From MANET to people-centric networking: Milestones and open research challenges

In this paper, we discuss the state of the art of (mobile) multi-hop ad hoc networking with the aim to present the current status of the research activities and identify the consolidated research areas, with limited research opportunities, and the hot and emerging research areas for which further research is required. We start by briefly discussing the MANET paradigm, and why the research on MANET protocols is now a cold research topic. Then we analyze the active research areas. Specifically, after discussing the wireless-network technologies, we analyze four successful ad hoc networking paradigms, mesh networks, opportunistic networks, vehicular networks, and sensor networks that emerged from the MANET world. We also present an emerging research direction in the multi-hop ad hoc networking field: people centric networking, triggered by the increasing penetration of the smartphones in everyday life, which is generating a people-centric revolution in computing and communications

Detecting Non-Line of Sight to Prevent Accidents in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

There are still many challenges in the field of VANETs that encouraged researchers to conduct further investigation in this field to meet these challenges. The issue pertaining to routing protocols such as delivering the warning messages to the vehicles facing Non-Line of Sight (NLOS) situations without causing the storm problem and channel contention, is regarded as a serious dilemma which is required to be tackled in VANET, especially in congested environments. This requires the designing of an efficient mechanism of routing protocol that can broadcast the warning messages from the emergency vehicles to the vehicles under NLOS, reducing the overhead and increasing the packet delivery ratio with a reduced time delay and channel utilisation. The main aim of this work is to develop the novel routing protocol for a high-density environment in VANET through utilisation of its high mobility features, aid of the sensors such as Global Positioning System (GPS) and Navigation System (NS). In this work, the cooperative approach has been used to develop the routing protocol called the Co-operative Volunteer Protocol (CVP), which uses volunteer vehicles to disseminate the warning message from the source to the target vehicle under NLOS issue; this also increases the packet delivery ratio, detection of NLOS and resolution of NLOS by delivering the warning message successfully to the vehicle under NLOS, thereby causing a direct impact on the reduction of collisions between vehicles in normal mode and emergency mode on the road near intersections or on highways. The cooperative approach adopted for warning message dissemination reduced the rebroadcast rate of messages, thereby decreasing significantly the storm issue and the channel contention. A novel architecture has been developed by utilising the concept of a Context-Aware System (CAS), which clarifies the OBU components and their interaction with each other in order to collect data and take the decisions based on the sensed circumstances. The proposed architecture has been divided into three main phases: sensing, processing and acting. The results obtained from the validation of the proposed CVP protocol using the simulator EstiNet under specific conditions and parameters showed that performance of the proposed protocol is better than that of the GRANT protocol with regard to several metrics such as packet delivery ratio, neighbourhood awareness, channel utilisation, overhead and latency. It is also successfully shown that the proposed CVP could detect the NLOS situation and solves it effectively and efficiently for both the intersection scenario in urban areas and the highway scenario

Achieving reliable and enhanced communication in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs)

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyWith the envisioned age of Internet of Things (IoTs), different aspects of Intelligent Transportation System (ITS) will be linked so as to advance road transportation safety, ease congestion of road traffic, lessen air pollution, improve passenger transportation comfort and significantly reduce road accidents. In vehicular networks, regular exchange of current position, direction, speed, etc., enable mobile vehicle to foresee an imminent vehicle accident and notify the driver early enough in order to take appropriate action(s) or the vehicle on its own may take adequate preventive measures to avert the looming accident. Actualizing this concept requires use of shared media access protocol that is capable of guaranteeing reliable and timely broadcast of safety messages. This dissertation investigates the use of Network Coding (NC) techniques to enrich the content of each transmission and ensure improved high reliability of the broadcasted safety messages with less number of retransmissions. A Code Aided Retransmission-based Error Recovery (CARER) protocol is proposed. In order to avoid broadcast storm problem, a rebroadcasting vehicle selection metric η, is developed, which is used to select a vehicle that will rebroadcast the received encoded message. Although the proposed CARER protocol demonstrates an impressive performance, the level of incurred overhead is fairly high due to the use of complex rebroadcasting vehicle selection metric. To resolve this issue, a Random Network Coding (RNC) and vehicle clustering based vehicular communication scheme with low algorithmic complexity, named Reliable and Enhanced Cooperative Cross-layer MAC (RECMAC) scheme, is proposed. The use of this clustering technique enables RECMAC to subdivide the vehicular network into small manageable, coordinated clusters which further improve transmission reliability and minimise negative impact of network overhead. Similarly, a Cluster Head (CH) selection metric ℱ(\u1d457) is designed, which is used to determine and select the most suitably qualified candidate to become the CH of a particular cluster. Finally, in order to investigate the impact of available radio spectral resource, an in-depth study of the required amount of spectrum sufficient to support high transmission reliability and minimum latency requirements of critical road safety messages in vehicular networks was carried out. The performance of the proposed schemes was clearly shown with detailed theoretical analysis and was further validated with simulation experiments

Quality of service aware data dissemination in vehicular Ad Hoc networks

Des systèmes de transport intelligents (STI) seront éventuellement fournis dans un proche avenir pour la sécurité et le confort des personnes lors de leurs déplacements sur les routes. Les réseaux ad-hoc véhiculaires (VANETs) représentent l'élément clé des STI. Les VANETs sont formés par des véhicules qui communiquent entre eux et avec l'infrastructure. En effet, les véhicules pourront échanger des messages qui comprennent, par exemple, des informations sur la circulation routière, les situations d'urgence et les divertissements. En particulier, les messages d'urgence sont diffusés par des véhicules en cas d'urgence (p.ex. un accident de voiture); afin de permettre aux conducteurs de réagir à temps (p.ex., ralentir), les messages d'urgence doivent être diffusés de manière fiable dans un délai très court. Dans les VANETs, il existe plusieurs facteurs, tels que le canal à pertes, les terminaux cachés, les interférences et la bande passante limitée, qui compliquent énormément la satisfaction des exigences de fiabilité et de délai des messages d'urgence. Dans cette thèse, en guise de première contribution, nous proposons un schéma de diffusion efficace à plusieurs sauts, appelé Dynamic Partitioning Scheme (DPS), pour diffuser les messages d'urgence. DPS calcule les tailles de partitions dynamiques et le calendrier de transmission pour chaque partition; à l'intérieur de la zone arrière de l'expéditeur, les partitions sont calculées de sorte qu'en moyenne chaque partition contient au moins un seul véhicule; l'objectif est de s'assurer que seul un véhicule dans la partition la plus éloignée (de l'expéditeur) est utilisé pour diffuser le message, jusqu'au saut suivant; ceci donne lieu à un délai d'un saut plus court. DPS assure une diffusion rapide des messages d'urgence. En outre, un nouveau mécanisme d'établissement de liaison, qui utilise des tonalités occupées, est proposé pour résoudre le problème du problème de terminal caché. Dans les VANETs, la Multidiffusion, c'est-à-dire la transmission d'un message d'une source à un nombre limité de véhicules connus en tant que destinations, est très importante. Par rapport à la diffusion unique, avec Multidiffusion, la source peut simultanément prendre en charge plusieurs destinations, via une arborescence de multidiffusion, ce qui permet d'économiser de la bande passante et de réduire la congestion du réseau. Cependant, puisque les VANETs ont une topologie dynamique, le maintien de la connectivité de l'arbre de multidiffusion est un problème majeur. Comme deuxième contribution, nous proposons deux approches pour modéliser l'utilisation totale de bande passante d'une arborescence de multidiffusion: (i) la première approche considère le nombre de segments de route impliqués dans l'arbre de multidiffusion et (ii) la seconde approche considère le nombre d'intersections relais dans l'arbre de multidiffusion. Une heuristique est proposée pour chaque approche. Pour assurer la qualité de service de l'arbre de multidiffusion, des procédures efficaces sont proposées pour le suivi des destinations et la surveillance de la qualité de service des segments de route. Comme troisième contribution, nous étudions le problème de la congestion causée par le routage du trafic de données dans les VANETs. Nous proposons (1) une approche de routage basée sur l’infonuagique qui, contrairement aux approches existantes, prend en compte les chemins de routage existants qui relaient déjà les données dans les VANETs. Les nouvelles demandes de routage sont traitées de sorte qu'aucun segment de route ne soit surchargé par plusieurs chemins de routage croisés. Au lieu d'acheminer les données en utilisant des chemins de routage sur un nombre limité de segments de route, notre approche équilibre la charge des données en utilisant des chemins de routage sur l'ensemble des tronçons routiers urbains, dans le but d'empêcher, dans la mesure du possible, les congestions locales dans les VANETs; et (2) une approche basée sur le réseau défini par logiciel (SDN) pour surveiller la connectivité VANET en temps réel et les délais de transmission sur chaque segment de route. Les données de surveillance sont utilisées en entrée de l'approche de routage.Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) will be eventually provided in the near future for both safety and comfort of people during their travel on the roads. Vehicular ad-hoc Networks (VANETs), represent the key component of ITS. VANETs consist of vehicles that communicate with each other and with the infrastructure. Indeed, vehicles will be able to exchange messages that include, for example, information about road traffic, emergency situations, and entertainment. Particularly, emergency messages are broadcasted by vehicles in case of an emergency (e.g., car accident); in order to allow drivers to react in time (e.g., slow down), emergency messages must be reliably disseminated with very short delay. In VANETs, there are several factors, such as lossy channel, hidden terminals, interferences and scarce bandwidth, which make satisfying reliability and delay requirements of emergency messages very challenging. In this thesis, as the first contribution, we propose a reliable time-efficient and multi-hop broadcasting scheme, called Dynamic Partitioning Scheme (DPS), to disseminate emergency messages. DPS computes dynamic partition sizes and the transmission schedule for each partition; inside the back area of the sender, the partitions are computed such that in average each partition contains at least a single vehicle; the objective is to ensure that only a vehicle in the farthest partition (from the sender) is used to disseminate the message, to next hop, resulting in shorter one hop delay. DPS ensures fast dissemination of emergency messages. Moreover, a new handshaking mechanism, that uses busy tones, is proposed to solve the problem of hidden terminal problem. In VANETs, Multicasting, i.e. delivering a message from a source to a limited known number of vehicles as destinations, is very important. Compared to Unicasting, with Multicasting, the source can simultaneously support multiple destinations, via a multicast tree, saving bandwidth and reducing overall communication congestion. However, since VANETs have a dynamic topology, maintaining the connectivity of the multicast tree is a major issue. As the second contribution, we propose two approaches to model total bandwidth usage of a multicast tree: (i) the first approach considers the number of road segments involved in the multicast tree and (ii) the second approach considers the number of relaying intersections involved in the multicast tree. A heuristic is proposed for each approach. To ensure QoS of the multicasting tree, efficient procedures are proposed for tracking destinations and monitoring QoS of road segments. As the third contribution, we study the problem of network congestion in routing data traffic in VANETs. We propose (1) a Cloud-based routing approach that, in opposition to existing approaches, takes into account existing routing paths which are already relaying data in VANETs. New routing requests are processed such that no road segment gets overloaded by multiple crossing routing paths. Instead of routing over a limited set of road segments, our approach balances the load of communication paths over the whole urban road segments, with the objective to prevent, whenever possible, local congestions in VANETs; and (2) a Software Defined Networking (SDN) based approach to monitor real-time VANETs connectivity and transmission delays on each road segment. The monitoring data is used as input to the routing approach

A Dynamic Messaging Architecture for Vehicular Social Networks

RÉSUMÉ La congestion routière et les longs trajets quotidiens sont deux grandes sources d'insatisfaction chez les voyageurs. Ces derniers partagent les mêmes besoins et intérêts au niveau de la route mais leur anonymité, leur manque de confiance en leur voisinage et la grande mobilité des véhicules les rendent incapables d'entamer et de maintenir une communication sure et stable entre eux, pendant les heures de pointe et les bouchons de circulation, afin de gérer ensemble l'état critique et imprévisible du trafic routier. Ceci déclenche chez eux des sentiments de frustration, augmente leur niveau de stress et les pousse à s'envoyer des messages de façon aveugle, ce qui empire la situation du trafic, congestionne le réseau, augmente les délais d'attente de réception d'information utiles et affecte négativement la qualité de leur voyage et leur état psychologique. Par ailleurs et en l'absence de congestion, certains voyageurs considèrent la longue durée de leur voyage comme du temps perdu à ne rien faire, d'autres utilisent les applications mobiles de géolocalisation et partagent leurs informations contextuelles avec leurs amis via les réseaux sociaux virtuels, ce qui est considéré comme un moyen de divertissement tout au long de leur voyage. En fait, l'anonymité des voyageurs au niveau de la route est alimentée par leur hésitation à partager leurs intérêts avec un public inconnu, ce qui pourrait les exposer aux problèmes de fuite de données personnelles et mettre en péril leur identité et information personnelles. Plusieurs travaux de recherche ont proposé des architectures véhiculaires qui favorisent et facilitent le développement de services et d'applications véhiculaires traditionnels orientés véhicule, qui visent principalement à améliorer la sécurité routière et à prévenir les accidents. D'autres travaux plus récents sont motivés par l'amélioration de la qualité du voyage et à offrir aux voyageurs des services de divertissement. Ces travaux proposent l'introduction du concept des réseaux sociaux dans les réseaux véhiculaires ad hoc afin de faciliter la formation de communautés véhiculaires sociales où les voyageurs sont regroupés en fonction de leur contexte et leurs intérêts sur la route. Pour ce faire, les auteurs de ces travaux ont procédé à la conception d'architectures véhiculaires sociales distribuées ou centralisées qui supportent le développement des applications véhiculaires orientées utilisateur. Cependant, ces architectures proposées ne sont pas hybrides. De plus, elles ne tiennent pas compte de la coopération entre les couches supérieures de l'architecture OSI (services et applications) et les couches inférieures responsables du routage de l'information contextuelle dynamique propagée à travers le réseau. En outre, ces dernières devraient aussi considérer la fragilité et l'instabilité des liens de communication entre les véhicules, ce qui empêche les voyageurs de maintenir une communication fiable et efficace sur la route et cause des collisions lors de la dissémination des messages dans des environnements véhiculaires denses. Par ailleurs, le coût d'accès à l'infrastructure induit une grande consommation de la bande passante dans le cas où la majorité des voyageurs se connectent à Internet simultanément dans un environnement véhiculaire hybride et dense. Cette thèse vient combler le vide d'architecture véhiculaire hybride dans les réseaux véhiculaires sociaux et propose un nouveau système de messagerie dynamique hybride, fiable, stable et efficace pour ce type de réseaux, appelé DYMES. Une telle architecture permet de favoriser les interactions entre les voyageurs en temps-réel, tout en respectant leur anonymité sur la route et en tenant compte de la dynamicité de leurs informations contextuelles partagées à travers le réseau, en utilisant un ensemble d'abstractions de communication fiable, efficace, distribué et centralisé, dans un environnement véhiculaire hybride et dense. Ce travail est subdivisé en trois volets importants qui ont fait l'objet d'articles scientifiques. Le premier volet consiste à identifier une méta-stratégie qui guide la conception des abstractions de communication hybrides sur lesquelles repose DYMES. Nous proposons l'utilisation du modèle de publication et de souscription aux services qui concorde avec la nature dynamique des réseaux véhiculaires et qui répond aux requis et aux besoins des voyageurs au niveau de la route en terme du respect de l'anonymité de leur identité. Dans ce modèle, les récipiendaires des messages publiés sont identifiés par leur contexte et non par leur identité. De ce fait, nous concevons et introduisons des abstractions dynamiques de publication et de souscription aux services qui visent à assurer une communication anonyme entre les voyageurs en leur permettant de publier leur information contextuelle dynamique et de souscrire en utilisant des filtres dynamiques sensibles au contexte des messages. Nous illustrons l'utilisation de DYMES et montrons son fonctionnement via deux applications véhiculaires sociales distribuées et centralisées. De plus, nous identifions et nous discutons nos choix d'implémentation des abstractions centralisées, distribuées et hybrides proposées qui guident la conception du système DYMES. Le deuxième volet propose un nouvel ensemble d'abstractions de publication et de souscription dynamiques, hybrides, efficientes et fiables qui représente un module de l'architecture DYMES. Notre première abstraction est une stratégie de publication et de souscription dynamique aux services de regroupement DPSCS (Dynamic Publish/Subscribe Clustering Strategy) qui aborde les problématiques de l'isolation des voyageurs au niveau de la route et de l'instabilité de leur liens de communication. DPSCS permet à chaque voyageur de former une communauté stable basée sur son propre contexte et intérêt, qui est capable de s'auto mettre à jour de façon efficiente et fiable tout en respectant l'anonymité des voyageurs sur la route. Pour ce faire, chaque voyageur qui désire communiquer avec son entourage en créant une communauté, publie une seule publication persistante, dans un espace déterminé, dont le contenu est dynamique. DPSCS repose sur un protocole de communication qui permet de propager cette publication de manière efficiente et fiable en sélectionnant les relais qui disposent d'un lien stable avec le nœud source (l'éditeur) de la publication et qui sont situés loin de ce nœud. Les voyageurs dont les souscriptions courantes concordent avec la publication dynamique du nœud source, joignent sa communauté. La persistance de la publication envoyée détermine la fin de la formation de la communauté. Notre deuxième abstraction proposée est une stratégie de découverte et de sélection de relais mobiles appelée MGDSS (Mobile Gateway Discovery/Selection Strategy). Cette dernière aborde les problématiques de découverte et de sélection de relais mobiles dans les environnements véhiculaires hybrides qui donnent naissance à d'autres problèmes comme la grande consommation de bande passante lors de l'accès d'un grand nombre de véhicules à l'infrastructure, et le nombre exponentiel de messages envoyés entre les voyageurs dans les environnements véhiculaires denses. MGDSS se base sur le résultat de DPSCS. Elle facilite aux voyageurs groupés dans des communautés la découverte de leur entourage en leur permettant de s'envoyer un seul message chacun, qui est propagé de façon fiable et efficiente en utilisant un nouveau protocole de diffusion nommé CoCo (Context-aware Coding). Ce dernier permet de réduire le nombre de retransmissions des messages à travers la communauté et d'en assurer la livraison par les voyageurs. Ces derniers procèdent à la sélection d'un nombre minimal de nœuds relais capables de les lier à l'infrastructure en se basant sur les informations qu'ils ont reçues à travers MGDS-CoCo. Notre stratégie de sélection nommée MGSS (Mobile Gateway Selection Strategy) permet aux voyageurs d'envoyer leurs publications et leurs souscriptions à l'infrastructure à travers les relais sélectionnés en utilisant les chemins les plus stables. Une nouvelle stratégie de correspondance entre publication et souscription est implémentée au niveau de l'infrastructure et permet de comparer et de mettre à jour les souscriptions des voyageurs et de les filtrer selon leur contenu dynamique avec les publications reçues. Le résultat est renvoyé aux souscripteurs concernés via le relais sélectionné en utilisant MGSS. L'évaluation de performance de cet ensemble d'abstractions dynamiques de publication et de souscription de l'architecture DYMES prouve que la stratégie DPSCS est, en moyenne, 28% meilleure que les autres stratégies existantes en termes d'efficience et qu'elle est capable de former des communautés dans l'ordre des millisecondes. De plus, MGDSS dépasse les stratégies existantes par un facteur de 71% à 100% en termes d'efficience pour toute densité de nœuds comparée aux autres stratégies. Finalement, le troisième volet de cette thèse aborde la problématique de la dissémination des messages dans les environnements véhiculaires distribués. Nous proposons une nouvelle stratégie de publication et de souscription dynamique aux services appelée SocialDrive-BroadTrip qui constitue un module important dans l'architecture DYMES. Cette stratégie assure une communication fiable et efficiente entre les voyageurs regroupés en peloton. Elle leur permet de publier des mises à jour persistantes dont le contenu est dynamique et de souscrire en utilisant des filtres dynamiques sensibles au contexte des mises à jour publiées. La correspondance entre publication et souscription est effectuée par les souscripteurs qui sont intéressés à recevoir les dernières mises à jour publiées. La propagation de ces dernières est assurée par un nouveau protocole de diffusion nommé BroadTrip. Ce dernier est basé sur la localisation et sur le codage réseau afin de réduire le nombre de retransmissions des mises à jour envoyées à travers le peloton. L'évaluation de performance de BroadTrip montre qu'il est en moyenne 12% à 38% meilleur que les autres approches existantes. De plus, nos résultats de simulation montrent que SocialDrive-BroadTrip dépasse les autres stratégies de 26% à 58% en termes d'efficience et qu'elle est plus rapide que les autres stratégies en termes du nombre de correspondances de mises à jours effectuées. Globalement, les abstractions de communication proposées dans l'architecture DYMES peuvent être utilisées comme base de développement de n'importe quelle application véhiculaire sociale. De plus, les résultats prouvent que l'architecture DYMES améliore la qualité d'interaction entre les voyageurs tout au long de leur voyage, en leur offrant différents types de services qui leur permettent de contrer leur isolement sur la route et de communiquer en temps réel de façon anonyme, efficiente, stable et efficace. Ceci permet aussi d'assurer leur confort pendant leurs navettes quotidiennes.----------ABSTRACT Spending time in a lengthy commute is unavoidable and is considered as one of the most painful parts of the commuters' daily routine. As ubiquitous computing is increasingly revolutionizing the way people interact and socialize, there is a pressing need to showcase vehicular social applications and services that enable proximity-based social interactions among commuters during their daily commutes. These applications aim at improving the quality of the commuters' traveling experience since they share similar congestion issues and are connected through wireless links. However, the major challenging issues that constraint their social interactions during their highway travels are 1) their anonymity on the road that does not encourage them to share their common interest which may reveal their identities and disclose their private information to an unknown public, and 2) the heterogeneous nature of vehicular environments and the unreliable connectivity of their wireless links which may drastically impact the quality of their social interactions. The inclusion of social networks within vehicles has attracted many researchers to devise either distributed or centralized vehicular social frameworks that support the development of vehicular applications and promote social interactions among commuters on the road. However, and to the best of our knowledge, there is a lack of hybrid vehicular social architectures. Moreover, existing architectures do not ensure a cooperation between upper service layers and the physical vehicular communication layers and are only designed to satisfy a specific kind of commuters' requirements. In this thesis, we tackle the lack of specialized hybrid vehicular social frameworks in the literature and we propose a novel, efficient, reliable, stable, hybrid and Dynamic Messaging System (DYMES) for vehicular social networks. Our proposed messaging system enables real-time social interactions among commuters based on their common interests, without revealing their identities, while taking into account the dynamic nature of their shared information, using a set of efficient, reliable, distributed and centralized communication abstractions. More specifically, this work is subdivided into three main aspects, each of these aspects led to scientific publications. The first aspect consists in the identification of a meta-strategy to guide building DYMES. We propose the use of the publish/subscribe model to design novel dynamic communication abstractions that match the dynamic nature of vehicular networks, as well as the anonymous nature of commuters' on the road. Our proposed dynamic publish/subscribe abstractions aim at breaking the commuters' social isolation by allowing them to publish dynamic contextual information and to subscribe using online context-aware message filters, without revealing their identities. We show the DYMES usage via two typical centralized and distributed vehicular social applications. Furthermore, we identify and discuss implementation issues of our proposed hybrid, distributed and centralized publish/subscribe abstractions which guide the building of our DYMES architecture. The second aspect introduces a set of novel, hybrid, efficient, reliable, stable and dynamic publish/subscribe abstractions that constitute an important building block of our hybrid DYMES architecture. Our first proposed abstraction is a Dynamic Publish/Subscribe Clustering Strategy (DPSCS) that tackles the problems of the commuters' anonymity and the intermittent nature of their wireless links which limit their social communication during their road trips. DPSCS provides the opportunity for each commuter to build a stable, self-updated, efficient and reliable community based on its own interests, without disclosing its personal information and without flooding the network. Using DPSCS, each commuter publishes a single persistent and dynamic publication in a predetermined geographical range, leaving the dynamic matching process to subscribers. DPSCS relies on the two Shot Stable Routing Service (2S-SRS) that disseminates the commuter's publication using stable and farther nodes. Our second proposed abstraction is a Mobile Gateway Discovery/Selection Strategy (MGDSS) that tackles the problems pertaining to mobile gateway discovery and selection in hybrid dense vehicular environments and that lead to other related challenges such as extensive bandwidth consumption and high message overhead. MGDSS is based on the outcome of DPSCS and allows commuters clustered in interest-based communities to efficiently and reliably discover their neighborhood, using an efficient and reliable broadcasting protocol called CoCo (Context-aware Coding). This protocol uses location and network coding in order to reduce the number of message retransmissions throughout the network, during the discovery process. A minimum number of mobile gateways is then selected by each commuter, upon the end of the discovery process, in order to simultaneously send the commuters' dynamic publications and subscriptions to the infrastructure using stable links. An online matching strategy is executed at the infrastructure and aims at updating the commuters' subscriptions and at sending positive matches to the corresponding subscribers. More specifically, DPSCS outperforms the next best comparable approach by 28% and succeeds to build social communities in the order of milliseconds. Furthermore, MGDSS shows an improvement of 71% to 100% over existing discovery strategies for any node density. Finally, the third aspect introduces a new dynamic publish/subscribe broadcasting abstraction called SocialDrive-BroadTrip that also constitutes an important building block of our hybrid DYMES architecture. SocialDrive-BroadTrip tackles the problem of updates dissemination in distributed vehicular environments. It aims at enabling real-time social interactions among commuters clustered in platoons. It allows them to publish dynamic and persistent updates and to subscribe using online context-aware update filters. Matching is executed by subscribers who are interested to receive the newest updates. The dissemination of persistent publications (updates) throughout the network is performed using a novel, efficient and reliable broadcasting protocol called BroadTrip. It leverages on location information and network coding in order to reduce the number of retransmissions needed to propagate the published persistent updates in platoons. The proposed abstraction is evaluated analytically and through simulations. We first evaluate the performance of BroadTrip protocol. The results show that it outperforms the next best comparable approach by 12% to 38% depending on settings. We then use BroadTrip as an underlying protocol in the DYMES architecture and evaluate the performance of SocialDrive-BroadTrip in a vehicular dense environment. The results show that our proposed strategy outperforms other existing approaches by 26% to 58% depending on settings. Globally, the results prove that DYMES is the best suitable messaging system to improve the quality of real-time social interactions among commuters in hybrid and dense vehicular environments, that it is able to ensure efficiency and comfort during their daily commutes and that its dynamic, efficient and reliable communication abstractions can be used to build any kind of vehicular social applications

Efficient Multi-Hop Communications for Software-Defined Wireless Networks

PhD thesisSoftware-Defined Networking (SDN) recently emerged to overcome the difficulty of network control by decoupling the control plane from the data plane. In terms of the wireless medium and mobile devices, although new challenges are introduced into SDN research, SDN promises to address many inherited problems in wireless communication networks. However, centralised SDN control brings concerns of scalability, reliability, and robustness especially for wireless networks. Considering these concerns, the use of physically distributed SDN controllers has been recognized as an effective solution. Nevertheless, it remains a challenge in regard to how the physically distributed controllers effectively communicate to form a logically centralised network control plane. Dissemination is a type of one-to-many communication service which plays an important role in control information exchange. This research focuses on the strategic packet forwarding for more efficient multi-hop communications in software-defined wireless networks. The research aim is to improve the delivery efficiency by exploiting the delay budget and node mobility. To achieve this objective, existing multi-hop forwarding methods and dissemination schemes in wireless networks are investigated and analysed. In the literature, information from the navigation system of mobile nodes has been utilised to identify candidate relay nodes. However, further studies are required to utilise partially predictable mobility based on more generalised navigational information such as the movement direction. In this research, the feasible exploitation of directional movement in path-unconstrained mobility is investigated for efficient multi-hop communications. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art because directional correlation of node movement is considered to dynamically exploit the delay budget for better selection of the relay node(s).Chinese Scholarship Council (CSC

Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks

Being infrastructure-less and without central administration control, wireless ad-hoc networking is playing a more and more important role in extending the coverage of traditional wireless infrastructure (cellular networks, wireless LAN, etc). This book includes state-of the-art techniques and solutions for wireless ad-hoc networks. It focuses on the following topics in ad-hoc networks: vehicular ad-hoc networks, security and caching, TCP in ad-hoc networks and emerging applications. It is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

Distribuição de conteúdos em redes veiculares usando mecanismos de comunicação tolerantes ao atraso

Mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e TelecomunicaçõesThe last couple of decades have been the stage for the introduction of new telecommunication networks. It is expected that in the future all types of vehicles, such as cars, buses and trucks have the ability to intercommunicate and form a vehicular network. Vehicular networks display particularities when compared to other networks due to their continuous node mobility and their wide geographical dispersion, leading to a permanent network fragmentation. Therefore, the main challenges that this type of network entails relate to the intermittent connectivity and the long and variable delay in information delivery. To address the problems related to the intermittent connectivity, a new concept was introduced – Delay Tolerant Network (DTN). This architecture is built on a Store-Carry-and-Forward (SCF) mechanism in order to assure the delivery of information when there is no end-to-end path defined. Vehicular networks support a multiplicity of services, including the transportation of non-urgent information. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that the use of a DTN for the dissemination of non-urgent information is able to surpass the aforementioned challenges. The work developed focused on the use of DTNs for the dissemination of non-urgent information. This information is originated in the network service provider and should be available on mobile network terminals during a limited period of time. In order to do so, four different strategies were deployed: Random, Least Number of Hops First (LNHF), Local Rarest Bundle First (LRBF) e Local Rarest Generation First (LRGF). All of these strategies have a common goal: to disseminate content into the network in the shortest period of time and minimizing network congestion. This work also contemplates the analysis and implementation of techniques that reduce network congestion. The design, implementation and validation of the proposed strategies was divided into three stages. The first stage focused on creating a Matlab emulator for the fast implementation and strategy validation. This stage resulted in the four strategies that were afterwards implemented in the DTNs software Helix – developed in a partnership between Instituto de Telecomunicac¸˜oes (IT) and Veniam R , which are responsible for the largest operating vehicular network worldwide that is located in Oporto city. The strategies were later evaluated on an emulator that was built for the largescale testing of DTN. Both emulators account for vehicular mobility based on information previously collected from the real platform. Finally, the strategy that presented the best overall performance was tested on a real platform – in a lab environment – for concept and operability demonstration. It is possible to conclude that two of the implemented strategies (LRBF and LRGF) can be deployed in the real network and guarantee a significant delivery rate. The LRBF strategy has the best performance in terms of delivery. However, it needs to add a significant overhead to the network in order to work. In the future, tests of scalability should be conducted in a real environment in order to confirm the emulator results. The real implementation of the strategies should be accompanied by the introduction of new types of services for content distribution.Nas últimas décadas tem-se assistido à introdução de novas redes de telecomunicações. Entre estas destacam-se as redes veiculares constituídas por todo o tipo de veículos com capacidades de intercomunicação. As redes veiculares têm especificidades singulares face a outro tipo de redes devido à constante mobilidade dos nós e à sua elevada dispersão geográfica. Os principais desafios introduzidos por este tipo de redes prendem-se com a conectividade intermitente e o atraso longo e variado na entrega da informação. Por forma a fazer face aos problemas relacionados com a conectividade intermitente, introduziu-se um novo conceito intitulado de Delay Tolerant Network (DTN). Esta arquitetura assenta num mecanismo de StoreCarry-and-Forward (SCF) por forma a garantir a entrega de informação em situações onde não existe um caminho estabelecido fim-a-fim. As redes veiculares suportam uma multiplicidade de serviços, nos quais se inclui o transporte de informação não-urgente. Desta forma, a utilização de uma DTN para a difusão de informação não-urgente permite ultrapassar os desafios identificados anteriormente. O trabalho realizado foca-se na utilização de DTNs para a disseminação de informação não-urgente. Por forma a operacionalizar esta premissa foram implementadas quatro estratégias distintas: Random, Least Number of Hops First (LNHF), Local Rarest Bundle First (LRBF) e Local Rarest Generation First (LRGF). Todas estas estratégias tem um objetivo comum: disseminar um conteúdo na rede no menor tempo possível minimizando ao máximo o congestionamento da rede. Foram também implementadas e estudadas técnicas para minimizar o congestionamento do meio. A metodologia de desenho, implementação e validação das estratégias propostas foi desenvolvida em três fases. A primeira focou-se na criação de um emulador Matlab para a implementação rápida e validação das estratégias. Dessa primeira fase resultaram quatro estratégias que foram posteriormente implementadas no software de DTNs Helix desenvolvido através de uma parceria entre o Instituto de Telecomunicações (IT) e a Veniam R (responsáveis pela maior rede veicular em operação a nível mundial localizada na cidade do Porto). As estratégias foram depois avaliadas num emulador construído para fazer testes de grande escala. Ambos os emuladores introduzem a mobilidade dos veículos com base em informação recolhida previamente da plataforma real. Por fim a estratégia que apresentou o melhor desempenho foi introduzida e testada numa plataforma real para demonstração de conceito e operacionalidade. Conclui-se que duas das estratégias implementadas (LRBF and LRGF) são passíveis de utilização na rede real garantido uma taxa de entrega significativa. A estratégia LRBF apresentou o melhor desempenho em termos de entrega, no entanto, necessita de adicionar um overhead considerável na rede para funcionar. No futuro devem ser realizados testes de escalabilidade em ambiente real por forma a confirmar os resultados obtidos em ambiente de emulação e real em pequena escala. A implementação real das estratégias deve ser acompanhada pela introdução de novos tipos de serviços para distribuição de conteúdos