Ubiquitous robust communications for emergency response using multi-operator heterogeneous networks

A number of disasters in various places of the planet have caused an extensive loss of lives, severe damages to properties and the environment, as well as a tremendous shock to the survivors. For relief and mitigation operations, emergency responders are immediately dispatched to the disaster areas. Ubiquitous and robust communications during the emergency response operations are of paramount importance. Nevertheless, various reports have highlighted that after many devastating events, the current technologies used, failed to support the mission critical communications, resulting in further loss of lives. Inefficiencies of the current communications used for emergency response include lack of technology inter-operability between different jurisdictions, and high vulnerability due to their centralized infrastructure. In this article, we propose a flexible network architecture that provides a common networking platform for heterogeneous multi-operator networks, for interoperation in case of emergencies. A wireless mesh network is the main part of the proposed architecture and this provides a back-up network in case of emergencies. We first describe the shortcomings and limitations of the current technologies, and then we address issues related to the applications and functionalities a future emergency response network should support. Furthermore, we describe the necessary requirements for a flexible, secure, robust, and QoS-aware emergency response multi-operator architecture, and then we suggest several schemes that can be adopted by our proposed architecture to meet those requirements. In addition, we suggest several methods for the re-tasking of communication means owned by independent individuals to provide support during emergencies. In order to investigate the feasibility of multimedia transmission over a wireless mesh network, we measured the performance of a video streaming application in a real wireless metropolitan multi-radio mesh network, showing that the mesh network can meet the requirements for high quality video transmissions

EVA Radio DRATS 2011 Report

In the Fall of 2011, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Glenn Research Center (GRC) participated in the Desert Research and Technology Studies (DRATS) field experiments held near Flagstaff, Arizona. The objective of the DRATS outing is to provide analog mission testing of candidate technologies for space exploration, especially those technologies applicable to human exploration of extra- terrestrial rocky bodies. These activities are performed at locations with similarities to extra-terrestrial conditions. This report describes the Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Dual-Band Radio Communication System which was demonstrated during the 2011 outing. The EVA radio system is designed to transport both voice and telemetry data through a mobile ad hoc wireless network and employs a dual-band radio configuration. Some key characteristics of this system include: 1. Dual-band radio configuration. 2. Intelligent switching between two different capability wireless networks. 3. Self-healing network. 4. Simultaneous data and voice communication

Vehicular Networks with Infrastructure: Modeling, Simulation and Testbed

This thesis focuses on Vehicular Networks with Infrastructure. In the examined scenarios, vehicular nodes (e.g., cars, buses) can communicate with infrastructure roadside units (RSUs) providing continuous or intermittent coverage of an urban road topology. Different aspects related to the design of new applications for Vehicular Networks are investigated through modeling, simulation and testing on real field. In particular, the thesis: i) provides a feasible multi-hop routing solution for maintaining connectivity among RSUs, forming the wireless mesh infrastructure, and moving vehicles; ii) explains how to combine the UHF and the traditional 5-GHz bands to design and implement a new high-capacity high-efficiency Content Downloading using disjoint control and service channels; iii) studies new RSUs deployment strategies for Content Dissemination and Downloading in urban and suburban scenarios with different vehicles mobility models and traffic densities; iv) defines an optimization problem to minimize the average travel delay perceived by the drivers, spreading different traffic flows over the surface roads in a urban scenario; v) exploits the concept of Nash equilibrium in the game-theory approach to efficiently guide electric vehicles drivers' towards the charging stations. Moreover, the thesis emphasizes the importance of using realistic mobility models, as well as reasonable signal propagation models for vehicular networks. Simplistic assumptions drive to trivial mathematical analysis and shorter simulations, but they frequently produce misleading results. Thus, testing the proposed solutions in the real field and collecting measurements is a good way to double-check the correctness of our studie

An altruistic cross-layer recovering mechanism for ad hoc wireless networks

Video streaming services have restrictive delay and bandwidth constraints. Ad hoc networks represent a hostile environment for this kind of real-time data transmission. Emerging mesh networks, where a backbone provides more topological stability, do not even assure a high quality of experience. In such scenario, mobility of terminal nodes causes link breakages until a new route is calculated. In the meanwhile, lost packets cause annoying video interruptions to the receiver. This paper proposes a new mechanism of recovering lost packets by means of caching overheard packets in neighbor nodes and retransmit them to destination. Moreover, an optimization is shown, which involves a video-aware cache in order to recover full frames and prioritize more significant frames. Results show the improvement in reception, increasing the throughput as well as video quality, whereas larger video interruptions are considerably reduced. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.Arce Vila, P.; Guerri Cebollada, JC. (2015). An altruistic cross-layer recovering mechanism for ad hoc wireless networks. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. 15(13):1744-1758. doi:10.1002/wcm.2459S174417581513Li J Blake C De Couto DSJ Lee HI Morris R Capacity of ad hoc wireless networks Proceedings of the 7th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networks (MobiCom) 2001 61 69Akyildiz, I. F., & Xudong Wang. (2005). A survey on wireless mesh networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, 43(9), S23-S30. doi:10.1109/mcom.2005.1509968Hsu, C.-J., Liu, H.-I., & Seah, W. K. G. (2011). Opportunistic routing – A review and the challenges ahead. Computer Networks, 55(15), 3592-3603. doi:10.1016/j.comnet.2011.06.021Huang, X., Zhai, H., & Fang, Y. (2008). Robust cooperative routing protocol in mobile wireless sensor networks. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 7(12), 5278-5285. doi:10.1109/t-wc.2008.060680Wieselthier, J. E., Nguyen, G. D., & Ephremides, A. (2001). Mobile Networks and Applications, 6(3), 251-263. doi:10.1023/a:1011478717164Clausen T Jacquet P Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR), IETF RFC 3626 2003 http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc3626.txtMarina, M. K., & Das, S. R. (2006). Ad hoc on-demand multipath distance vector routing. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 6(7), 969-988. doi:10.1002/wcm.432Zhou X Lu Y Ma HG Routing improvement using multiple disjoint paths for ad hoc networks International Conference on Wireless and Optical Communications Networks (IFIP) 2006 1 5Fujisawa H Minami H Yamamoto M Izumi Y Fujita Y Route selection using retransmission packets for video streaming on ad hoc networks IEEE Conference on Radio and Wireless Symposium (RWS) 2006 607 610Badis H Agha KA QOLSR multi-path routing for mobile ad hoc networks based on multiple metrics: bandwidth and delay IEEE 59th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) 2004 2181 2184Wu Z Wu J Cross-layer routing optimization for video transmission over wireless ad hoc networks 6th International Conference on Wireless Communications Networks and Mobile Computing (WiCOM) 2010 1 6Schier, M., & Welzl, M. (2012). Optimizing Selective ARQ for H.264 Live Streaming: A Novel Method for Predicting Loss-Impact in Real Time. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 14(2), 415-430. doi:10.1109/tmm.2011.2178235Nikoupour M Nikoupour A Dehghan M A cross-layer framework for video streaming over wireless ad-hoc networks 3rd International Conference on Digital Information Management (ICDIM) 2008 340 345Yamamoto R Miyoshi T Distributed retransmission method using neighbor terminals for ad hoc networks Proceedings of the 14th Asia-Pacific Conference on Communications (APCC) 2008 1 5Gravalos I Kokkinos P Varvarigos EA Multi-criteria cooperative energy-aware routing in wireless ad-hoc networks Proceedings of the 9th International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC) 2013 387 393Abid, R. M., Benbrahim, T., & Biaz, S. (2010). IEEE 802.11s Wireless Mesh Networks for Last-Mile Internet Access: An Open-Source Real-World Indoor Testbed Implementation. Wireless Sensor Network, 02(10), 725-738. doi:10.4236/wsn.2010.210088Yen, Y.-S., Chang, R.-S., & Wu, C.-Y. (2011). A seamless handoff scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, 13(2), 157-169. doi:10.1002/wcm.1102Liangzhong Yin, & Guohong Cao. (2006). Supporting cooperative caching in ad hoc networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, 5(1), 77-89. doi:10.1109/tmc.2006.15Biswas S Morris R ExOR: opportunistic multi-hop routing for wireless networks Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2005 133 144Chachulski S Jennings M Katti S Katabi D Trading structure for randomness in wireless opportunistic routing Proceedings of ACM SIGCOMM 2007 169 180Kohler E Handley M Floyd S Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP), IETF RFC 4340 2006 http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc4340.txtSchierl, T., Ganger, K., Hellge, C., Wiegand, T., & Stockhammer, T. (2006). SVC-based multisource streaming for robust video transmission in mobile ad hoc networks. IEEE Wireless Communications, 13(5), 96-103. doi:10.1109/wc-m.2006.250365Iera, A., Molinaro, A., Paratore, S. Y., Ruggeri, G., & Zurzolo, A. (2011). Making a mesh router/gateway from a smartphone: Is that a practical solution? Ad Hoc Networks, 9(8), 1414-1429. doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2011.03.00

Improving the Performance of Wireless LANs

This book quantifies the key factors of WLAN performance and describes methods for improvement. It provides theoretical background and empirical results for the optimum planning and deployment of indoor WLAN systems, explaining the fundamentals while supplying guidelines for design, modeling, and performance evaluation. It discusses environmental effects on WLAN systems, protocol redesign for routing and MAC, and traffic distribution; examines emerging and future network technologies; and includes radio propagation and site measurements, simulations for various network design scenarios, numerous illustrations, practical examples, and learning aids

Survey on QoE/QoS Correlation Models for Video Streaming over Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) are a new emerging technology which has attracted enormous interest over the last few years. It enables vehicles to communicate with each other and with roadside infrastructures for many applications. One of the promising applications is multimedia services for traffic safety or infotainment. The video service requires a good quality to satisfy the end-user known as the Quality of Experience (QoE). Several models have been suggested in the literature to measure or predict this metric. In this paper, we present an overview of interesting researches, which propose QoE models for video streaming over VANETs. The limits and deficiencies of these models are identified, which shed light on the challenges and real problems to overcome in the future

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: quality-of-service and video communication, routing protocol and cross-layer design. A few interesting problems about security and delay-tolerant networks are also discussed. This book is targeted to provide network engineers and researchers with design guidelines for large scale wireless ad hoc networks

Avaliação de desempenho e mobilidade em redes auto-organizadas

Mestrado em Engenharia de Computadores e TelemáticaAs redes móveis ad hoc (ou auto-organizadas) são um assunto que nos últimos anos tem ganho muita atenção da comunidade científica. Os problemas associados a este tipo de redes foram amplamente estudados e expostos, foram propostas soluções, e algumas até foram tornadas um padrão da indústria. No entanto, a grande maioria do trabalho realizado, é dedicado a resolver só um problema de cada vez. Da mesma forma, as soluções que são testadas por forma a verificar a sua validade, muitas das vezes, são testadas recorrendo a trabalho de simulação. Uma parte do trabalho que é apresentado nesta dissertação de mestrado, junta uma série de protocolos desenvolvidos para redes ad hoc, os quais providenciam funcionalidades como: auto configuração, encaminhamento unicast e multicast, qualidade de serviço e taxação com incentivos numa única solução integrada que interliga as redes ad hoc a redes infra-estruturadas funcionando como uma extensão das mesmas. O demonstrador criado é avaliado de forma experimental, e os resultados obtidos são apresentados e discutidos. Uma vez que a rede ad hoc está interligada à rede infra-estruturada, num ambiente de quarta geração, é também apresentada uma arquitectura que suporta mobilidade de nós entre redes ad hoc e as redes infra-estuturadas que fazem parte do ambiente heterogéneo, e de este para as redes ad hoc é apresentada. A rede geral onde a rede ad hoc é integrada suporta novas tecnologias e tendências em gestão de mobilidade, tais como o protocolo em desenvolvimento IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover e gestão de mobilidade baseada em Domínios de Mobilidade Local. A forma como a rede ad hoc se integra com as tecnologias presentes na rede infra-estruturada, e como as especificidades da rede ad hoc são escondidas, é descrita e explicada. ABSTRACT: Mobile Ad hoc network is a subject that has gained lots of attention from the research community in recent years. The problems inherent to this types of networks have been studied and exposed, solutions have been created and even standardized. However, the vast majority of the work performed is dedicated to only one problem at the time. In addition, the tests performed to validate the produced solutions are, most of the times, obtained through simulation work. The work presented in this thesis gathers together a set of ad hoc protocols, providing functionalities such as auto-configuration, unicast and multicast routing, quality of service and charging and rewarding in one integrated testbed, serving as a stub network in a hotspot scenario. A experimental evaluation is performed, and results are presented and discussed. Additionally, since the network belongs to a hotspot of fourth generation, a architecture that supports mobility of nodes between the ad hoc network and infrastructure networks is presented. The general network that includes ad hoc network integrates and supports the new technologies and tendencies in mobility management, such as the IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover and mobility management based on Local Mobility Domains. The way the MANET fully integrates with the infrastructure network, and how the ad hoc networks specific characteristics are hidden, is also presented and explained