1,142 research outputs found
Amorphous Placement and Retrieval of Sensory Data in Sparse Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks
Abstract—Personal communication devices are increasingly being equipped with sensors that are able to passively collect information from their surroundings – information that could be stored in fairly small local caches. We envision a system in which users of such devices use their collective sensing, storage, and communication resources to query the state of (possibly remote) neighborhoods. The goal of such a system is to achieve the highest query success ratio using the least communication overhead (power). We show that the use of Data Centric Storage (DCS), or directed placement, is a viable approach for achieving this goal, but only when the underlying network is well connected. Alternatively, we propose, amorphous placement, in which sensory samples are cached locally and informed exchanges of cached samples is used to diffuse the sensory data throughout the whole network. In handling queries, the local cache is searched first for potential answers. If unsuccessful, the query is forwarded to one or more direct neighbors for answers. This technique leverages node mobility and caching capabilities to avoid the multi-hop communication overhead of directed placement. Using a simplified mobility model, we provide analytical lower and upper bounds on the ability of amorphous placement to achieve uniform field coverage in one and two dimensions. We show that combining informed shuffling of cached samples upon an encounter between two nodes, with the querying of direct neighbors could lead to significant performance improvements. For instance, under realistic mobility models, our simulation experiments show that amorphous placement achieves 10% to 40% better query answering ratio at a 25% to 35% savings in consumed power over directed placement.National Science Foundation (CNS Cybertrust 0524477, CNS NeTS 0520166, CNS ITR 0205294, EIA RI 0202067
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
Learning in Real-Time Search: A Unifying Framework
Real-time search methods are suited for tasks in which the agent is
interacting with an initially unknown environment in real time. In such
simultaneous planning and learning problems, the agent has to select its
actions in a limited amount of time, while sensing only a local part of the
environment centered at the agents current location. Real-time heuristic search
agents select actions using a limited lookahead search and evaluating the
frontier states with a heuristic function. Over repeated experiences, they
refine heuristic values of states to avoid infinite loops and to converge to
better solutions. The wide spread of such settings in autonomous software and
hardware agents has led to an explosion of real-time search algorithms over the
last two decades. Not only is a potential user confronted with a hodgepodge of
algorithms, but he also faces the choice of control parameters they use. In
this paper we address both problems. The first contribution is an introduction
of a simple three-parameter framework (named LRTS) which extracts the core
ideas behind many existing algorithms. We then prove that LRTA*, epsilon-LRTA*,
SLA*, and gamma-Trap algorithms are special cases of our framework. Thus, they
are unified and extended with additional features. Second, we prove
completeness and convergence of any algorithm covered by the LRTS framework.
Third, we prove several upper-bounds relating the control parameters and
solution quality. Finally, we analyze the influence of the three control
parameters empirically in the realistic scalable domains of real-time
navigation on initially unknown maps from a commercial role-playing game as
well as routing in ad hoc sensor networks
Distributed Maximum Likelihood Sensor Network Localization
We propose a class of convex relaxations to solve the sensor network
localization problem, based on a maximum likelihood (ML) formulation. This
class, as well as the tightness of the relaxations, depends on the noise
probability density function (PDF) of the collected measurements. We derive a
computational efficient edge-based version of this ML convex relaxation class
and we design a distributed algorithm that enables the sensor nodes to solve
these edge-based convex programs locally by communicating only with their close
neighbors. This algorithm relies on the alternating direction method of
multipliers (ADMM), it converges to the centralized solution, it can run
asynchronously, and it is computation error-resilient. Finally, we compare our
proposed distributed scheme with other available methods, both analytically and
numerically, and we argue the added value of ADMM, especially for large-scale
networks
Robust Localization from Incomplete Local Information
We consider the problem of localizing wireless devices in an ad-hoc network
embedded in a d-dimensional Euclidean space. Obtaining a good estimation of
where wireless devices are located is crucial in wireless network applications
including environment monitoring, geographic routing and topology control. When
the positions of the devices are unknown and only local distance information is
given, we need to infer the positions from these local distance measurements.
This problem is particularly challenging when we only have access to
measurements that have limited accuracy and are incomplete. We consider the
extreme case of this limitation on the available information, namely only the
connectivity information is available, i.e., we only know whether a pair of
nodes is within a fixed detection range of each other or not, and no
information is known about how far apart they are. Further, to account for
detection failures, we assume that even if a pair of devices is within the
detection range, it fails to detect the presence of one another with some
probability and this probability of failure depends on how far apart those
devices are. Given this limited information, we investigate the performance of
a centralized positioning algorithm MDS-MAP introduced by Shang et al., and a
distributed positioning algorithm, introduced by Savarese et al., called
HOP-TERRAIN. In particular, for a network consisting of n devices positioned
randomly, we provide a bound on the resulting error for both algorithms. We
show that the error is bounded, decreasing at a rate that is proportional to
R/Rc, where Rc is the critical detection range when the resulting random
network starts to be connected, and R is the detection range of each device.Comment: 40 pages, 13 figure
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