Energy Optimal Transmission Scheduling in Wireless Sensor Networks

One of the main issues in the design of sensor networks is energy efficient communication of time-critical data. Energy wastage can be caused by failed packet transmission attempts at each node due to channel dynamics and interference. Therefore transmission control techniques that are unaware of the channel dynamics can lead to suboptimal channel use patterns. In this paper we propose a transmission controller that utilizes different "grades" of channel side information to schedule packet transmissions in an optimal way, while meeting a deadline constraint for all packets waiting in the transmission queue. The wireless channel is modeled as a finite-state Markov channel. We are specifically interested in the case where the transmitter has low-grade channel side information that can be obtained based solely on the ACK/NAK sequence for the previous transmissions. Our scheduler is readily implementable and it is based on the dynamic programming solution to the finite-horizon transmission control problem. We also calculate the information theoretic capacity of the finite state Markov channel with feedback containing different grades of channel side information including that, obtained through the ACK/NAK sequence. We illustrate that our scheduler achieves a given throughput at a power level that is fairly close to the fundamental limit achievable over the channel.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogeneous network deployment based on micro, pico and femto-cells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technologyComment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Cooperative medium access control based on spectrum leasing

Based on cooperative spectrum leasing, a distributed “win–win” (WW) cooperative framework is designed to encourage the licensed source node (SN) to lease some part of its spectral resources to the unlicensed relay node (RN) for the sake of simultaneously improving the SN’s achievable rate and for reducing the energy consumption (EC). The potential candidate RNs carry out autonomous decisions concerning whether to contend for a cooperative transmission opportunity, which could dissipate some of their battery power, while conveying their traffic in light of their individual service requirements. Furthermore, a WW cooperative medium-access-control (MAC) protocol is designed to implement the proposed distributed WW cooperative framework. Simulation results demonstrate that our WW cooperative MAC protocol is capable of providing both substantial rate improvements and considerable energy savings for the cooperative spectrum leasing system

On the Performance of the Relay-ARQ Networks

This paper investigates the performance of relay networks in the presence of hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback and adaptive power allocation. The throughput and the outage probability of different hybrid ARQ protocols are studied for independent and spatially-correlated fading channels. The results are obtained for the cases where there is a sum power constraint on the source and the relay or when each of the source and the relay are power-limited individually. With adaptive power allocation, the results demonstrate the efficiency of relay-ARQ techniques in different conditions.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 201

A Survey on Wireless Security: Technical Challenges, Recent Advances and Future Trends

This paper examines the security vulnerabilities and threats imposed by the inherent open nature of wireless communications and to devise efficient defense mechanisms for improving the wireless network security. We first summarize the security requirements of wireless networks, including their authenticity, confidentiality, integrity and availability issues. Next, a comprehensive overview of security attacks encountered in wireless networks is presented in view of the network protocol architecture, where the potential security threats are discussed at each protocol layer. We also provide a survey of the existing security protocols and algorithms that are adopted in the existing wireless network standards, such as the Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, WiMAX, and the long-term evolution (LTE) systems. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art in physical-layer security, which is an emerging technique of securing the open communications environment against eavesdropping attacks at the physical layer. We also introduce the family of various jamming attacks and their counter-measures, including the constant jammer, intermittent jammer, reactive jammer, adaptive jammer and intelligent jammer. Additionally, we discuss the integration of physical-layer security into existing authentication and cryptography mechanisms for further securing wireless networks. Finally, some technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends in wireless security are discussed.Comment: 36 pages. Accepted to Appear in Proceedings of the IEEE, 201