Quality-Driven Cross-Layer Protocols for Video Streaming over Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

The emerging vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) offer a variety of applications and new potential markets related to safety, convenience and entertainment, however, they suffer from a number of challenges not shared so deeply by other types of existing networks, particularly, in terms of mobility of nodes, and end-to-end quality of service (QoS) provision. Although several existing works in the literature have attempted to provide efficient protocols at different layers targeted mostly for safety applications, there remain many barriers to be overcome in order to constrain the widespread use of such networks for non-safety applications, specifically, for video streaming: 1) impact of high speed mobility of nodes on end-to-end QoS provision; 2) cross-layer protocol design while keeping low computational complexity; 3) considering customer-oriented QoS metrics in the design of protocols; and 4) maintaining seamless single-hop and multi-hop connection between the destination vehicle and the road side unit (RSU) while network is moving. This thesis addresses each of the above limitations in design of cross-layer protocols for video streaming application. 1) An adaptive MAC retransmission limit selection scheme is proposed to improve the performance of IEEE 802.11p standard MAC protocol for video streaming applications over VANETs. A multi-objective optimization framework, which jointly minimizes the probability of playback freezes and start-up delay of the streamed video at the destination vehicle by tuning the MAC retransmission limit with respect to channel statistics as well as packet transmission rate, is applied at road side unit (RSU). Two-hop transmission is applied in zones in which the destination vehicle is not within the transmission range of any RSU. In the multi-hop scenario, we discuss the computation of access probability used in the MAC adaptation scheme and propose a cross-layer path selection scheme; 2) We take advantage of similarity between multi-hop urban VANETs in dense traffic conditions and mesh connected networks. First, we investigate an application-centric routing scheme for video streaming over mesh connected overlays. Next, we introduce the challenges of urban VANETs compared to mesh networks and extend the proposed scheme in mesh network into a protocol for urban VANETs. A classification-based method is proposed to select an optimal path for video streaming over multi-hop mesh networks. The novelty is to translate the path selection over multi-hop networks to a standard classification problem. The classification is based on minimizing average video packet distortion at the receiving nodes. The classifiers are trained offline using a vast collection of video sequences and wireless channel conditions in order to yield optimal performance during real time path selection. Our method substantially reduces the complexity of conventional exhaustive optimization methods and results in high quality (low distortion). Next, we propose an application-centric routing scheme for real-time video transmission over urban multi-hop vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) scenarios. Queuing based mobility model, spatial traffic distribution and prob- ability of connectivity for sparse and dense VANET scenarios are taken into consideration in designing the routing protocol. Numerical results demonstrate the gain achieved by the proposed routing scheme versus geographic greedy forwarding in terms of video frame distortion and streaming start-up delay in several urban communication scenarios for various vehicle entrance rate and traffic densities; and 3) finally, the proposed quality-driven routing scheme for delivering video streams is combined with a novel IP management scheme. The routing scheme aims to optimize the visual quality of the transmitted video frames by minimizing the distortion, the start-up delay, and the frequency of the streaming freezes. As the destination vehicle is in motion, it is unrealistic to assume that the vehicle will remain connected to the same access router (AR) for the whole trip. Mobile IP management schemes can benefit from the proposed multi-hop routing protocol in order to adapt proxy mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) for multi-hop VANET for video streaming applications. The proposed cross-layer protocols can significantly improve the video streaming quality in terms of the number of streaming freezes and start-up delay over VANETs while achieving low computational complexity by using pattern classification methods for optimization

Investigating TCP performance in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have become increasingly important in view of their promise of ubiquitous connectivity beyond traditional fixed infrastructure networks. Such networks, consisting of potentially highly mobile nodes, have provided new challenges by introducing special consideration stemming from the unique characteristics of the wireless medium and the dynamic nature of the network topology. The TCP protocol, which has been widely deployed on a multitude of internetworks including the Internet, is naturally viewed as the de facto reliable transport protocol for use in MANETs. However, assumptions made at TCP’s inception reflected characteristics of the prevalent wired infrastructure of networks at the time and could subsequently lead to sub-optimal performance when used in wireless ad hoc environments. The basic presupposition underlying TCP congestion control is that packet losses are predominantly an indication of congestion in the network. The detrimental effect of such an assumption on TCP’s performance in MANET environments has been a long-standing research problem. Hence, previous work has focused on addressing the ambiguity behind the cause of packet loss as perceived by TCP by proposing changes at various levels across the network protocol stack, such as at the MAC mechanism of the transceiver or via coupling with the routing protocol at the network layer. The main challenge addressed by the current work is to propose new methods to ameliorate the illness-effects of TCP’s misinterpretation of the causes of packet loss in MANETs. An assumed restriction on any proposed modifications is that resulting performance increases should be achievable by introducing limited changes confined to the transport layer. Such a restriction aids incremental adoption and ease of deployment by requiring minimal implementation effort. Further, the issue of packet loss ambiguity, from a transport layer perspective, has, by definition, to be dealt with in an end-to-end fashion. As such, a proposed solution may involve implementation at the sender, the receiver or both to address TCP shortcomings. Some attempts at describing TCP behaviour in MANETs have been previously reported in the literature. However, a thorough enquiry into the performance of those TCP agents popular in terms of research and adoption has been lacking. Specifically, very little work has been performed on an exhaustive analysis of TCP variants across different MANET routing protocols and under various mobility conditions. The first part of the dissertation addresses this shortcoming through extensive simulation evaluation in order to ascertain the relative performance merits of each TCP variant in terms of achieved goodput over dynamic topologies. Careful examination reveals sub-par performance of TCP Reno, the largely equivalent performance of NewReno and SACK, whilst the effectiveness of a proactive TCP variant (Vegas) is explicitly stated and justified for the first time in a dynamic MANET environment. Examination of the literature reveals that in addition to losses caused by route breakages, the hidden terminal effect contributes significantly to non-congestion induced packet losses in MANETs, which in turn has noticeably negative impact on TCP goodput. By adapting the conservative slow start mechanism of TCP Vegas into a form suitable for reactive TCP agents, like Reno, NewReno and SACK, the second part of the dissertation proposes a new Reno-based congestion avoidance mechanism which increases TCP goodput considerably across long paths by mitigating the negative effects of hidden terminals and alleviating some of the ambiguity of non-congestion related packet loss in MANETs. The proposed changes maintain intact the end-to-end semantics of TCP and are solely applicable to the sender. The new mechanism is further contrasted with an existing transport layer-focused solution and is shown to perform significantly better in a range of dynamic scenarios. As solution from an end-to-end perspective may be applicable to either or both communicating ends, the idea of implementing receiver-side alterations is also explored. Previous work has been primarily concerned with reducing receiver-generated cumulative ACK responses by “bundling” them into as few packets as possible thereby reducing misinterpretations of packet loss due to hidden terminals. However, a thorough evaluation of such receiver-side solutions reveals limitations in common evaluation practices and the solutions themselves. In an effort to address this shortcoming, the third part of this research work first specifies a tighter problem domain, identifying the circumstances under which the problem may be tackled by an end-to-end solution. Subsequent original analysis reveals that by taking into account optimisations possible in wireless communications, namely the partial or complete omission of the RTS/CTS handshake, noticeable improvements in TCP goodput are achievable especially over long paths. This novel modification is activated in a variety of topologies and is assessed using new metrics to more accurately gauge its effectiveness in a wireless multihop environment

Experimental investigation into novel methods of reliable and secure on-body communications with low system overheads

Until recently the concept of wearable biosensors for purposes of medical monitoring was restricted to wired sensor applications. Recent advances in electronics and wireless communications have made the possibility of removing the wire from sensor applications a possibility. These advances have led to the development of small scale, wearable, sensing and communication platforms that can be placed on the human body creating the foundation for a Body Sensor Network (BSN). Body Sensor Networks aim to remove the restrictions that traditional wired sensors impose. The anticipation is that BSNs will permit the monitoring of physiological signals in any environment without limitation, giving Physicians the ability to monitor patients more closely and in environments that they cannot monitor today. Even with the recent advancements of electronics and wireless communications there are still many unanswered questions for practical solutions of BSNs that prevent BSNs from replacing traditional wired systems altogether. There is a great need for research into BSN architectures to set the standard for wireless sensor monitoring. In this work a development platform has been created for the investigation into the design and implementation of practical BSN solutions. The platform is used to compare BSN architectures and provide quantifiable results. From this work BSN architecture components that provide optimizations in system performance, energy, network lifetime and security are recommended. In Chapter 3 BSN network architectures employing the use of relaying of creeping waves is investigated. The investigation includes experimental analysis of various test environments. Experimentation demonstrates that the relaying of creeping waves offers considerable performance gains when compared to non-relay networks. For example, relaying is shown to increase network-lifetime by a factor of 13, decrease energy-per-bit requirements by 13 dB and provide the ability for the network to compensate for considerably wider fade margins. In Chapter 4 utilizing the randomness of the wireless channel for securing on-body communications with low overheads is considered. A low-complexity algorithm for establishing symmetric encryption keys is presented and validated. The algorithm relies on readily available RSSI measurements obtained from existing packets being sent and received in the network. The generated bit sequences from the algorithm are evaluated for matching between two communicating parties and mismatching with a malicious eavesdropper. It is shown that the algorithm produces long sequences of highly random bits that are perfectly matched between legitimate parties and highly mismatched with the eavesdropper

実観測に基づく電波環境データベースを用いた空間的周波数共用に関する研究

The growth in demand for mobile communication systems has exponentially increased data traffic during the last decade. Because this exponential growth consumes finite spectrum resources, traditional spectrum utilization policies with exclusive resource allocation faces a limit. In order to develop novel spectrum resources, many researchers have shown an interest in spectrum sharing with cognitive radio (CR). This method allows secondary users (SUs) to share spectrum bands with primary users (PUs) under interference constraints for PUs. SUs are required to take into consideration the interference margin to the estimated interference temperature at PUs in order to protect communication quality of PUs. On the other hand, an excess interference margin decreases the spectrum sharing opportunity; therefore, it is important to manage the interference power properly. Spectrum estimation techniques in spectrum sharing can be categorized into two methods: spectrum sensing and spectrum database. Spectrum sensing uses the detection of PU signals to characterize radio environments. To provide good protection, signal detection must be performed under the (strict) condition that the PU signal strength be below the noise floor, even under low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) and fading conditions. These fluctuations make it difficult for the SUs to achieve stable detection; thus, it is very challenging to accurately estimate the actual activity of the PU. The second method is based on storing information about spectrum availabilities of each location in spectrum databases. In this method, afterSUs query the database before they utilize the spectrum, the database provides spectrum information to the SUs. Current databases usually evaluate white space (WS) based on empirical propagation models. However, it is well known that empirical propagation models cannot take into account all of the indeterminacies of radio environments, such as shadowing effects. Because SUs must not interfere toward PUs, the conventional database requires the SUs to set large margins to ensure no interference with PUs.In this dissertation, we propose and comprehensively study a measurement-based spectrum database for highly efficient spectrum management. The proposed database is a hybrid system, combining spectrum sensing and a spectrum database. The spectrum database consists of radio environment information measured by mobile terminals. After enough data are gathered, the database estimates the radio environment characteristics by statistical processing with the large datasets. Using the accurate knowledge of the received PU signal power, spectrum sharing based on PU signal quality metrics such as the signal-to-interference power ratio (SIR) can be implemented.We first introduce the proposed database architecture. After we briefly discuss a theoretical performance of the proposed database, we present experimental results for the database construction using actual TV broadcast signals. The experimental results show that the proposed database reduces the estimation error of the radio environment. Next, we propose a transmission power control method with a radio environment map (REM) for secondary networks. The REM stores the spatial distribution of the average received signal power. We can optimize the accuracy of the measurement-based REM using the Kriging interpolation. Although several researchers have maintained a continuous interest in improving the accuracy of the REM, sufficient study has not been done to actually explore the interference constraint considering the estimation error. The proposed method uses ordinary Kriging for the spectrum cartography. According to the predicted distribution of the estimation error, the allowable interference power to the PU is approximately formulated. Numerical results show that the proposed method can achieve the probabilistic interference constraint asymptotically, and an increase in the number of measurement datasets improves the spectrum sharing capability. After that, we extend the proposed database to the radio propagation estimation in distributed wireless links in order to accurately estimate interference characteristics from SUs to PUs. Although current wireless distributed networks have to rely on an empirical model to estimate the radio environment, in the spectrum sharing networks, such a path loss-based interference prediction decreases the spectrum sharing opportunity because of the requirement for the interference margin. The proposed method focuses on the spatial-correlation of radio propagation characteristics between different wireless links. Using Kriging-based shadowing estimation, the radio propagation of the wireless link that has arbitrary location relationship can be predicted. Numerical results show that the proposed method achieves higher estimation accuracy than path loss-based estimation methods. The methods discussed in this thesis can develop more spatial WSs in existing allocated bandwidth such as TVWS, and can provide these WSs to new wireless systems expected to appear in the future. Additionally, these results will contribute not only to such spectrum sharing but also to improvement of the spectrum management in existing systems. For example, in heterogeneous networks (HetNets), a suitable inter-cell interference management enables transmitters to reuse the frequency efficiently and the user equipment can select the optimum base station. We anticipate that this dissertation strongly contributes to improvingthe spectrum utilization efficiency of the whole wireless systems.電気通信大学201

Scalable Video Streaming for Single-Hop Wireless Networks Using a Contention-Based Access MAC Protocol

Limited bandwidth and high packet loss rate pose a serious challenge for video streaming applications over wireless networks. Even when packet loss is not present, the bandwidth fluctuation, as a result of an arbitrary number of active flows in an IEEE 802.11 network, can significantly degrade the video quality. This paper aims to enhance the quality of video streaming applications in wireless home networks via a joint optimization of video layer-allocation technique, admission control algorithm, and medium access control (MAC) protocol. Using an Aloha-like MAC protocol, we propose a novel admission control framework, which can be viewed as an optimization problem that maximizes the average quality of admitted videos, given a specified minimum video quality for each flow. We present some hardness results for the optimization problem under various conditions and propose some heuristic algorithms for finding a good solution. In particular, we show that a simple greedy layer-allocation algorithm can perform reasonably well, although it is typically not optimal. Consequently, we present a more expensive heuristic algorithm that guarantees to approximate the optimal solution within a constant factor. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed framework can improve the video quality up to 26% as compared to those of the existing approaches

Experimental and analytical evalution of embedded link performance with small-scale channel fluctuations

We have deployed a first-of-its-kind, urban-scale wireless mesh network which provides Internet access to 1000's of users spanning multiple square kilometers in an underserved area in Houston, TX. However, in this and other urban environments, IEEE 802.11 link performance is both misunderstood and poor-performing due to complex node interactions which are affected by a vast array of factors including topology, channel conditions, modulation rate, packet sizes, and physical layer capture. In this thesis, I draw from 100's of thousands of urban measurements and develop an analytical model to understand the performance of links embedded in the aforementioned complex scenarios. My focus is on two fundamental concepts involving embedded links. First, choosing the modulation rate which maximizes the throughput is imperative since each bit of the (overly-)shared medium is critical. Yet, all existing rate adaptation mechanisrns fail to track the ideal rate even in a simple, non-mobile urban scenario. Using a custom cross-layer framework, I implement multiple and previously un-implemented rate adaptation mechanisms to reveal the reasons for the failure and design rate adaptation mechanisms which are able to track urban and downtown vehicular and non-mobile environments. Second, I pose a basic, yet unsolved problem: given a time-varying channel and traffic matrix in the aforementioned complex scenario, predict the throughput of an embedded link and understand the complex interactions of factors that lead to its performance. By performing thousands of measurements of embedded links on an urban mesh network and developing an analytical model, this work is the first to show that even a 1 dB change in channel state can yield a bi-modal shift in throughput that emulates a change in node connectivity. Finally, I apply our model and experimentation to modulation rate selection and the interaction of control and data traffic to show that understanding these complex interdependencies leads to operation in improved performance regimes. My work has implications for this and other urban communities which have unequal access to Internet resources, enabling a high-speed access infrastructure at extremely low cost

Reti Wireless Cognitive Cooperanti su TV White e Grey Spaces

Wireless networks rapidly became a fundamental pillar of everyday activities. Whether at work or elsewhere, people often benefits from always-on connections. This trend is likely to increase, and hence actual technologies struggle to cope with the increase in traffic demand. To this end, Cognitive Wireless Networks have been studied. These networks aim at a better utilization of the spectrum, by understanding the environment in which they operate, and adapt accordingly. In particular recently national regulators opened up consultations on the opportunistic use of the TV bands, which became partially free due to the digital TV switch over. In this work, we focus on the indoor use of of TVWS. Interesting use cases like smart metering and WiFI like connectivity arise, and are studied and compared against state of the art technology. New measurements for TVWS networks will be presented and evaluated, and fundamental characteristics of the signal derived. Then, building on that, a new model of spectrum sharing, which takes into account also the height from the terrain, is presented and evaluated in a real scenario. The principal limits and performance of TVWS operated networks will be studied for two main use cases, namely Machine to Machine communication and for wireless sensor networks, particularly for the smart grid scenario. The outcome is that TVWS are certainly interesting to be studied and deployed, in particular when used as an additional offload for other wireless technologies. Seeing TVWS as the only wireless technology on a device is harder to be seen: the uncertainity in channel availability is the major drawback of opportunistic networks, since depending on the primary network channel allocation might lead in having no channels available for communication. TVWS can be effectively exploited as offloading solutions, and most of the contributions presented in this work proceed in this direction