Position-based routing and MAC protocols for wireless ad-hoc networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This thesis presents the Forecasting Routing Technique (FORTEL), a routing protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) based on the nodes’ Location Information. FORTEL stores the nodes’ location information in the Location Table (LT) in order to construct routes between the source and the destination nodes. FORTEL follows the source routing strategy, which has rarely been applied in position-based routing. According to the source routing strategy, the end-to-end route is attached to the packet, therefore, the processing cost, in regards to the intermediate nodes that simply relay the packet according to route, is minimized. FORTEL’s key mechanisms include: first, the location update scheme, employed to keep the LT entries up-to-date with the network topology. Besides the mobility variation and the constant rate location update schemes applied, a window location update scheme is presented to increase the LT’s information accuracy. Second, the switching mechanism, between “Hello” message and location update employed, to reduce the protocol’s routing overhead. Third and most important is the route computation mechanism, which is integrated with a topology forecasting technique to construct up-to-date routes between the communication peers, aiming to achieve high delivery rate and increase the protocol robustness against the nodes’ movement. FORTEL demonstrates higher performance as compared to other MANET’s routing protocols, and it delivers up to 20% more packets than AODV and up to 60 % more than DSR and OLSR, while maintaining low levels of routing overhead and network delay at the same time. The effectiveness of the window update scheme is also discussed, and it proves to increase FORTEL’s delivery rate by up to 30% as compared to the other update schemes. A common and frequently occurring phenomenon, in wireless networks, is the Hidden Terminal problem that significantly impacts the communication performance and the efficiency of the routing and MAC protocols. Beaconless routing approach in MANETs, which delivers data packets without prior knowledge of any sort `of information, suffers from packet duplication caused by the hidden nodes during the contention process. Moreover, the throughput of the IEEE MAC protocol decreases dramatically when the hidden terminal problem occurs. RTS/CTS mechanism fails to eliminate the problem and can further degrade the network’s performance by introducing additional overhead. To tackle these challenges, this thesis presents two techniques, the Sender Suppression Algorithm and the Location-Aided MAC, where both rely on the nodes’ position to eliminate packet duplication in the beaconless routing and improve the performance of the 802.11 MAC respectively. Both schemes are based on the concept of grouping the nodes into zones and assign different time delay to each one. According to the Sender Suppression Algorithm, the sender’s forwarding area is divided into three zones, therefore, the local timer, set to define the time that the receiver has to wait before responding to the sender’s transmission, is added to the assigned zone delay. Following the first response, the sender interferes and suppresses the receivers with active timer of. On the other hand, the Location-Aided MAC, essentially a hybrid MAC, combines the concepts of time division and carrier sensing. The radio range of the wireless receiver is partitioned into four zones with different zone delays assigned to each zone. Channel access within the zone is purely controlled by CSMA/CA protocol, while it is time-based amongst zones. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques is demonstrated through simulation tests. Location-Aided MAC considerably improves the network’s throughput compared to CSMA/CA and RTS/CTS. However, remarkable results come when the proposed technique and the RTS/CTS are combined, which achieves up to 20% more throughput as compared to the standalone RTS/CTS. Finally, the thesis presents a novel link lifetime estimation method for greedy forwarding to compute the link duration between two nodes. Based on a newly introduced Stability-Aware Greedy (SAG) scheme, the proposed method incorporates the destination node in the computation process and thus has a significant advantage over the conventional method, which only considers the information of the nodes composing the link

Train Tracking and Shadowing Estimation Based on Received Signal Strength

Abstract. In this work, we present an on-board solution for train position tracking that can be used in cases of GPS failures and that does not suffer from the error accumulation problem of Dead Reckoning (DR). It is based on Received Signal Strength (RSS) measured in radio communication systems by several mobile stations having antennas placed on top of different carriages of the train. As the RSS is affected by the slow fading or shadowing, both the position and the shadowing are jointly tracked. We estimate the shadowing atlas consisting of the shadowing maps along the railway of the different base stations. The proposed solution applies Bayesian filtering for efficiently processing the observations

Position-based routing and MAC protocols for wireless ad-hoc networks

This thesis presents the Forecasting Routing Technique (FORTEL), a routing protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) based on the nodes' Location Information. FORTEL stores the nodes' location information in the Location Table (LT) in order to construct routes between the source and the destination nodes. FORTEL follows the source routing strategy, which has rarely been applied in position-based routing. According to the source routing strategy, the end-to-end route is attached to the packet, therefore, the processing cost, in regards to the intermediate nodes that simply relay the packet according to route, is minimized. FORTEL's key mechanisms include: first, the location update scheme, employed to keep the LT entries up-to-date with the network topology. Besides the mobility variation and the constant rate location update schemes applied, a window location update scheme is presented to increase the LT's information accuracy. Second, the switching mechanism, between "Hello" message and location update employed, to reduce the protocol's routing overhead. Third and most important is the route computation mechanism, which is integrated with a topology forecasting technique to construct up-to-date routes between the communication peers, aiming to achieve high delivery rate and increase the protocol robustness against the nodes' movement. FORTEL demonstrates higher performance as compared to other MANET's routing protocols, and it delivers up to 20% more packets than AODV and up to 60 % more than DSR and OLSR, while maintaining low levels of routing overhead and network delay at the same time. The effectiveness of the window update scheme is also discussed, and it proves to increase FORTEL's delivery rate by up to 30% as compared to the other update schemes. A common and frequently occurring phenomenon, in wireless networks, is the Hidden Terminal problem that significantly impacts the communication performance and the efficiency of the routing and MAC protocols. Beaconless routing approach in MANETs, which delivers data packets without prior knowledge of any sort `of information, suffers from packet duplication caused by the hidden nodes during the contention process. Moreover, the throughput of the IEEE MAC protocol decreases dramatically when the hidden terminal problem occurs. RTS/CTS mechanism fails to eliminate the problem and can further degrade the network's performance by introducing additional overhead. To tackle these challenges, this thesis presents two techniques, the Sender Suppression Algorithm and the Location-Aided MAC, where both rely on the nodes' position to eliminate packet duplication in the beaconless routing and improve the performance of the 802.11 MAC respectively. Both schemes are based on the concept of grouping the nodes into zones and assign different time delay to each one. According to the Sender Suppression Algorithm, the sender's forwarding area is divided into three zones, therefore, the local timer, set to define the time that the receiver has to wait before responding to the sender's transmission, is added to the assigned zone delay. Following the first response, the sender interferes and suppresses the receivers with active timer of. On the other hand, the Location-Aided MAC, essentially a hybrid MAC, combines the concepts of time division and carrier sensing. The radio range of the wireless receiver is partitioned into four zones with different zone delays assigned to each zone. Channel access within the zone is purely controlled by CSMA/CA protocol, while it is time-based amongst zones. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques is demonstrated through simulation tests. Location-Aided MAC considerably improves the network's throughput compared to CSMA/CA and RTS/CTS. However, remarkable results come when the proposed technique and the RTS/CTS are combined, which achieves up to 20% more throughput as compared to the standalone RTS/CTS. Finally, the thesis presents a novel link lifetime estimation method for greedy forwarding to compute the link duration between two nodes. Based on a newly introduced Stability-Aware Greedy (SAG) scheme, the proposed method incorporates the destination node in the computation process and thus has a significant advantage over the conventional method, which only considers the information of the nodes composing the link.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Gestion Des Risques Majeurs Au Maroc: Les Instabilités De Terrain

Instabilities of the ground is regarded as one of the most serious problems that affect many areas in Morocco. The study is important and beneficial because it concerns various sections of the Rif area. Indeed, certain zones which came at the top have been seriously affected. Disorders are numerous: destruction of homes, loss of agricultural land, and deterioration of infrastructure (roads, railways, and bridges). The aim of this study is focused on the zones where the road network generally is much damaged. This, however, causes a disturbance and even an interruption of the road traffic during stormy periods. The detailed study of lithology, climatology, geomorphology, hydrology, and the slope of the studied zones allows us to highlight the characteristics of the unstable grounds. It also helped us to figure out that the rheological nature of the ground plays a significant role in the characterization of the type of movement.The analysis of various movements which was found enables us to conclude that an instability of the ground depends on the conjunction on many factors, whether they are of provision or release. The most important factors causing the instabilities of the ground are: The alternation of rocks of nature; permeability and plasticity were well contrasted. The rugged relief and steep slopes. Geotechnical properties. Seismicity. Irregular rainfall. Geomorphology and land use. Anthropogenic action. Spatial distribution of the risk zones shows that the majority of the studied sections experience strong risks and medium risks levels

Position-based routing and MAC protocols for wireless ad-hoc networks

This thesis presents the Forecasting Routing Technique (FORTEL), a routing protocol for Mobile Ad-Hoc Networks (MANETs) based on the nodes' Location Information. FORTEL stores the nodes' location information in the Location Table (LT) in order to construct routes between the source and the destination nodes. FORTEL follows the source routing strategy, which has rarely been applied in position-based routing. According to the source routing strategy, the end-to-end route is attached to the packet, therefore, the processing cost, in regards to the intermediate nodes that simply relay the packet according to route, is minimized. FORTEL's key mechanisms include: first, the location update scheme, employed to keep the LT entries up-to-date with the network topology. Besides the mobility variation and the constant rate location update schemes applied, a window location update scheme is presented to increase the LT's information accuracy. Second, the switching mechanism, between "Hello" message and location update employed, to reduce the protocol's routing overhead. Third and most important is the route computation mechanism, which is integrated with a topology forecasting technique to construct up-to-date routes between the communication peers, aiming to achieve high delivery rate and increase the protocol robustness against the nodes' movement. FORTEL demonstrates higher performance as compared to other MANET's routing protocols, and it delivers up to 20% more packets than AODV and up to 60 % more than DSR and OLSR, while maintaining low levels of routing overhead and network delay at the same time. The effectiveness of the window update scheme is also discussed, and it proves to increase FORTEL's delivery rate by up to 30% as compared to the other update schemes. A common and frequently occurring phenomenon, in wireless networks, is the Hidden Terminal problem that significantly impacts the communication performance and the efficiency of the routing and MAC protocols. Beaconless routing approach in MANETs, which delivers data packets without prior knowledge of any sort `of information, suffers from packet duplication caused by the hidden nodes during the contention process. Moreover, the throughput of the IEEE MAC protocol decreases dramatically when the hidden terminal problem occurs. RTS/CTS mechanism fails to eliminate the problem and can further degrade the network's performance by introducing additional overhead. To tackle these challenges, this thesis presents two techniques, the Sender Suppression Algorithm and the Location-Aided MAC, where both rely on the nodes' position to eliminate packet duplication in the beaconless routing and improve the performance of the 802.11 MAC respectively. Both schemes are based on the concept of grouping the nodes into zones and assign different time delay to each one. According to the Sender Suppression Algorithm, the sender's forwarding area is divided into three zones, therefore, the local timer, set to define the time that the receiver has to wait before responding to the sender's transmission, is added to the assigned zone delay. Following the first response, the sender interferes and suppresses the receivers with active timer of. On the other hand, the Location-Aided MAC, essentially a hybrid MAC, combines the concepts of time division and carrier sensing. The radio range of the wireless receiver is partitioned into four zones with different zone delays assigned to each zone. Channel access within the zone is purely controlled by CSMA/CA protocol, while it is time-based amongst zones. The effectiveness of the proposed techniques is demonstrated through simulation tests. Location-Aided MAC considerably improves the network's throughput compared to CSMA/CA and RTS/CTS. However, remarkable results come when the proposed technique and the RTS/CTS are combined, which achieves up to 20% more throughput as compared to the standalone RTS/CTS. Finally, the thesis presents a novel link lifetime estimation method for greedy forwarding to compute the link duration between two nodes. Based on a newly introduced Stability-Aware Greedy (SAG) scheme, the proposed method incorporates the destination node in the computation process and thus has a significant advantage over the conventional method, which only considers the information of the nodes composing the link.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

DFT-computational modeling and TiberCAD frameworks for photovoltaic performance investigation of copper-based 2D hybrid perovskite solar absorbers

In this work, we use a combination of dispersion-corrected density functional theory (DFT-D3) and the TiberCAD framework for the first time to investigate a newly designed and synthesized class of (C6H10N2)[CuCl4] 2D-type perovskite. The inter- and intra-atomic reorganization in the crystal packing and the type of interaction forming in the active area have been discussed via Hirshfeld surface (HS) analyses. A distinct charge transfer from CuCl4 to [C6H10N2] is identified by frontier molecular orbitals (FMOs) and density of states (DOS). This newly designed narrow-band gap small-molecule perovskite, with an energy gap (E-g) of 2.11 eV, exhibits a higher fill factor (FF = 81.34%), leading to an open-circuit voltage (V-oc) of 1.738 V and a power conversion efficiency (PCE) approaching similar to 10.20%. The interaction between a donor (D) and an acceptor (A) results in a charge transfer complex (CT) through the formation of hydrogen bonds (Cl-H), as revealed by QTAIM analysis. These findings were further supported by 2D-LOL and 3D-ELF analyses by visualizing excess electrons surrounding the acceptor entity. Finally, we performed numerical simulations of solar cell structures using TiberCAD software

Burnout among surgeons before and during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic: an international survey

Background: SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has had many significant impacts within the surgical realm, and surgeons have been obligated to reconsider almost every aspect of daily clinical practice. Methods: This is a cross-sectional study reported in compliance with the CHERRIES guidelines and conducted through an online platform from June 14th to July 15th, 2020. The primary outcome was the burden of burnout during the pandemic indicated by the validated Shirom-Melamed Burnout Measure. Results: Nine hundred fifty-four surgeons completed the survey. The median length of practice was 10 years; 78.2% included were male with a median age of 37 years old, 39.5% were consultants, 68.9% were general surgeons, and 55.7% were affiliated with an academic institution. Overall, there was a significant increase in the mean burnout score during the pandemic; longer years of practice and older age were significantly associated with less burnout. There were significant reductions in the median number of outpatient visits, operated cases, on-call hours, emergency visits, and research work, so, 48.2% of respondents felt that the training resources were insufficient. The majority (81.3%) of respondents reported that their hospitals were included in the management of COVID-19, 66.5% felt their roles had been minimized; 41% were asked to assist in non-surgical medical practices, and 37.6% of respondents were included in COVID-19 management. Conclusions: There was a significant burnout among trainees. Almost all aspects of clinical and research activities were affected with a significant reduction in the volume of research, outpatient clinic visits, surgical procedures, on-call hours, and emergency cases hindering the training. Trial registration: The study was registered on clicaltrials.gov "NCT04433286" on 16/06/2020

Contributions aux techniques de traitement du signal pour la géolocalisation coopérative dans le contexte des systèmes sans fil et le suivi de trajectoires

Advancements in information technology and communication systems enabled the development of a wide variety of location based applications and services. The global navigation satellite systems are among the fundamental localization solutions. In harsh environments (e.g., urban canyons and indoor areas), these solutions do not provide a good accuracy or even become unavailable. In order to offer accurate and ubiquitous localization solutions, wireless communication systems have been considered, where several location dependent parameters of the transmitted signals can be measured and exploited (e.g., the time-of-arrival (ToA), the received signal strength (RSS)). In this work, the topic of wireless localization is explored from a statistical signal processing perspective with a focus on two axes. The first axis is cooperative localization applied to ad-hoc networks, where the nodes perform pair-wise ranging measurements (i.e., ToA or RSS) between each other in order to simultaneously estimate their positions. The unique solvability conditions are studied based on the two approaches of graph rigidity and semidefinite programming, and the identifiability conditions are derived. Location estimation solutions are considered with a focus on probabilistic estimation and its application in Markov random fields using the nonparametric belief propagation (NBP) algorithm. The second axis is mobile terminals tracking based on RSS measurements. These measurements are affected by a shadowing phenomenon. The improvement brought by the knowledge of the shadowing maps to the position estimation accuracy is studied. The classical solution for obtaining these maps is fingerprinting, which can be costly in time and effort. Solutions are developed to overcome these difficulties. Several solutions are proposed and investigated via Monte Carlo simulations in different deployment and application scenarios, and several theoretical and practical results are derived.Les avancements des technologies de l'information et des systèmes de communication ont permis le développement d'une grande variété d'applications et de services de géolocalisation. Les systèmes de positionnement par satellites figurent parmi les solutions principales de localisation. Dans des environnements difficiles (par exemples, les canyons urbains ou à l'intérieur des bâtiments), ces solutions ne fournissent pas une bonne précision, ou même deviennent indisponibles. Afin d'offrir des solutions de localisation précises et disponibles quelque soit l'environnement, les systèmes de communication sans fil ont été utilisés, où plusieurs paramètres topo-dépendants des signaux transmis peuvent être mesurés et exploités (par exemple, le temps d'arrivée (ToA), la puissance du signal reçu (RSS)). Dans ce travail, la localisation dans les systèmes sans fil est étudié d¿un point de vue traitement statistique du signal, et en explorant deux axes. Le premier axe concerne la localisation coopérative appliquée aux réseaux ad-hoc, où les différents n¿uds effectuent des mesures de distance par paire (c.à.d. ToA ou RSS) afin d'estimer simultanément leurs positions. Les conditions de solvabilité unique sont étudiées en s'appuyant sur les deux approches de la rigidité graphique et la programmation semi-définie, et ainsi les conditions d'identifiabilité sont déduites. Les solutions d'estimation de la position sont considérées en se concentrant sur l'estimation probabiliste et son application dans des champs aléatoires de Markov et ce en utilisant l¿algorithme de propagation de croyance non-paramétrique (NBP). Le deuxième axe concerne la poursuite des terminaux mobiles en se basant sur des mesures RSS. Ces mesures sont affectées par un phénomène de masquage (shadowing). L'amélioration apportée à la précision de positionnement par la connaissance des cartes de shadowing est étudiée. La solution classique pour l'obtention de ces cartes est le fingerprinting, qui peut être coûteux en temps de collecte de mesures. Des solutions sont développées afin de surmonter ces difficultés. Plusieurs solutions sont proposées et étudiées par des simulations de Monte Carlo pour différents scénarios d'application et de déploiement, et plusieurs résultats théoriques et pratiques sont obtenus