609 research outputs found
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
On the Catalyzing Effect of Randomness on the Per-Flow Throughput in Wireless Networks
This paper investigates the throughput capacity of a flow crossing a
multi-hop wireless network, whose geometry is characterized by general
randomness laws including Uniform, Poisson, Heavy-Tailed distributions for both
the nodes' densities and the number of hops. The key contribution is to
demonstrate \textit{how} the \textit{per-flow throughput} depends on the
distribution of 1) the number of nodes inside hops' interference sets, 2)
the number of hops , and 3) the degree of spatial correlations. The
randomness in both 's and is advantageous, i.e., it can yield larger
scalings (as large as ) than in non-random settings. An interesting
consequence is that the per-flow capacity can exhibit the opposite behavior to
the network capacity, which was shown to suffer from a logarithmic decrease in
the presence of randomness. In turn, spatial correlations along the end-to-end
path are detrimental by a logarithmic term
Max-min Fairness in 802.11 Mesh Networks
In this paper we build upon the recent observation that the 802.11 rate
region is log-convex and, for the first time, characterise max-min fair rate
allocations for a large class of 802.11 wireless mesh networks. By exploiting
features of the 802.11e/n MAC, in particular TXOP packet bursting, we are able
to use this characterisation to establish a straightforward, practically
implementable approach for achieving max-min throughput fairness. We
demonstrate that this approach can be readily extended to encompass time-based
fairness in multi-rate 802.11 mesh networks
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