A new connectivity strategy for wireless mesh networks using dynamic spectrum access

The introduction of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) marked an important juncture in the evolution of wireless networks. DSA is a spectrum assignment paradigm where devices are able to make real-time adjustment to their spectrum usage and adapt to changes in their spectral environment to meet performance objectives. DSA allows spectrum to be used more efficiently and may be considered as a viable approach to the ever increasing demand for spectrum in urban areas and the need for coverage extension to unconnected communities. While DSA can be applied to any spectrum band, the initial focus has been in the Ultra-High Frequency (UHF) band traditionally used for television broadcast because the band is lightly occupied and also happens to be ideal spectrum for sparsely populated rural areas. Wireless access in general is said to offer the most hope in extending connectivity to rural and unconnected peri-urban communities. Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) in particular offer several attractive characteristics such as multi-hopping, ad-hoc networking, capabilities of self-organising and self-healing, hence the focus on WMNs. Motivated by the desire to leverage DSA for mesh networking, this research revisits the aspect of connectivity in WMNs with DSA. The advantages of DSA when combined with mesh networking not only build on the benefits, but also creates additional challenges. The study seeks to address the connectivity challenge across three key dimensions, namely network formation, link metric and multi-link utilisation. To start with, one of the conundrums faced in WMNs with DSA is that the current 802.11s mesh standard provides limited support for DSA, while DSA related standards such as 802.22 provide limited support for mesh networking. This gap in standardisation complicates the integration of DSA in WMNs as several issues are left outside the scope of the applicable standard. This dissertation highlights the inadequacy of the current MAC protocol in ensuring TVWS regulation compliance in multi-hop environments and proposes a logical link MAC sub-layer procedure to fill the gap. A network is considered compliant in this context if each node operates on a channel that it is allowed to use as determined for example, by the spectrum database. Using a combination of prototypical experiments, simulation and numerical analysis, it is shown that the proposed protocol ensures network formation is accomplished in a manner that is compliant with TVWS regulation. Having tackled the compliance problem at the mesh formation level, the next logical step was to explore performance improvement avenues. Considering the importance of routing in WMNs, the study evaluates link characterisation to determine suitable metric for routing purposes. Along this dimension, the research makes two main contributions. Firstly, A-link-metric (Augmented Link Metric) approach for WMN with DSA is proposed. A-link-metric reinforces existing metrics to factor in characteristics of a DSA channel, which is essential to improve the routing protocol's ranking of links for optimal path selection. Secondly, in response to the question of “which one is the suitable metric?”, the Dynamic Path Metric Selection (DPMeS) concept is introduced. The principal idea is to mechanise the routing protocol such that it assesses the network via a distributed probing mechanism and dynamically binds the routing metric. Using DPMeS, a routing metric is selected to match the network type and prevailing conditions, which is vital as each routing metric thrives or recedes in performance depending on the scenario. DPMeS is aimed at unifying the years worth of prior studies on routing metrics in WMNs. Simulation results indicate that A-link-metric achieves up to 83.4 % and 34.6 % performance improvement in terms of throughput and end-to-end delay respectively compared to the corresponding base metric (i.e. non-augmented variant). With DPMeS, the routing protocol is expected to yield better performance consistently compared to the fixed metric approach whose performance fluctuates amid changes in network setup and conditions. By and large, DSA-enabled WMN nodes will require access to some fixed spectrum to fall back on when opportunistic spectrum is unavailable. In the absence of fully functional integrated-chip cognitive radios to enable DSA, the immediate feasible solution for the interim is single hardware platforms fitted with multiple transceivers. This configuration results in multi-band multi-radio node capability that lends itself to a variety of link options in terms of transmit/receive radio functionality. The dissertation reports on the experimental performance evaluation of radios operating in the 5 GHz and UHF-TVWS bands for hybrid back-haul links. It is found that individual radios perform differently depending on the operating parameter settings, namely channel, channel-width and transmission power subject to prevailing environmental (both spectral and topographical) conditions. When aggregated, if the radios' data-rates are approximately equal, there is a throughput and round-trip time performance improvement of 44.5 - 61.8 % and 7.5 - 41.9 % respectively. For hybrid links comprising radios with significantly unequal data-rates, this study proposes an adaptive round-robin (ARR) based algorithm for efficient multilink utilisation. Numerical analysis indicate that ARR provides 75 % throughput improvement. These results indicate that network optimisation overall requires both time and frequency division duplexing. Based on the experimental test results, this dissertation presents a three-layered routing framework for multi-link utilisation. The top layer represents the nodes' logical interface to the WMN while the bottom layer corresponds to the underlying physical wireless network interface cards (WNIC). The middle layer is an abstract and reductive representation of the possible and available transmission, and reception options between node pairs, which depends on the number and type of WNICs. Drawing on the experimental results and insight gained, the study builds criteria towards a mechanism for auto selection of the optimal link option. Overall, this study is anticipated to serve as a springboard to stimulate the adoption and integration of DSA in WMNs, and further development in multi-link utilisation strategies to increase capacity. Ultimately, it is hoped that this contribution will collectively contribute effort towards attaining the global goal of extending connectivity to the unconnected

Using hypergraph theory to model coexistence management and coordinated spectrum allocation for heterogeneous wireless networks operating in shared spectrum

Electromagnetic waves in the Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum are used to convey wireless transmissions from one radio antenna to another. Spectrum utilisation factor, which refers to how readily a given spectrum can be reused across space and time while maintaining an acceptable level of transmission errors, is used to measure how efficiently a unit of frequency spectrum can be allocated to a specified number of users. The demand for wireless applications is increasing exponentially, hence there is a need for efficient management of the RF spectrum. However, spectrum usage studies have shown that the spectrum is under-utilised in space and time. A regulatory shift from static spectrum assignment to DSA is one way of addressing this. Licence exemption policy has also been advanced in Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) systems to spur wireless innovation and universal access to the internet. Furthermore, there is a shift from homogeneous to heterogeneous radio access and usage of the same spectrum band. These three shifts from traditional spectrum management have led to the challenge of coexistence among heterogeneous wireless networks which access the spectrum using DSA techniques. Cognitive radios have the ability for spectrum agility based on spectrum conditions. However, in the presence of multiple heterogeneous networks and without spectrum coordination, there is a challenge related to switching between available channels to minimise interference and maximise spectrum allocation. This thesis therefore focuses on the design of a framework for coexistence management and spectrum coordination, with the objective of maximising spectrum utilisation across geographical space and across time. The amount of geographical coverage in which a frequency can be used is optimised through frequency reuse while ensuring that harmful interference is minimised. The time during which spectrum is occupied is increased through time-sharing of the same spectrum by two or more networks, while ensuring that spectrum is shared by networks that can coexist in the same spectrum and that the total channel load is not excessive to prevent spectrum starvation. Conventionally, a graph is used to model relationships between entities such as interference relationships among networks. However, the concept of an edge in a graph is not sufficient to model relationships that involve more than two entities, such as more than two networks that are able to share the same channel in the time domain, because an edge can only connect two entities. On the other hand, a hypergraph is a generalisation of an undirected graph in which a hyperedge can connect more than two entities. Therefore, this thesis investigates the use of hypergraph theory to model the RF environment and the spectrum allocation scheme. The hypergraph model was applied to an algorithm for spectrum sharing among 100 heterogeneous wireless networks, whose geo-locations were randomly and independently generated in a 50 km by 50 km area. Simulation results for spectrum utilisation performance have shown that the hypergraph-based model allocated channels, on average, to 8% more networks than the graph-based model. The results also show that, for the same RF environment, the hypergraph model requires up to 36% fewer channels to achieve, on average, 100% operational networks, than the graph model. The rate of growth of the running time of the hypergraph-based algorithm with respect to the input size is equal to the square of the input size, like the graph-based algorithm. Thus, the model achieved better performance at no additional time complexity.Electromagnetic waves in the Radio Frequency (RF) spectrum are used to convey wireless transmissions from one radio antenna to another. Spectrum utilisation factor, which refers to how readily a given spectrum can be reused across space and time while maintaining an acceptable level of transmission errors, is used to measure how efficiently a unit of frequency spectrum can be allocated to a specified number of users. The demand for wireless applications is increasing exponentially, hence there is a need for efficient management of the RF spectrum. However, spectrum usage studies have shown that the spectrum is under-utilised in space and time. A regulatory shift from static spectrum assignment to DSA is one way of addressing this. Licence exemption policy has also been advanced in Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) systems to spur wireless innovation and universal access to the internet. Furthermore, there is a shift from homogeneous to heterogeneous radio access and usage of the same spectrum band. These three shifts from traditional spectrum management have led to the challenge of coexistence among heterogeneous wireless networks which access the spectrum using DSA techniques. Cognitive radios have the ability for spectrum agility based on spectrum conditions. However, in the presence of multiple heterogeneous networks and without spectrum coordination, there is a challenge related to switching between available channels to minimise interference and maximise spectrum allocation. This thesis therefore focuses on the design of a framework for coexistence management and spectrum coordination, with the objective of maximising spectrum utilisation across geographical space and across time. The amount of geographical coverage in which a frequency can be used is optimised through frequency reuse while ensuring that harmful interference is minimised. The time during which spectrum is occupied is increased through time-sharing of the same spectrum by two or more networks, while ensuring that spectrum is shared by networks that can coexist in the same spectrum and that the total channel load is not excessive to prevent spectrum starvation. Conventionally, a graph is used to model relationships between entities such as interference relationships among networks. However, the concept of an edge in a graph is not sufficient to model relationships that involve more than two entities, such as more than two networks that are able to share the same channel in the time domain, because an edge can only connect two entities. On the other hand, a hypergraph is a generalisation of an undirected graph in which a hyperedge can connect more than two entities. Therefore, this thesis investigates the use of hypergraph theory to model the RF environment and the spectrum allocation scheme. The hypergraph model was applied to an algorithm for spectrum sharing among 100 heterogeneous wireless networks, whose geo-locations were randomly and independently generated in a 50 km by 50 km area. Simulation results for spectrum utilisation performance have shown that the hypergraph-based model allocated channels, on average, to 8% more networks than the graph-based model. The results also show that, for the same RF environment, the hypergraph model requires up to 36% fewer channels to achieve, on average, 100% operational networks, than the graph model. The rate of growth of the running time of the hypergraph-based algorithm with respect to the input size is equal to the square of the input size, like the graph-based algorithm. Thus, the model achieved better performance at no additional time complexity

Proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC 1990)

Presented here are the proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC), held June 17-20, 1990 in Ottawa, Canada. Topics covered include future mobile satellite communications concepts, aeronautical applications, modulation and coding, propagation and experimental systems, mobile terminal equipment, network architecture and control, regulatory and policy considerations, vehicle antennas, and speech compression

An analysis of regulatory frameworks for wireless communications, societal concerns and risk: the case of radio frequency (RF) allocation and licensing.

This thesis analyses how and why culture and geography influence the allocation and licensing of the radio frequency (RF) spectrum in different nations. Based on a broad study of 235 countries, an inter-disciplinary approach is used to explore regulatory frameworks and attitudes toward risk. In addition, detailed case studies of the UK, France, the US and Ecuador provide deeper insights into the main contrasting regulatory styles. Three alternative sociological theories are used to analyse and explain the results for both the in-depth and broad brush studies. The Cultural Theory of Mary Douglas and co-workers is first used to categorise countries in terms of perceptual filters. The empirical findings indicate some countries to be apparently exceptional in their behaviour. The theory of Bounded Rationality is used to investigate and explain these apparent irrationalities. Finally, Rational Field Theory shows how beliefs and values guide administrations in their RF regulation. A number of key factors are found to dominate and patterns emerge. The European RF harmonisation is unique. Following European unification, wireless regulation is divided into two major camps (the EU and the US), which differ in their risk concerns, approach to top-down mandated standards, allocation of RF spectrum to licence-exempt bands and type approval process. The adoption of cellular and TV standards around the world reflects geopolitical and colonial influence. The language of a country is a significant indicator of its analogue TV standard. Interestingly, the longitude of a country to a fair extent defines RF allocation: Africa and West Asia follow Europe, whereas the Americas approximate the US. RF regulation and risk tolerability differ between tropical and non-tropical climates. The collectivised/centralised versus the individualised/market-based rationalities result in different regulatory frameworks and contrasting societal and risk concerns. The success of the top-down European GSM and the bottom-up Wi-Fi standards reveal how the central- planning and market-based approaches have thrived. Attitudes to RF human hazards and spurious emissions levels reveal that the US, Canada and Japan are more tolerant of these risks than Europe. Australia, Canada, New Zealand, UK and USA encourage technological innovation. A practical benefit of this study is that it will give regulators more freedom to choose a rational RF licensing protocol, by better understanding the possibly self-imposed boundaries of cultural and geographical factors which are currently shaping allocation. Academically, there is utility in undertaking a cultural and geographic analysis of a topic that is mostly the domain of engineering, economic and legal analysts

Secondary user pricing strategies in a cognitive radio environment

There has been a growing demand for spectrum availability due to inefficient management of the radio frequency spectrum and underutilization of all spectrum bands. Spectrum has been managed with the same approach for over the last decade and only recently due to the phenomenal growth in mobile and broadband communications has attention been given to it. Intelligent communication systems such as cognitive radio have been identified in assisting the need for the limited resource, wireless spectrum. If spectrum trading becomes commercially successful, it can provide great economic and social benefits for the service provider, primary and secondary users. In order to maintain viability of spectrum trading, a pricing strategy is necessary for secondary users, it is also imperative to find a game theory model that minimally impacts the primary users in terms of their service, however it should aid in decreasing the cost to the primary users. Game theory along with economic theory is used to analyse the relationships/cooperation between the users and service provider. This work contributes to the field of dynamic spectrum access and aims to compare pricing strategies of secondary users in terms of the revenue earned by the primary service providers as well as investigate the impact of regulations on said pricing strategies. The pricing strategies modelled and simulated in MATLAB include the market-equilibrium pricing strategy and the competitive pricing strategy. These two strategies are chosen as they are the most relevant in South Africa. The two pricing strategies are compared in terms of advantages and disadvantages as well the revenue earned by each of the primary services. The framework for testing is provided along with the test cases. The influence of telecommunication regulations and policy on the frameworks and results are discussed in detail as well as the impact of the telecommunication regulation and policy in South Africa

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin

Proceedings of the Fifth International Mobile Satellite Conference 1997

Satellite-based mobile communications systems provide voice and data communications to users over a vast geographic area. The users may communicate via mobile or hand-held terminals, which may also provide access to terrestrial communications services. While previous International Mobile Satellite Conferences have concentrated on technical advances and the increasing worldwide commercial activities, this conference focuses on the next generation of mobile satellite services. The approximately 80 papers included here cover sessions in the following areas: networking and protocols; code division multiple access technologies; demand, economics and technology issues; current and planned systems; propagation; terminal technology; modulation and coding advances; spacecraft technology; advanced systems; and applications and experiments

Channel parameter tuning in a hybrid Wi-Fi-Dynamic Spectrum Access Wireless Mesh Network

This work addresses Channel Assignment in a multi-radio multi-channel (MRMC) Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) using both Wi-Fi and Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) spectrum bands and standards. This scenario poses new challenges because nodes are spread out geographically so may have differing allowed channels and experience different levels of external interference in different channels. A solution must meet two conflicting requirements simultaneously: 1) avoid or minimise interference within the network and from external interference sources, and 2) maintain connectivity within the network. These two requirements must be met while staying within the link constraints and the radio interface constraints, such as only assigning as many channels to a node as it has radios. This work's original contribution to the field is a unified framework for channel optimisation and assignment in a WMN that uses both DSA and traditional Wi-Fi channels for interconnectivity. This contribution is realised by providing and analysing the performance of near-optimal Channel Assignment (CA) solutions using metaheuristic algorithms for the MRMC WMNs using DSA bands. We have created a simulation framework for evaluating the algorithms. The performance of Simulated Annealing, Genetic Algorithm, Differential Evolution, and Particle Swarm Optimisation algorithms have been analysed and compared for the CA optimisation problem. We introduce a novel algorithm, used alongside the metaheuristic optimisation algorithms, to generate feasible candidate CA solutions. Unlike previous studies, this sensing and CA work takes into account the requirement to use a Geolocation Spectrum Database (GLSD) to get the allowed channels, in addition to using spectrum sensing to identify and estimate the cumulative severity of both internal and external interference sources. External interference may be caused by other secondary users (SUs) in the vicinity or by primary transmitters of the DSA band whose emissions leak into adjacent channels, next-toadjacent, or even into further channels. We use signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) as the optimisation objective. This incorporates any possible source or type of interference and makes our method agnostic to the protocol or technology of the interfering devices while ensuring that the received signal level is high enough for connectivity to be maintained on as many links as possible. To support our assertion that SINR is a reasonable criterion on which to base the optimisation, we have carried out extensive outdoor measurements in both line-of-sight and wooded conditions in the television white space (TVWS) DSA band and the 5 GHz Wi-Fi band. These measurements show that SINR is useful as a performance measure, especially when the interference experienced on a link is high. Our statistical analysis shows that SINR effectively differentiates the performance of different channels and that SINR is well correlated with throughput and is thus a good predictor of end-user experience, despite varying conditions. We also identify and analyse the idle times created by Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) contention-based Medium Access Control (MAC) operations and propose the use of these idle times for spectrum sensing to measure the SINR on possible channels. This means we can perform spectrum sensing with zero spectrum sensing delay experienced by the end user. Unlike previous work, this spectrum sensing is transparent and can be performed without causing any disruption to the normal data transmission of the network. We conduct Markov chain analysis to find the expected length of time of a sensing window. We also derive an efficient minimum variance unbiased estimator of the interference plus noise and show how the SINR can be found using this estimate. Our estimation is more granular, accurate, and appropriate to the problem of Secondary User (SU)-SU coexistence than the binary hypothesis testing methods that are most common in the literature. Furthermore, we construct confidence intervals based on the probability density function derived for the observations. This leads to finding and showing the relationships between the number of sampling windows and sampling time, the interference power, and the achievable confidence interval width. While our results coincide with (and thus are confirmed by) some key previous recommendations, ours are more precise, granular, and accurate and allow for application to a wider range of operating conditions. Finally, we present alterations to the IEEE 802.11k protocol to enable the reporting of spectrum sensing results to the fusion or gateway node and algorithms for distributing the Channel Assignment once computed. We analyse the convergence rate of the proposed procedures and find that high network availability can be maintained despite the temporary loss of connectivity caused by the channel switching procedure. This dissertation consolidates the different activities required to improve the channel parameter settings of a multi-radio multi-channel DSA-WMN. The work facilitates the extension of Internet connectivity to the unconnected or unreliably connected in rural or peri-urban areas in a more cost-effective way, enabling more meaningful and affordable access technologies. It also empowers smaller players to construct better community networks for sharing local content. This technology can have knock-on effects of improved socio-economic conditions for the communities that use it