Performance evaluation of mobile relays in CDMA system

In this thesis we consider the uplink direction of DS-CDMA (Direct Sequence, Code Division Multiple Access) network with multihop transmission. For the purpose, we discussed simple conditions by which we can understand whether single hop or multihop is better. One promising direction that the current wireless network moves toward is multihopping that allows mobiles to relay packets of other mobiles to their destinations. A major reason for adopting such multihopping is in capacity and range enhancement, which may pay off its increased complexity. Here, we focus on the non-real-time (NRT) services in the uplink of a DS-CDMA cell. Mobiles are moving around the cell, trying to send NRT packets to the base station, possibly by multihopping. Our goal is to derive a per-hop based multihop scheduling algorithm that is easily applicable in a cellular network with high mobility. For the purpose, we utilize the similarity between the basketball game and our multihop uplink packet scheduling problem. By regarding players, the basket and the ball as mobiles, the base station and data packet, respectively, we can mimic passing (multihopping) patterns of the basketball players. A major difference between the two is that in the multihopping problem, there are many packets (balls) while in the basket ball game, there is only one ball to shoot into the basket

Cabernet: A Content Delivery Network for Moving Vehicles

This paper describes the design, implementation, and evaluation of Cabernet, a system to deliver data to and from moving vehicles using open 802.11 (WiFi) access points encountered opportunistically during travel. Network connectivity in Cabernet is both fleeting (access points are typicallywithin range for a few seconds) and intermittent (because the access points don't provide continuous coverage), and suffers from high packet loss rates over the wireless channel. On the positive side, in the absence of losses, achievable data rates over WiFi can reach many megabits per second. Unfortunately, current protocols don't establish end-to-end connectivity fast enough, don't cope well with intermittent connectivity, and don't handle high packet loss rates well enough to achieve this potential throughput. Cabernet incorporates two new techniques to improve data delivery throughput: QuickWifi, a streamlined client-side process to establish end-to-end connectivity quickly, reducing the mean time to establish connectivity from 12.9 seconds to less than 366 ms and CTP, a transport protocol that distinguishes congestion on the wired portion of the path from losses over the wireless link to reliably and efficiently deliver data to nodes in cars. We have deployed the system on a fleet of 10 taxis, each running several hours per day in the Boston area. Our experiments show that CTP improves throughput by a factor of 2x over TCP and that QuickWifi increases the number of connectionsby a factor of 4x over unoptimized approaches. Thus, Cabernet is perhaps the first practical system capable of delivering data to moving vehicles over existing short-range WiFi radios, with a mean transfer capacity of approximately 38 megabytes/hour per car, or a mean rate of 87 kbit/s

A content dissemination framework for vehicular networking

Vehicular Networks are a peculiar class of wireless mobile networks in which vehicles are equipped with radio interfaces and are, therefore, able to communicate with fixed infrastructure (if available) or other vehicles. Content dissemination has a potential number of applications in vehicular networking, including advertising, traffic warnings, parking notifications and emergency announcements. This thesis addresses two possible dissemination strategies: i) Push-based that is aiming to proactively deliver information to a group of vehicles based on their interests and the level of matching content, and ii) Pull-based that is allowing vehicles to explicitly request custom information. Our dissemination framework is taking into consideration very specific information only available in vehicular networks: the geographical data produced by the navigation system. With its aid, a vehicle's mobility patterns become predictable. This information is exploited to efficiently deliver the content where it is needed. Furthermore, we use the navigation system to automatically filter information which might be relevant to the vehicles. Our framework has been designed and implemented in .NET C# and Microsoft MapPoint. It was tested using a small number of vehicles in the area of Cambridge, UK. Moreover, to prove the correctness of our protocols, we further evaluated it in a large-scale network simulation over a number of realistic vehicular trace-based scenarios. Finally, we built a test-case application aiming to prove that vehicles can gain from such a framework. In this application every vehicle collects and disseminates road traffic information. Vehicles that receive this information can individually evaluate the traffic conditions and take an alternative route, if needed. To evaluate this approach, we collaborated with UCLA's Network Research Lab (NRL), to build a simulator that combines network and dynamic mobility emulation simultaneously. When our dissemination framework is used, the drivers can considerably reduce their trip-times

Experimental Analysis of Opportunistic Communication for Vehicular Internet Access

This thesis examines the problem of using 802.11 hotspots for vehicular Internet access. In this access paradigm, a user in a vehicle performs batch transfers by opportunistically communicating with roadside 802.11 access points while driving along a highway. Despite the short connection duration, a significant amount of data can be transferred. Because complete coverage is not needed, this method of Internet access provides a low-cost alternative to using cellular technology for applications that can tolerate some delay and require large data transfer such as sending or receiving music, movies, or digital photographs. Although vehicular opportunistic connections offer the potential to transfer a large of amount of data, utilizing this potential is non-trivial because existing transport and data-link layer network protocols were not designed for this use. This thesis presents an experimental analysis of transport and data-link layer protocol operation at a level of detail not previously explored. We identify ten problems that cause a reduction of up to 50% of the amount of data that could have been transferred in this scenario. Our primary finding is that transmission errors during connection setup and inadequate MAC data rate selection are the main causes of the under-utilization of the connection. Based on these findings we make preliminary recommendations for best practices for using vehicular opportunistic connections. In particular, we argue that overall throughput could be significantly improved if environmental information was available to the lower layer network protocols

Optimal Content Downloading in Vehicular Networks

We consider a system where users aboard communication-enabled vehicles are interested in downloading different contents from Internet-based servers. This scenario captures many of the infotainment services that vehicular communication is envisioned to enable, including news reporting, navigation maps and software updating, or multimedia file downloading. In this paper, we outline the performance limits of such a vehicular content downloading system by modelling the downloading process as an optimization problem, and maximizing the overall system throughput. Our approach allows us to investigate the impact of different factors, such as the roadside infrastructure deployment, the vehicle-to-vehicle relaying, and the penetration rate of the communication technology, even in presence of large instances of the problem. Results highlight the existence of two operational regimes at different penetration rates and the importance of an efficient, yet 2-hop constrained, vehicle-to-vehicle relaying

SOWER: Self-­Organizing Wireless Network for Messaging

Short Message Service (SMS) has become extremely popular in many countries, and represents a multi-billion dollars market. Yet many consumers consider that the price cellular network operators charge for it is too high. In this paper, we explain that there exist alternatives to cellular networks for the provision of SMS. In particular, we present the Self-Organizing Wireless messaging nEtwoRk (SOWER), an all-wireless network operable in cities. In SOWER, each user installs a wireless, power-plugged, device at home and communicates by means of a mobile device. Based on our experimental measurements of IEEE 802.11 equipped devices, we show the feasibility of the concept in various urban scenarios. We also show that city-wide connectivity can be achieved even with a limited market penetration. We propose an appropriate routing protocol, and we explain that the capacity of such networks is sufficient to support messaging communication

Adaptive Fuzzy Spray and Wait: Efficient Routing for Opportunistic Networks

The technological advancement in the area of wireless networking is ultimately envisioned to reach complete and seamless ubiquity, where every point on earth will need to be covered by Internet access. Low connectivity environments have emerged as a major challenge, and accordingly Opportunistic Networks arose as a promising solution. While these networks do not assume the existence of a path from the source to the destination, they opportunistically utilize any possible resource available to maximize throughput. Routing protocols in such environments have always tried to target an increased delivery probability, a shorter delay, and a reduced overhead. In this work, we try to balance these apparently conflicting goals by introducing “Adaptive Fuzzy Spray and Wait”, an optimized routing scheme for opportunistic networks. On top of the overhead reduction, we argue that the spray-based opportunistic routing techniques can attain higher delivery probability through integrating the adequate buffer prioritization and dropping policies. Towards that purpose, we employ a fuzzy decision making scheme. We also tackle the limitations of the previous approaches by allowing a full-adaptation to the varying network parameters. Extensive simulations using the ONE (Opportunistic Network Environment) simulator [1] show the robustness and effectiveness of the algorithm under challenged network conditions

Conception d’un support de communication opportuniste pour les services pervasifs

The vision of pervasive computing of building interactive smart spaces in the physical environment is gradually heading from the research domain to reality. Computing capacity is moving beyond personal computers to many day-to-day devices, and these devices become, thanks to multiple interfaces, capable of communicating directly with one another or of connecting to the Internet.In this thesis, we are interested in a kind of pervasive computing environment that forms what we call an Intermittently Connected Hybrid Network (ICHN). An ICHN is a network composed of two parts: a fixed and a mobile part. The fixed part is formed of some fixed infostations (potentially connected together with some fixed infrastructure, typically the Internet). The mobile part, on the other hand, is formed of smartphones carried by nomadic people. While the fixed part is mainly stable, the mobile part is considered challenging and form what is called an Opportunistic Network. Indeed, relying on short-range communication means coupled with the free movements of people and radio interferences lead to frequent disconnections. To perform a network-wide communication, the "store, carry and forward" approach is usually applied. With this approach, a message can be stored temporarily on a device, in order to be forwarded later when circumstances permit. Any device can opportunistically be used as an intermediate relay to facilitate the propagation of a message from one part of the network to another. In this context, the provisioning of pervasive services is particularly challenging, and requires revisiting important components of the provisioning process, such as performing pervasive service discovery and invocation with the presence of connectivity disruptions and absence of both end-to-end paths and access continuity due to user mobility. This thesis addresses the problems of providing network-wide service provisioning in ICHNs and proposes solutions for pervasive service discovery, invocation and access continuity. Concerning service discovery challenge, we propose TAO-DIS, a service discovery protocol that performs an automatic and fast service discovery mechanism. TAO-DIS takes into account the hybrid nature of an ICHN and that the majority of services are provided by infostations. It permits mobile users to discover all the services in the surrounding environment in order to identify and choose the most convenient ones. To allow users to interact with the discovered services, we introduce TAO-INV. TAO-INV is a service invocation protocol specifically designed for ICHNs. It relies on a set of heuristics and mechanisms that ensures performing efficient routing of messages (both service requests and responses) between fixed infostations and mobile clients while preserving both low values of overhead and round trip delays. Since some infostations in the network might be connected, we propose a soft handover mechanism that modifies the invocation process in order to reduce service delivery delays. This handover mechanism takes into consideration the opportunistic nature of the mobile part of the ICHN. We have performed various experiments to evaluate our solutions and compare them with other protocols designed for ad hoc and opportunistic networks. The obtained results tend to prove that our solutions outperform these protocols, namely thanks to the optimizations we have developed for ICHNs. In our opinion, building specialized protocols that benefit from techniques specifically designed for ICHNs is an approach that should be pursued, in complement with research works on general-purpose communication protocolsLa vision de l'informatique ubiquitaire permettant de construire des espaces intelligents interactifs dans l'environnement physique passe, peu à peu, du domaine de la recherche à la réalité. La capacité de calcul ne se limite plus à l'ordinateur personnel mais s'intègre dans de multiples appareils du quotidien, et ces appareils deviennent, grâce à plusieurs interfaces, capables de communiquer directement les uns avec les autres ou bien de se connecter à Internet.Dans cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés à un type d'environnement cible de l'informatique ubiquitaire qui forme ce que nous appelons un réseau hybride à connexions intermittentes (ICHN). Un ICHN est un réseau composé de deux parties : une partie fixe et une partie mobile. La partie fixe est constituée de plusieurs infostations fixes (potentiellement reliées entre elles avec une infrastructure fixe, typiquement l'Internet). La partie mobile, quant à elle, est constituée de smartphones portés par des personnes nomades. Tandis que la partie fixe est principalement stable, la partie mobile pose un certain nombre de défis propres aux réseaux opportunistes. En effet, l'utilisation de moyens de communication à courte portée couplée à des déplacements de personnes non contraints et à des interférences radio induit des déconnexions fréquentes. Le concept du "store, carry and forward" est alors habituellement appliqué pour permettre la communication sur l'ensemble du réseau. Avec cette approche, un message peut être stocké temporairement sur un appareil avant d'être transféré plus tard quand les circonstances sont plus favorables. Ainsi, n'importe quel appareil devient un relai de transmission opportuniste qui permet de faciliter la propagation d'un message dans le réseau. Dans ce contexte, la fourniture de services est particulièrement problématique, et exige de revisiter les composants principaux du processus de fourniture, tels que la découverte et l'invocation de service, en présence de ruptures de connectivité et en l'absence de chemins de bout en bout. Cette thèse aborde les problèmes de fourniture de service sur l'ensemble d'un ICHN et propose des solutions pour la découverte de services, l'invocation et la continuité d'accès. En ce qui concerne le défi de la découverte de services, nous proposons TAO-DIS, un protocole qui met en œuvre un mécanisme automatique et rapide de découverte de services. TAO-DIS tient compte de la nature hybride d'un ICHN et du fait que la majorité des services sont fournis par des infostations. Il permet aux utilisateurs mobiles de découvrir tous les services dans l'environnement afin d'identifier et de choisir les plus intéressants. Pour permettre aux utilisateurs d'interagir avec les services découverts, nous introduisons TAO-INV. TAO-INV est un protocole d'invocation de service spécialement conçu pour les ICHN. Il se fonde sur un ensemble d'heuristiques et de mécanismes qui assurent un acheminement efficace des messages (des requêtes et des réponses de services) entre les infostations fixes et les clients mobiles tout en conservant un surcoût et des temps de réponses réduits. Puisque certaines infostations dans le réseau peuvent être reliées entre elles, nous proposons un mécanisme de continuité d'accès (handover) qui modifie le processus d'invocation pour réduire les délais de délivrance. Dans sa définition, il est tenu compte de la nature opportuniste de la partie mobile de l'ICHN. Nous avons mené diverses expérimentations pour évaluer nos solutions et les comparer à d'autres protocoles conçus pour des réseaux ad hoc et des réseaux opportunistes. Les résultats obtenus tendent à montrer que nos solutions surpassent ces autres protocoles, notamment grâce aux optimisations que nous avons développées pour les ICHN. À notre avis, construire des protocoles spécialisés qui tirent parti des techniques spécifiquement conçues pour les ICHN est une approche à poursuivre en complément des recherches sur des protocoles de communication polyvalent

Walkabout : an asynchronous messaging architecture for mobile devices

Modern mobile devices are prolific producers and consumers of digital data, and wireless networking capabilities enable them to transfer their data over the Internet while moving. Applications running on these devices may perform transfers to upload data for backup or distribution, or to download new content on demand. Unfortunately, the limited connectivity that mobile devices experience can make these transfers slow and impractical as the amount of data increases. This thesis argues that asynchronous messaging supported by local proxies can improve the transfer capabilities of mobile devices, making it practical for them to participate in large Internet transfers. The design of the Walkabout architecture follows this approach: proxies form store-and-forward overlay networks to deliver messages asynchronously across the Internet on behalf of devices. A mobile device uploads a message to a local proxy at rapid speed, and the overlay delivers it to one or more destination devices, caching the message until each one is able to retrieve it from a local proxy. A device is able to partially upload or download a message whenever it has network connectivity, and can resume this transfer at any proxy if interrupted through disconnection. Simulation results show that Walkabout provides better throughput for mobile devices than is possible under existing methods, for a range of movement patterns. Upload and end-to-end to transfer speeds are always high when the device sending the message is mobile. In the basic Walkabout model, a message sent to a mobile device that is repeatedly moving between a small selection of connection points experiences high download and end-to-end transfer speeds, but these speeds fall as the number of connection points grows. Pre-emptive message delivery extensions improve this situation, making fast end-to-end transfers and device downloads possible under any pattern of movement. This thesis describes the design and evaluation of Walkabout, with both practical implementation and extensive simulation under real-world scenarios