivity and network partitioning by introducing Agents and Ferry Mechanism based Routing (AFMR). The AFMR comprises of two stages by applying two schemes: mobile agents and ferry mechanism. The agents' scheme is proposed to deal with intermittent connectivity and network partitioning by collecting the basic information about network connection such as signal strength, nodes position in the network and distance to the destination nodes to minimize end-to-end delivery time. The second stage is to increase the message delivery ratio by moving the nodes towards the path with available network connectivity based on agents' feedback. The AFMR is evaluated through simulations and the results are compared with those of Epidemic, PRoPHET and Message Ferry (MF). The findings demonstrate that AFMR is superior to all three, with respect to the average end-to-end delivery time, message delivery ratio, network load and message drop ratio, which are regarded as extremely important metrics for the evaluation of DTN routing protocols. The AFMR achieves improved network performance in terms of end-to-end delivery time (56.3%); enhanced message delivery ratio (60.0%); mitigation of message drop (63.5%) and reduced network load (26.1 %). The contributions of this thesis are to enhance the performance of DTN by significantly overcoming the intermittent connectivity and network partitioning problems in the network

Exploring centrality for message forwarding in opportunistic networks

In opportunistic networks, centrality characterizes a node's capability to act as a communication hub. In this paper, we provide an in-depth study of choosing effective centrality metrics for message forwarding in bandwidth-limited opportunistic networks. Based on this study, we propose a destination-unaware forwarding algorithm that accounts for the popularity of a node and the contact durations between nodes. We evaluate the algorithm on two experimental human mobility traces. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves higher system throughput while maintaining a lower forwarding cost compared with several known destination-unaware forwarding schemes. ©2010 IEEE.published_or_final_versionThe 2010 IEEE Conference on Wireless Communications and Networking (WCNC), Sydney, NSW, Australia, 18-21 April 2010. In Proceedings of the IEEE WCNC, 2010, p. 1-

Spray Router with Node Location Dependent Remaining-TTL Message Scheduling in DTNs

Delay and disruption tolerant networks (DTNs) adopt the store-carry-and-forward paradigm. Each node stores messages in a buffer storage and waits for either an appropriate forwarding opportunity or the message\u27s expiration time, i.e., its time-to-live (TTL). There are two key issues that influence the performance of DTN routing: the forwarding policy that determines whether a message should be forwarded to an encountered node, and the buffer management policy that determines which message should be sent from the queue (i.e., message scheduling) and which message should be dropped when the buffer storage is full. This paper proposes a DTN routing protocol, called spray-and hop-distance-based with remaining-TTL consideration (SNHD-TTL) which integrates three features: (1) binary spray; (2) hop-distance-based forwarding; and (3) node location dependent remaining-TTL message scheduling. The aim is to better deliver messages which are highly congested especially in the “island scenario.” We evaluate it by simulation-based comparison with other popular protocols, namely Epidemic as a baseline and PRoPHETv2 that performs well according to our previous study. Our simulation results show that SNHD-TTL is able to outperform other routing protocols, significantly reduce overhead, and at the same time, increase the total size of delivered messages.Special Issue of Applications and the Internet in Conjunction with Main Topics of COMPSAC 201