A New Phase Transition for Local Delays in MANETs

We consider Mobile Ad-hoc Network (MANET) with transmitters located according to a Poisson point in the Euclidean plane, slotted Aloha Medium Access (MAC) protocol and the so-called outage scenario, where a successful transmission requires a Signal-to-Interference-and-Noise (SINR) larger than some threshold. We analyze the local delays in such a network, namely the number of times slots required for nodes to transmit a packet to their prescribed next-hop receivers. The analysis depends very much on the receiver scenario and on the variability of the fading. In most cases, each node has finite-mean geometric random delay and thus a positive next hop throughput. However, the spatial (or large population) averaging of these individual finite mean-delays leads to infinite values in several practical cases, including the Rayleigh fading and positive thermal noise case. In some cases it exhibits an interesting phase transition phenomenon where the spatial average is finite when certain model parameters are below a threshold and infinite above. We call this phenomenon, contention phase transition. We argue that the spatial average of the mean local delays is infinite primarily because of the outage logic, where one transmits full packets at time slots when the receiver is covered at the required SINR and where one wastes all the other time slots. This results in the "RESTART" mechanism, which in turn explains why we have infinite spatial average. Adaptive coding offers a nice way of breaking the outage/RESTART logic. We show examples where the average delays are finite in the adaptive coding case, whereas they are infinite in the outage case.Comment: accepted for IEEE Infocom 201

Stochastic Analysis of Aloha in Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to study the Aloha medium access (MAC) scheme in one-dimensional, {\em linear} networks, which might be an appropriate assumption for Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs). We study performance metrics based on the signal-over-interference and noise ratio (SINR) assuming power-law mean path-loss and independent point-to-point fading. We derive closed formulas for the capture probability. We consider the presence or the absence of noise and we study performance with outage or with adaptive coding. We carry out the joint optimization of the density of packet progress (in bit meters) both in the transmission probability and in the transmission range. We also compare the performance of slotted and non-slotted Aloha. We show that in contrast to planar networks the density of packet progress per unit of length does not increase with the network node density

Stochastic Analysis of Non-slotted Aloha in Wireless Ad-Hoc Networks

In this paper we propose two analytically tractable stochastic models of non-slotted Aloha for Mobile Ad-hoc NETworks (MANETs): one model assumes a static pattern of nodes while the other assumes that the pattern of nodes varies over time. Both models feature transmitters randomly located in the Euclidean plane, according to a Poisson point process with the receivers randomly located at a fixed distance from the emitters. We concentrate on the so-called outage scenario, where a successful transmission requires a Signal-to-Interference-and-Noise Ratio (SINR) larger than a given threshold. With Rayleigh fading and the SINR averaged over the duration of the packet transmission, both models lead to closed form expressions for the probability of successful transmission. We show an excellent matching of these results with simulations. Using our models we compare the performances of non-slotted Aloha to previously studied slotted Aloha. We observe that when the path loss is not very strong both models, when appropriately optimized, exhibit similar performance. For stronger path loss non-slotted Aloha performs worse than slotted Aloha, however when the path loss exponent is equal to 4 its density of successfully received packets is still 75% of that in the slotted scheme. This is still much more than the 50% predicted by the well-known analysis where simultaneous transmissions are never successful. Moreover, in any path loss scenario, both schemes exhibit the same energy efficiency.Comment: accepted for IEEE Infocom 201

Stochastic analysis of spatial and opportunistic Aloha

International audienceSpatial Aloha is probably the simplest medium access protocol to be used in a large mobile ad hoc network: each station tosses a coin independently of everything else and accesses the channel if it gets heads. In a network where stations are randomly and homogeneously located in the Euclidean plane, there is a way to tune the bias of the coin so as to obtain the best possible compromise between spatial reuse and per transmitter throughput. This paper shows how to address this questions using stochastic geometry and more precisely Poisson shot noise field theory. The theory that is developed is fully computational and leads to new closed form expressions for various kinds of spatial averages (like e.g. outage, throughput or transport). It also allows one to derive general scaling laws that hold for general fading assumptions. We exemplify its flexibility by analyzing a natural variant of Spatial Aloha that we call Opportunistic Aloha and that consists in replacing the coin tossing by an evaluation of the quality of the channel of each station to its receiver and a selection of the stations with good channels (e.g. fading) conditions. We show how to adapt the general machinery to this variant and how to optimize and implement it. We show that when properly tuned, Opportunistic Aloha very significantly outperforms Spatial Aloha, with e.g. a mean throughput per unit area twice higher for Rayleigh fading scenarios with typical parameters

Algorithm for Optimizing Packet Size in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

This thesis proposes an algorithm to optimize packet size in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). In this thesis, the packet size is adapted to maximize the communication performance through the automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol. The optimal packet size is chosen by an algorithm based on the estimation of the channel from the number of retransmission requests and the link statistics obtained from the mobility pattern. By adapting the non-uniform distribution of the bit error rate (BER) obtained from the mobility pattern analysis, it is possible to estimate channel conditions more accurately from the number of retransmission requests and to improve the system performance. It was found that the distribution of the link distance among mobile nodes following the Gauss-Markov mobility pattern in a circularly shaped area well fits the Beta distribution function. From the simulation results it is observed that when the interference increases, or the path loss exponent increases, or when the size of history decreases, the throughput and efficiency performance will decrease. Based on an analysis in various wireless environments, the algorithm proposed in this thesis shows almost an optimal throughput efficiency performance, and it gives better performance than the algorithm in [6], which uses an uniform distribution function for the estimation of the channel condition. By adapting the Beta distribution of the BER obtained from the mobility pattern, it is possible to estimate the channel conditions more accurately from the number of retransmission requests and to improve the throughput and utilization performance of MANET communication systems.School of Electrical & Computer Engineerin

Cognitive MAC protocols for mobile Ad-Hoc networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The term of Cognitive Radio (CR) used to indicate that spectrum radio could be accessed dynamically and opportunistically by unlicensed users. In CR Networks, Interference between nodes, hidden terminal problem, and spectrum sensing errors are big issues to be widely discussed in the research field nowadays. To improve the performance of such kind of networks, this thesis proposes Cognitive Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs). From the concept of CR, this thesis has been able to develop a cognitive MAC framework in which a cognitive process consisting of cognitive elements is considered, which can make efficient decisions to optimise the CR network. In this context, three different scenarios to maximize the secondary user's throughput have been proposed. We found that the throughput improvement depends on the transition probabilities. However, considering the past information state of the spectrum can dramatically increases the secondary user's throughput by up to 40%. Moreover, by increasing the number of channels, the throughput of the network can be improved about 25%. Furthermore, to study the impact of Physical (PHY) Layer errors on cognitive MAC layer in MANETs, in this thesis, a Sensing Error-Aware MAC protocols for MANETs has been proposed. The developed model has been able to improve the MAC layer performance under the challenge of sensing errors. In this context, the proposed model examined two sensing error probabilities: the false alarm probability and the missed detection probability. The simulation results have shown that both probabilities could be adapted to maintain the false alarm probability at certain values to achieve good results. Finally, in this thesis, a cooperative sensing scheme with interference mitigation for Cognitive Wireless Mesh Networks (CogMesh) has been proposed. Moreover, a prioritybased traffic scenario to analyze the problem of packet delay and a novel technique for dynamic channel allocation in CogMesh is presented. Considering each channel in the system as a sub-server, the average delay of the users' packets is reduced and the cooperative sensing scenario dramatically increases the network throughput 50% more as the number of arrival rate is increased

MAC regenerative analysis of wireless Ad-Hoc networks

Dissertação apresentada na Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade Nova de Lisboa para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de ComputadoresThe IEEE 802.11 is a fast growing technology all over the world. This growth is essentially due to the increasing number of users in the network. Despite the increasing number of users, not all of them need the same quality of service. Thus, service differentiation is an important aspect that shall be considered in mathematical models that describe network performance. Moreover, users typically communicate using point-to-point connections(unicast transmission scheme) and point-to-multipoint connections (broadcast transmission scheme). The co-existence of unicast and broadcast traffic impacts the network performance and its importance cannot be neglected in the network performance evaluation. This motivates the work presented in this thesis, which characterizes the network accounting for these important parameters. This thesis formulates a model to describe the behavior of the medium access control used in IEEE 802.11-based networks. This is the first step to develop a model that considers both different groups of users configured with different medium access control parameters and the co-existence of two different transmission schemes (unicast and broadcast). The model also assumes a finite number of retransmissions for unicast packets and it is confirmed that several models already proposed in other works are especial cases of the proposed model. Finally, a theoretical validation of the model is done as well as some simulations to assess its accuracy and, some realistic network features are discussed

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks: Point-to-Point, Emergency and Broadcast Communications

International audienceThe aim of this paper is to analyze the Aloha medium access (MAC) scheme in one-dimensional, linear networks, which might be an appropriate assumption for Vehicular Ad-hoc NETworks (VANETs). The locations of the vehicles are assumed to follow a homegeneous Poisson point process. Assuming powerlaw mean path-loss and independent point-to-point fading we study performance metrics based on the signal-over-interference and noise ratio (SINR). In contrast to previous studies where the receivers are at a fixed distance from the transmitter, we assume here that the receivers are the nearest neighbors of the transmitters in the Poisson process and in a given direction. We derive closed formulas for the capture probability and for the density of progress of a packet sent by a given node. We compute the mean delay to send a packet transmitted at each slot until successful reception. We also evaluate an upper bound to discover the neighborhood within a given space interval. We show that we can include noise in the previous models