Cross-Layer Optimization on Different Data Rates for Efficient Performance in Wireless Sensor Network

The traditional protocols used in wireless sensor networks adhere to stringent layering approaches, which decreases the performance of the quality of service (Quality of Service) metrics. As per specifications 802.15.4, wireless sensor networks are inexpensive and energy efficient. It is essential for evaluating the performance of WSNs. Researchers have looked into the fundamental aspects of a single physical layer and the medium access control (MAC) layer protocol using methodologies calculated using several mathematical models or experimental approaches, respectively. In this research, we offer an improved cross-layer analytical model that utilises a thorough combining and interacting of a Markov chain model of the MAC layer's propagation with a model of the PHY layer's propagation. This combination and interaction are described in detail. Various Quality of Service (quality of service) statistics are presented and evaluated, and a cross-layer effectiveness degradation study is conducted under different inputs of multi-parameter vectors. Other parameters, such as Average Wait Time, Reliability, Failure Probability, and Throughput, have been estimated from the simulation results and contrasted with standardised models. The cross-layer model provides a more thorough performance study with various cross-layer parameter sets, some of which comprise distance, power transmission, and offered loads, among other things

A Game Theory based Contention Window Adjustment for IEEE 802.11 under Heavy Load

The 802.11 families are considered as the most applicable set of standards for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) where nodes make access to the wireless media using random access techniques. In such networks, each node adjusts its contention window to the minimum size irrespective of the number of competing nodes, so in saturated mode and excessive number of nodes available, the network performance is reduced due to severe collision probability. A cooperative game is being proposed to adjust the users’ contention windows in improving the network throughput, delay and packet drop ratio under heavy traffic load circumstances. The system’s performance evaluated by simulations indicate some superiorities of the proposed method over 802.11-DCF (Distribute Coordinate Function)

MAC/PHY Co-Design of CSMA Wireless Networks Using Software Radios.

In the past decade, CSMA-based protocols have spawned numerous network standards (e.g., the WiFi family), and played a key role in improving the ubiquity of wireless networks. However, the rapid evolution of CSMA brings unprecedented challenges, especially the coexistence of different network architectures and communications devices. Meanwhile, many intrinsic limitations of CSMA have been the main obstacle to the performance of its derivatives, such as ZigBee, WiFi, and mesh networks. Most of these problems are observed to root in the abstract interface of the CSMA MAC and PHY layers --- the MAC simply abstracts the advancement of PHY technologies as a change of data rate. Hence, the benefits of new PHY technologies are either not fully exploited, or they even may harm the performance of existing network protocols due to poor interoperability. In this dissertation, we show that a joint design of the MAC/PHY layers can achieve a substantially higher level of capacity, interoperability and energy efficiency than the weakly coupled MAC/PHY design in the current CSMA wireless networks. In the proposed MAC/PHY co-design, the PHY layer exposes more states and capabilities to the MAC, and the MAC performs intelligent adaptation to and control over the PHY layer. We leverage the reconfigurability of software radios to design smart signal processing algorithms that meet the challenge of making PHY capabilities usable by the MAC layer. With the approach of MAC/PHY co-design, we have revisited the primitive operations of CSMA (collision avoidance, carrier signaling, carrier sensing, spectrum access and transmitter cooperation), and overcome its limitations in relay and broadcast applications, coexistence of heterogeneous networks, energy efficiency, coexistence of different spectrum widths, and scalability for MIMO networks. We have validated the feasibility and performance of our design using extensive analysis, simulation and testbed implementation.PHDComputer Science & EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/95944/1/xyzhang_1.pd

Cognitive Communications in White Space: Opportunistic Scheduling, Spectrum Shaping and Delay Analysis

abstract: A unique feature, yet a challenge, in cognitive radio (CR) networks is the user hierarchy: secondary users (SU) wishing for data transmission must defer in the presence of active primary users (PUs), whose priority to channel access is strictly higher.Under a common thread of characterizing and improving Quality of Service (QoS) for the SUs, this dissertation is progressively organized under two main thrusts: the first thrust focuses on SU's throughput by exploiting the underlying properties of the PU spectrum to perform effective scheduling algorithms; and the second thrust aims at another important QoS performance of the SUs, namely delay, subject to the impact of PUs' activities, and proposes enhancement and control mechanisms. More specifically, in the first thrust, opportunistic spectrum scheduling for SU is first considered by jointly exploiting the memory in PU's occupancy and channel fading. In particular, the underexplored scenario where PU occupancy presents a {long} temporal memory is taken into consideration. By casting the problem as a partially observable Markov decision process, a set of {multi-tier} tradeoffs are quantified and illustrated. Next, a spectrum shaping framework is proposed by leveraging network coding as a {spectrum shaper} on the PU's traffic. Such shaping effect brings in predictability of the primary spectrum, which is utilized by the SUs to carry out adaptive channel sensing by prioritizing channel access order, and hence significantly improve their throughput. On the other hand, such predictability can make wireless channels more susceptible to jamming attacks. As a result, caution must be taken in designing wireless systems to balance the throughput and the jamming-resistant capability. The second thrust turns attention to an equally important performance metric, i.e., delay performance. Specifically, queueing delay analysis is conducted for SUs employing random access over the PU channels. Fluid approximation is taken and Poisson driven stochastic differential equations are applied to characterize the moments of the SUs' steady-state queueing delay. Then, dynamic packet generation control mechanisms are developed to meet the given delay requirements for SUs.Dissertation/ThesisPh.D. Electrical Engineering 201

Energy Efficient and Cooperative Solutions for Next-Generation Wireless Networks

Energy efficiency is increasingly important for next-generation wireless systems due to the limited battery resources of mobile clients. While fourth generation cellular standards emphasize low client battery consumption, existing techniques do not explicitly focus on reducing power that is consumed when a client is actively communicating with the network. Based on high data rate demands of modern multimedia applications, active mode power consumption is expected to become a critical consideration for the development and deployment of future wireless technologies. Another reason for focusing more attention on energy efficient studies is given by the relatively slow progress in battery technology and the growing quality of service requirements of multimedia applications. The disproportion between demanded and available battery capacity is becoming especially significant for small-scale mobile client devices, where wireless power consumption dominates within the total device power budget. To compensate for this growing gap, aggressive improvements in all aspects of wireless system design are necessary. Recent work in this area indicates that joint link adaptation and resource allocation techniques optimizing energy efficient metrics can provide a considerable gain in client power consumption. Consequently, it is crucial to adapt state-of-the-art energy efficient approaches for practical use, as well as to illustrate the pros and cons associated with applying power-bandwidth optimization to improve client energy efficiency and develop insights for future research in this area. This constitutes the first objective of the present research. Together with energy efficiency, next-generation cellular technologies are emphasizing stronger support for heterogeneous multimedia applications. Since the integration of diverse services within a single radio platform is expected to result in higher operator profits and, at the same time, reduce network management expenses, intensive research efforts have been invested into design principles of such networks. However, as wireless resources are limited and shared by clients, service integration may become challenging. A key element in such systems is the packet scheduler, which typically helps ensure that the individual quality of service requirements of wireless clients are satisfied. In contrastingly different distributed wireless environments, random multiple access protocols are beginning to provide mechanisms for statistical quality of service assurance. However, there is currently a lack of comprehensive analytical frameworks which allow reliable control of the quality of service parameters for both cellular and local area networks. Providing such frameworks is therefore the second objective of this thesis. Additionally, the study addresses the simultaneous operation of a cellular and a local area network in spectrally intense metropolitan deployments and solves some related problems. Further improving the performance of battery-driven mobile clients, cooperative communications are sought as a promising and practical concept. In particular, they are capable of mitigating the negative effects of fading in a wireless channel and are thus expected to enhance next-generation cellular networks in terms of client spectral and energy efficiencies. At the cell edges or in areas missing any supportive relaying infrastructure, client-based cooperative techniques are becoming even more important. As such, a mobile client with poor channel quality may take advantage of neighboring clients which would relay data on its behalf. The key idea behind the concept of client relay is to provide flexible and distributed control over cooperative communications by the wireless clients themselves. By contrast to fully centralized control, this is expected to minimize overhead protocol signaling and hence ensure simpler implementation. Compared to infrastructure relay, client relay will also be cheaper to deploy. Developing the novel concept of client relay, proposing simple and feasible cooperation protocols, and analyzing the basic trade-offs behind client relay functionality become the third objective of this research. Envisioning the evolution of cellular technologies beyond their fourth generation, it appears important to study a wireless network capable of supporting machine-to-machine applications. Recent standardization documents cover a plethora of machine-to-machine use cases, as they also outline the respective technical requirements and features according to the application or network environment. As follows from this activity, a smart grid is one of the primary machine-to-machine use cases that involves meters autonomously reporting usage and alarm information to the grid infrastructure to help reduce operational cost, as well as regulate a customer's utility usage. The preliminary analysis of the reference smart grid scenario indicates weak system architecture components. For instance, the large population of machine-to-machine devices may connect nearly simultaneously to the wireless infrastructure and, consequently, suffer from excessive network entry delays. Another concern is the performance of cell-edge machine-to-machine devices with weak wireless links. Therefore, mitigating the above architecture vulnerabilities and improving the performance of future smart grid deployments is the fourth objective of this thesis. Summarizing, this thesis is generally aimed at the improvement of energy efficient properties of mobile devices in next-generation wireless networks. The related research also embraces a novel cooperation technique where clients may assist each other to increase per-client and network-wide performance. Applying the proposed solutions, the operation time of mobile clients without recharging may be increased dramatically. Our approach incorporates both analytical and simulation components to evaluate complex interactions between the studied objectives. It brings important conclusions about energy efficient and cooperative client behaviors, which is crucial for further development of wireless communications technologies

Contribution to design a communication framework for vehicular ad hoc networks in urban scenarios

The constant mobility of people, the growing need to be always connected, the large number of vehicles that nowadays can be found in the roads and the advances in technology make Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) be a major area of research. Vehicular Ad hoc Networks are a special type of wireless Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs), which allow a group of mobile nodes configure a temporary network and maintain it without the need of a fixed infrastructure. A vehicular network presents some specific characteristics, as the very high speed of nodes. Due to this high speed the topology changes are frequent and the communication links may last only a few seconds. Smart cities are now a reality and have a direct relationship with vehicular networks. With the help of existing infrastructure such as traffic lights, we propose a scheme to update and analyse traffic density and a warning system to spread alert messages. With this, traffic lights assist vehicular networks to take proper decisions. This would ensure less congested streets. It would also be possible that the routing protocol forwards data packets to vehicles on streets with enough neighbours to increase the possibility of delivering the packets to destination. Sharing updated, reliable and real-time information, about traffic conditions, weather or security alerts, increases the need of algorithms for the dissemination of information that take into account the main beneffits and constraints of these networks. For all this, routing protocols for vehicular networks have the difficult task to select and establish transmission links to send the data packets from source to destination through multiple nodes using intermediate vehicles efficiently. The main objective of this thesis is to provide improvements in the communication framework for vehicular networks to improve decisions to select next hops in the moment to send information, in this way improving the exchange of information to provide suitable communication to minimize accidents, reduce congestion, optimize resources for emergencies, etc. Also, we include intelligence to vehicles at the moment to take routing decisions. Making them map-aware, being conscious of the presence of buildings and other obstacles in urban environments. Furthermore, our proposal considers the decision to store packets for a maximum time until finding other neighbouring nodes to forward the packets before discarding them. For this, we propose a protocol that considers multiple metrics that we call MMMR (A Multimetric, Map-Aware Routing Protocol ). MMMR is a protocol based on geographical knowledge of the environment and vehicle location. The metrics considered are the distance, the density of vehicles in transmission range, the available bandwidth and the future trajectory of the neighbouring nodes. This allows us to have a complete view of the vehicular scenario to anticipate the driver about possible changes that may occur. Thus, a node can select a node among all its neighbours, which is the best option to increase the likelihood of successful packet delivery, minimizing time and offering a level of quality and service. In the same way, being aware of the increase of information in wireless environments, we analyse the possibility of offering anonymity services. We include a mechanism of anonymity in routing protocols based on the Crowd algorithm, which uses the idea of hiding the original source of a packet. This allowed us to add some level of anonymity on VANET routing protocols. The analytical modeling of the available bandwidth between nodes in a VANET, the use of city infrastructure in a smart way, the forwarding selection in data routing byvehicles and the provision of anonymity in communications, are issues that have been addressed in this PhD thesis. In our research work we provide contributions to improve the communication framework for Vehicular Ad hoc Networks obtaining benefits toenhance the everyday of the population.La movilidad constante de las personas y la creciente necesidad de estar conectados en todo momento ha hecho de las redes vehiculares un área cuyo interés ha ido en aumento. La gran cantidad de vehículos que hay en la actualidad, y los avances tecnológicos han hecho de las redes vehiculares (VANETS, Vehicular Ad hoc Networks) un gran campo de investigación. Las redes vehiculares son un tipo especial de redes móviles ad hoc inalámbricas, las cuales, al igual que las redes MANET (Mobile Ad hoc Networks), permiten a un grupo de nodos móviles tanto configurar como mantener una red temporal por si mismos sin la necesidad de una infraestructura fija. Las redes vehiculares presentan algunas características muy representativas, por ejemplo, la alta velocidad que pueden alcanzar los nodos, en este caso vehículos. Debido a esta alta velocidad la topología cambia frecuentemente y la duración de los enlaces de comunicación puede ser de unos pocos segundos. Estas redes tienen una amplia área de aplicación, pudiendo tener comunicación entre los mismos nodos (V2V) o entre los vehículos y una infraestructura fija (V2I). Uno de los principales desafíos existentes en las VANET es la seguridad vial donde el gobierno y fabricantes de automóviles han centrado principalmente sus esfuerzos. Gracias a la rápida evolución de las tecnologías de comunicación inalámbrica los investigadores han logrado introducir las redes vehiculares dentro de las comunicaciones diarias permitiendo una amplia variedad de servicios para ofrecer. Las ciudades inteligentes son ahora una realidad y tienen una relación directa con las redes vehiculares. Con la ayuda de la infraestructura existente, como semáforos, se propone un sistema de análisis de densidad de tráfico y mensajes de alerta. Con esto, los semáforos ayudan a la red vehicular en la toma de decisiones. Así se logrará disponer de calles menos congestionadas para hacer una circulación más fluida (lo cual disminuye la contaminación). Además, sería posible que el protocolo de encaminamiento de datos elija vehículos en calles con suficientes vecinos para incrementar la posibilidad de entregar los paquetes al destino (minimizando pérdidas de información). El compartir información actualizada, confiable y en tiempo real sobre el estado del tráfico, clima o alertas de seguridad, aumenta la necesidad de algoritmos de difusión de la información que consideren los principales beneficios y restricciones de estas redes. Así mismo, considerar servicios críticos que necesiten un nivel de calidad y servicio es otro desafío importante. Por todo esto, un protocolo de encaminamiento para este tipo de redes tiene la difícil tarea de seleccionar y establecer enlaces de transmisión para enviar los datos desde el origen hacia el destino vía múltiples nodos utilizando vehículos intermedios de una manera eficiente. El principal objetivo de esta tesis es ofrecer mejoras en los sistemas de comunicación vehicular que mejoren la toma de decisiones en el momento de realizar el envío de la información, con lo cual se mejora el intercambio de información para poder ofrecer comunicación oportuna que minimice accidentes, reduzca atascos, optimice los recursos destinados a emergencias, etc. Así mismo, incluimos más inteligencia a los coches en el momento de tomar decisiones de encaminamiento de paquetes. Haciéndolos conscientes de la presencia de edificios y otros obstáculos en los entornos urbanos. Así como tomar la decisión de guardar paquetes durante un tiempo máximo de modo que se encuentre otros nodos vecinos para encaminar paquetes de información antes de descartarlo. Para esto, proponemos un protocolo basado en múltiples métricas (MMMR, A Multimetric, Map-aware Routing Protocol ) que es un protocolo geográfio basado en el conocimiento del entorno y localización de los vehículos. Las métricas consideradas son la distancia, la densidad de vehículos en el área de transmisión, el ancho de banda disponible y la trayectoria futura de los nodos vecinos. Esto nos permite tener una visión completa del escenario vehicular y anticiparnos a los posibles cambios que puedan suceder. Así, un nodo podrá seleccionar aquel nodo entre todos sus vecinos posibles que sea la mejor opción para incrementar la posibilidad de entrega exitosa de paquetes, minimizando tiempos y ofreciendo un cierto nivel de calidad y servicio. De la misma manera, conscientes del incremento de información que circula por medios inalámbricos, se analizó la posibilidad de servicios de anonimato. Incluimos pues un mecanismo de anonimato en protocolos de encaminamiento basado en el algoritmo Crowd, que se basa en la idea de ocultar la fuente original de un paquete. Esto nos permitió añadir cierto nivel de anonimato que pueden ofrecer los protocolos de encaminamiento. El modelado analítico del ancho de banda disponible entre nodos de una VANET, el uso de la infraestructura de la ciudad de una manera inteligente, la adecuada toma de decisiones de encaminamiento de datos por parte de los vehículos y la disposición de anonimato en las comunicaciones, son problemas que han sido abordados en este trabajo de tesis doctoral que ofrece contribuciones a la mejora de las comunicaciones en redes vehiculares en entornos urbanos aportando beneficios en el desarrollo de la vida diaria de la población

Channel Access in Wireless Networks: Protocol Design of Energy-Aware Schemes for the IoT and Analysis of Existing Technologies

The design of channel access policies has been an object of study since the deployment of the first wireless networks, as the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer is responsible for coordinating transmissions to a shared channel and plays a key role in the network performance. While the original target was the system throughput, over the years the focus switched to communication latency, Quality of Service (QoS) guarantees, energy consumption, spectrum efficiency, and any combination of such goals. The basic mechanisms to use a shared channel, such as ALOHA, TDMA- and FDMA-based policies, have been introduced decades ago. Nonetheless, the continuous evolution of wireless networks and the emergence of new communication paradigms demand the development of new strategies to adapt and optimize the standard approaches so as to satisfy the requirements of applications and devices. This thesis proposes several channel access schemes for novel wireless technologies, in particular Internet of Things (IoT) networks, the Long-Term Evolution (LTE) cellular standard, and mmWave communication with the IEEE802.11ad standard. The first part of the thesis concerns energy-aware channel access policies for IoT networks, which typically include several battery-powered sensors. In scenarios with energy restrictions, traditional protocols that do not consider the energy consumption may lead to the premature death of the network and unreliable performance expectations. The proposed schemes show the importance of accurately characterizing all the sources of energy consumption (and inflow, in the case of energy harvesting), which need to be included in the protocol design. In particular, the schemes presented in this thesis exploit data processing and compression techniques to trade off QoS for lifetime. We investigate contention-free and contention-based chanel access policies for different scenarios and application requirements. While the energy-aware schemes proposed for IoT networks are based on a clean-slate approach that is agnostic of the communication technology used, the second part of the thesis is focused on the LTE and IEEE802.11ad standards. As regards LTE, the study proposed in this thesis shows how to use machine-learning techniques to infer the collision multiplicity in the channel access phase, information that can be used to understand when the network is congested and improve the contention resolution mechanism. This is especially useful for massive access scenarios; in the last years, in fact, the research community has been investigating on the use of LTE for Machine-Type Communication (MTC). As regards the standard IEEE802.11ad, instead, it provides a hybrid MAC layer with contention-based and contention-free scheduled allocations, and a dynamic channel time allocation mechanism built on top of such schedule. Although this hybrid scheme is expected to meet heterogeneous requirements, it is still not clear how to develop a schedule based on the various traffic flows and their demands. A mathematical model is necessary to understand the performance and limits of the possible types of allocations and guide the scheduling process. In this thesis, we propose a model for the contention-based access periods which is aware of the interleaving of the available channel time with contention-free allocations

Energy-efficient multi-criteria packet forwarding in multi-hop wireless networks

Reliable multi-hop packet forwarding is an important requirement for the implementation of realistic large-scale wireless ad-hoc networks. However, packet forwarding methods based on a single criterion, such as the traditional greedy geographic forwarding, are not sufficient in most realistic wireless settings because perfect-reception-within-rangecannot be assumed. Furthermore, methods where the selection of intermediate relaying nodes is performed at the transmitter-side do not adapt well to rapidly changing network environments. Although a few link-aware geographic forwarding schemes have been reported in the literature, the tradeoffs between multiple decision criteria and their impact on network metrics such as throughput, delay and energy consumption have not been studied. This dissertation presents a series of strategies aimed at addressing the challenges faced by the choice of relay nodes in error-prone dynamic wireless network environments. First, a single-criterion receiver-side relay election (RSRE) is introduced as a distributed alternative to the traditional transmitter-side relay selection. Contrary to the transmitter- side selection, at each hop, an optimal node is elected among receivers to relay packets toward the destination. Next, a multi-criteria RSRE, which factors multiple decision criteria in the election process at lower overhead cost, is proposed. A general cost metric in the form of a multi-parameter mapping function aggregates decision criteria into a single metric used to rank potential relay candidates. A two-criteria RSRE case study shows that a proper combination of greedy forwarding and link quality leads to higher energy efficiency and substantial improvement in the end-to-end delay. Last, mesh multi-path forwarding methods are examined. A generalized mesh construction algorithm in introduced to show impact of a mesh structure on network performance