Performance Modelling and Optimisation of Multi-hop Networks

A major challenge in the design of large-scale networks is to predict and optimise the total time and energy consumption required to deliver a packet from a source node to a destination node. Examples of such complex networks include wireless ad hoc and sensor networks which need to deal with the effects of node mobility, routing inaccuracies, higher packet loss rates, limited or time-varying effective bandwidth, energy constraints, and the computational limitations of the nodes. They also include more reliable communication environments, such as wired networks, that are susceptible to random failures, security threats and malicious behaviours which compromise their quality of service (QoS) guarantees. In such networks, packets traverse a number of hops that cannot be determined in advance and encounter non-homogeneous network conditions that have been largely ignored in the literature. This thesis examines analytical properties of packet travel in large networks and investigates the implications of some packet coding techniques on both QoS and resource utilisation. Specifically, we use a mixed jump and diffusion model to represent packet traversal through large networks. The model accounts for network non-homogeneity regarding routing and the loss rate that a packet experiences as it passes successive segments of a source to destination route. A mixed analytical-numerical method is developed to compute the average packet travel time and the energy it consumes. The model is able to capture the effects of increased loss rate in areas remote from the source and destination, variable rate of advancement towards destination over the route, as well as of defending against malicious packets within a certain distance from the destination. We then consider sending multiple coded packets that follow independent paths to the destination node so as to mitigate the effects of losses and routing inaccuracies. We study a homogeneous medium and obtain the time-dependent properties of the packet’s travel process, allowing us to compare the merits and limitations of coding, both in terms of delivery times and energy efficiency. Finally, we propose models that can assist in the analysis and optimisation of the performance of inter-flow network coding (NC). We analyse two queueing models for a router that carries out NC, in addition to its standard packet routing function. The approach is extended to the study of multiple hops, which leads to an optimisation problem that characterises the optimal time that packets should be held back in a router, waiting for coding opportunities to arise, so that the total packet end-to-end delay is minimised

Evaluation of network coding techniques for a sniper detection application

This paper experimentally studies the reliability and delay of flooding based multicast protocols for a sniper detection application. In particular using an emulator it studies under which conditions protocols based on network coding deliver performance improvements compared to classic flooding. It then presents an implementation of such protocols on mobile phones

Trading Structure for Randomness in Wireless Opportunistic Routing

Opportunistic routing is a recent technique that achieves high throughput in the face of lossy wireless links. The current opportunistic routing protocol, ExOR, ties the MAC with routing, imposing a strict schedule on routers' access to the medium. Although the scheduler delivers opportunistic gains, it misses some of the inherent features of the 802.11 MAC. For example, it prevents spatial reuse and thus may underutilize the wireless medium. It also eliminates the layering abstraction, making the protocol less amenable to extensions of alternate traffic type such as multicast.This paper presents MORE, a MAC-independent opportunistic routing protocol. MORE randomly mixes packets before forwarding them. This randomness ensures that routers that hear the same transmission do not forward the same packets. Thus, MORE needs no special scheduler to coordinate routers and can run directly on top of 802.11. Experimental results from a 20-node wireless testbed show that MORE's average unicast throughput is 20% higher than ExOR, and the gains rise to 50% over ExOR when there is a chance of spatial reuse. For multicast, MORE's gains increase with the number of destinations, and are 35-200% greater than ExOR

Opportunistic routing in wireless mesh networks

Opportunistic Routing (OR) has been proposed as a way to increase the performance of wireless networks by exploiting its broadcast nature. In OR, instead of pre-selecting a single specific node to be the next-hop as a forwarder for a packet, multiple nodes can potentially be selected as the next-hop forwarder. Thus the source can use multiple potential paths to deliver the packets to the destination. More specially, when the current node transmits a packet, all the candidates that receive the packet successfully will coordinate with each other to determine which one would actually forward the packet according to some criteria, while the other nodes will simply discard the packet. In this chapter, we survey the state of the art in OR, then focus on the candidates selection algorithms and carry out a comparative performance evaluation of the most relevant proposals appeared in the literature.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft