Packet Skipping and Network Coding for Delay-Sensitive Network Communication

We provide an analytical study of the impact of packet skipping and opportunistic network coding on the timely communication of messages through a single network element. In a first step, we consider a single-server queueing system with Poisson arrivals, exponential service times, and a single buffer position. Packets arriving at a network node have a fixed deadline before which they should reach the destination. To preserve server capacity, we introduce a thresholding policy, based on remaining time until deadline expiration, to decide whether to serve a packet or skip its service. The obtained goodput improvement of the system is derived, as well as the operating conditions under which thresholding can enhance performance. Subsequently, we focus our analysis on a system that supports network coding instead of thresholding. We characterize the impact of network coding at a router node on the delivery of packets associated with deadlines. We model the router node as a queueing system where packets arrive from two independent Poisson flows and undergo opportunistic coding operations. We obtain an exact expression for the goodput of the system and study the achievable gain. Finally, we provide an analytical model that considers both network coding and packet skipping, capturing their joint performance. A comparative analysis between the aforementioned approaches is provided

Techniques de contrôle de congestion et de dissémination d'informations dans les réseaux véhiculaires

Les réseaux véhiculaires, connus sous le terme VANETs, sont des réseaux impliquant des communications entre deux ou plusieurs véhicules et éventuellement une communication avec des éléments d’infrastructure sur la route. Récemment, le concept de systèmes de transports intelligent a connu beaucoup d’intérêt. Les STI sont des systèmes utilisant les nouvelles technologies de communication sans fil appliquées au domaine du transport pour améliorer la sécurité routière, la logistique et les services d’information. Des défis majeurs ont besoin cependant d'être abordés pour offrir une communication sur la route sécurisée et fiable dans des environnements anonymes et quelquefois hostiles à la communication. Comme dans tout système de communication, les réseaux véhiculaires doivent opérer en respectant des contraintes en termes de qualité de service. Ces contraintes sont d’autant plus strictes quand il s’agit de fournir des services de sécurité sur la route. Ce projet vise à développer des techniques de communication véhiculaires pour le relayage d’informations de manière fiable et à faible délai entre véhicules voyageant à haute vitesse. Ces techniques devront permettre de respecter des contraintes temporelles sévères afin d’envisager leur utilisation dans des applications de sécurité sur la route. Pour ce faire, cette thèse proposera d’abord des techniques efficaces de dissémination d’informations utilisant des approches multi-métriques basées sur différentes mesures en temps-réel. Des méthodes de relayage seront proposées qui permettent de diminuer les délais d’acheminement et augmenter la probabilité de réception. Ces méthodes utiliseront, entre autres, des approches d’adaptation de la portée et/ou de la priorité des messages en fonction de leur type et de l’intérêt éventuels des véhicules récepteurs en la réception de ces messages. Dans un second volet, ce projet proposera des concepts et des méthodes afin de palier au problème de congestion dans les réseaux véhiculaires qui peut résulter conjointement à la dissémination d’informations. Ces concepts et méthodes viseront à respecter la fiabilité exigée par les applications de sécurité, tout en restant conforme aux nouveaux standards de communications véhiculaires

Exploiting Caching and Multicast for 5G Wireless Networks

The landscape toward 5G wireless communication is currently unclear, and, despite the efforts of academia and industry in evolving traditional cellular networks, the enabling technology for 5G is still obscure. This paper puts forward a network paradigm toward next-generation cellular networks, targeting to satisfy the explosive demand for mobile data while minimizing energy expenditures. The paradigm builds on two principles; namely caching and multicast. On one hand, caching policies disperse popular content files at the wireless edge, e.g., pico-cells and femto-cells, hence shortening the distance between content and requester. On other hand, due to the broadcast nature of wireless medium, requests for identical files occurring at nearby times are aggregated and served through a common multicast stream. To better exploit the available cache space, caching policies are optimized based on multicast transmissions. We show that the multicast-aware caching problem is NP-hard and develop solutions with performance guarantees using randomized-rounding techniques. Trace-driven numerical results show that in the presence of massive demand for delay tolerant content, combining caching and multicast can indeed reduce energy costs. The gains over existing caching schemes are 19% when users tolerate delay of three minutes, increasing further with the steepness of content access pattern

Analysis of a Rumor Routing Protocol with Limited Packet Lifetimes

Wireless sensor networks require specialized protocols that conserve power and minimize network traffic. Therefore, it is vitally important to analyze how the parameters of a protocol affect these metrics. In doing so, a more efficient protocol can be developed. This research evaluates how the number of nodes in a network, time between generated agents, lifetime of agents, number of agent transmissions, time between generated queries, lifetime of queries, and node transmission time affect a modified rumor routing protocol for a large-scale, wireless sensor network. Furthermore, it analyzes how the probability distribution of certain protocol parameters affects the network performance. The time between generated queries had the greatest effect upon a network’s energy consumption, accounting for 73.64% of the total variation. An exponential query interarrival distribution with a rate of 0.4 queries/second/node used 25.78% less power than an exponential distribution with a rate of 0.6 queries/second/node. The node transmission time was liable for 73.99% of the total variation in proportion of query failures. Of three distributions, each with a mean of 0.5 seconds, the proportion of query failures using a Rayleigh transmission time distribution was 14.23% less than an exponential distribution and 18.46% less than a uniform distribution. Lastly, 54.85% of the total variation in the mean proportion of time a node is uninformed was a result of the time between generated agents. The mean proportion of time a node is uninformed using an exponential agent interarrival distribution with a rate of 0.005 was 6.59% higher than an exponential distribution with a rate of 0.01

Recent Developments in Smart Healthcare

Medicine is undergoing a sector-wide transformation thanks to the advances in computing and networking technologies. Healthcare is changing from reactive and hospital-centered to preventive and personalized, from disease focused to well-being centered. In essence, the healthcare systems, as well as fundamental medicine research, are becoming smarter. We anticipate significant improvements in areas ranging from molecular genomics and proteomics to decision support for healthcare professionals through big data analytics, to support behavior changes through technology-enabled self-management, and social and motivational support. Furthermore, with smart technologies, healthcare delivery could also be made more efficient, higher quality, and lower cost. In this special issue, we received a total 45 submissions and accepted 19 outstanding papers that roughly span across several interesting topics on smart healthcare, including public health, health information technology (Health IT), and smart medicine

Proceedings of the 5th MIT/ONR Workshop on C[3] Systems, held at Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California, August 23 to 27, 1982

"December 1982."Includes bibliographies and index.Office of Naval Research Contract no. ONR/N00014-77-C-0532 NR041-519edited by Michael Athans ... [et al.]

Mobile Networks

The growth in the use of mobile networks has come mainly with the third generation systems and voice traffic. With the current third generation and the arrival of the 4G, the number of mobile users in the world will exceed the number of landlines users. Audio and video streaming have had a significant increase, parallel to the requirements of bandwidth and quality of service demanded by those applications. Mobile networks require that the applications and protocols that have worked successfully in fixed networks can be used with the same level of quality in mobile scenarios. Until the third generation of mobile networks, the need to ensure reliable handovers was still an important issue. On the eve of a new generation of access networks (4G) and increased connectivity between networks of different characteristics commonly called hybrid (satellite, ad-hoc, sensors, wired, WIMAX, LAN, etc.), it is necessary to transfer mechanisms of mobility to future generations of networks. In order to achieve this, it is essential to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the performance of current protocols and the diverse topologies to suit the new mobility conditions

Smart PIN: performance and cost-oriented context-aware personal information network

The next generation of networks will involve interconnection of heterogeneous individual networks such as WPAN, WLAN, WMAN and Cellular network, adopting the IP as common infrastructural protocol and providing virtually always-connected network. Furthermore, there are many devices which enable easy acquisition and storage of information as pictures, movies, emails, etc. Therefore, the information overload and divergent content’s characteristics make it difficult for users to handle their data in manual way. Consequently, there is a need for personalised automatic services which would enable data exchange across heterogeneous network and devices. To support these personalised services, user centric approaches for data delivery across the heterogeneous network are also required. In this context, this thesis proposes Smart PIN - a novel performance and cost-oriented context-aware Personal Information Network. Smart PIN's architecture is detailed including its network, service and management components. Within the service component, two novel schemes for efficient delivery of context and content data are proposed: Multimedia Data Replication Scheme (MDRS) and Quality-oriented Algorithm for Multiple-source Multimedia Delivery (QAMMD). MDRS supports efficient data accessibility among distributed devices using data replication which is based on a utility function and a minimum data set. QAMMD employs a buffer underflow avoidance scheme for streaming, which achieves high multimedia quality without content adaptation to network conditions. Simulation models for MDRS and QAMMD were built which are based on various heterogeneous network scenarios. Additionally a multiple-source streaming based on QAMMS was implemented as a prototype and tested in an emulated network environment. Comparative tests show that MDRS and QAMMD perform significantly better than other approaches