Distance-Dependent RED Policy (DDRED)

International audienceThe network quality of service (QoS) and the congestion control of the transport protocol are important parameters for the performance of a network data transfer. To this end, routers use various queue policies for packet dispatching, and all of them must deal with packet drop. We propose a new algorithm for packet drop in routers. Given that a packet drop wastes all the network resources it has already used, we propose a new policy which favors packets with higher distance from source. It can be simply integrated on top of tail drop or RED (with or without ECN) queue policies. Simulations with NS2 show that long flows are indeed favored compared to short flows, and lead to higher overall resource utilisation without sacrificing TCP fairness

Removing the MAC Retransmission Times from the RTT in TCP

MAC retransmission of packets (for example in a video transfer) raises the RTT and leads to throughput decrease on TCP versions based on RTT for their sending rate. This is not the appropriate effect, because retransmissions are caused by temporary interferences, which often appear in wireless links. This paper deals with the effects of MAC retransmissions. A new TCP option is proposed, which fully takes into account the effect of MAC retransmissions. In this proposition wireless network cards have a timer which is initialised with the value of the option once the packet is sent the first time, and this value is stored in the option each time the packet is retransmitted. The exact time of retransmissions is then known by the source. Simulations show that the proposed mechanism increases throughput

A framework to Calibrate a MEMS Sensor Network

International audienceThe Smart Surface project aims at designing an integrated micro-manipulator based on an array of micromodules connected with a 2D array topology network. Each micromodule comprises a sensor, an actuator and a processing unit. One of the aims of the processing unit is to differentiate the shape of the part that is put on top of the Smart Surface. From a set of shapes this differentiation is done through a distributed algorithm that we call a criterion. The article presents Sensor Network Calibrator (SNC), a calibrator which allows to parametrize the Smart Surface and to determine the necessary number of sensors required by our Smart Surface. The tests will show that SNC is of great importance for choosing the number of sensors, and therefore to determine the size of the sensors grid

VAAL, Video Adaptation at Application Layer and Experiments using DCCP

International audienceMore and more high definition and high quality videos are nowadays stored on Internet but they are not accessible for everybody because high and stable bandwidth is needed to stream them. A lower bitrate encoding is usually chosen but it leads to lower quality too. A solution is to use a TCP-friendly transport protocol and let the application itself choose for each user the bitrate of the video which matches the network bandwidth. This paper presents VAAL, a simple and efficient method designed to ameliorate user video experience. It involves only the application layer on the sender. The main idea of VAAL is that the sender application monitors the network conditions by checking transport protocol buffer overflows and adapts the video bitrate accordingly. Experimental results show that the video adaptation using VAAL performs very well compared to the currently widely-used static encoding

Oscillation-free video adaptation at application layer on server side and experiments using DCCP

International audienceNowadays, video data transfers account for much of the Internet bandwidth and a huge number of users use it daily. However, despite its apparent interest, video streaming is still done in a suboptimal manner. Indeed, more and more high-definition and high-quality videos are nowadays stored on Internet but they are not accessible for everybody because a high and stable bandwidth is needed to stream them; also, during videoconferencing, the highest possible quality often exceeds the available bandwidth. Hence, a lower bitrate encoding is usually chosen but it leads to lower quality and network under-utilization too. This paper presents Video Adaptation at Application Layer (VAAL), a simple and efficient method designed to use optimally network resources and to ameliorate user video experience. It involves only the application layer on the server. The main idea of VAAL is that it checks Transmission Control Protocol-friendly transport protocol buffer overflows and adapts the video bitrate accordingly; as a result, the bitrate constantly matches the network bandwidth. It can be used together with Zigzag Avoidance Algorithm (ZAAL), a novel algorithm aiming to avoid quality oscillations. Experimental results show that the video adaptation using VAAL+ZAAL performs much better compared with the currently widely used static encoding, making it a strong candidate for hard real-time video streaming

Simulation to help calibration of a {MEMS} Sensor Network

International audienceThe Smart Surface project aims at designing an integrated micro-manipulator based on an array of micromodules connected with a 2D array topology network. Each micromodule comprises a sensor, an actuator and a processing unit. One of the aims of the processing unit is to differentiate the shape of the part that is put on top of the Smart Surface. From a set of shapes this differentiation is done through a distributed algorithm that we call a criterion. The article presents Sensor Network Calibrator (SNC), a calibrator which allows to parametrize the Smart Surface and to determine the necessary number of sensors required by our Smart Surface. The tests will show that SNC is of great importance for choosing the number of sensors, and therefore to determine the size of the sensors grid

An analysis of congestion controls in centralized control systems

International audienceThis article studies different congestion control methods applied to a centralized control system, consisting in several sensors/actuators and one controller. Sensors/actuators are linked to the controller through an IP network. Depending on the data exchanged, the network can be congested. In such case, the congestion control used by data exchange becomes important. We evaluate four congestion control methods used by three classical transport protocols, UDP, TCP and DCCP. This evaluation uses ns2 network simulator. Results on a centralised control system show that TCP and DCCP offer a good tradeoff on reliability vs. throughput, whereas UDP has best results provided that the network is well configured

A taxonomy of the parameters used by decision methods for adaptive video transmission

International audienceNowadays, video data transfers account for much of the Internet traffic and a huge number of users use this service on a daily base. Even if videos are usually stored in several bitrates on servers, the video sending rate does not take into account network conditions which are changing dynamically during transmission. Therefore, the best bitrate is not used which causes sub-optimal video quality when the video bitrate is under the available bandwidth or packet loss when it is over it. One solution is to deploy adaptive video, which adapts video parameters such as bitrate or frame resolution to network conditions. Many ideas are proposed in the literature, yet no paper provides a global view on adaptation methods in order to classify them. This article fills this gap by discussing several adaptation methods through a taxonomy of the parameters used for adaptation. We show that, in the research community, the sender generally takes the decision of adaptation whereas in the solutions supported by major current companies the receiver takes this decision. We notably suggest, without evaluation, a valuable and realistic adaptation method, gathering the advantages of the presented methods

{EcnLD}, {ECN Loss Differentiation} to optimize the performance of transport protocols on wireless networks

International audienceOne major yet unsolved problem in wired-cum-wireless networks is the classification of losses, which can be due either to wireless temporary interferences or to network congestion. The transport protocol response to losses has to be different for these two cases. If the transmission uses existing protocols like TCP, the losses will always be classified as congestion losses by the data sender, causing reduced throughput. In wired networks, ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) can be used to control the congestion through active queue management such as RED (Random Early Detection). It can also be used to resolve the transport protocol misreaction on wireless networks. This paper proposes a loss differentiation method (EcnLD), based on ECN signaling and RTT, and applied to TCPlike. TCPlike is one of the two current congestion controls present in the new transport protocol DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol). Our results indicate that EcnLD is a good approach to optimize congestion control and therefore increase the performance of transport protocols over wireless networks

Video quality estimation of {DCCP} streaming over wireless networks

International audienceThis paper describes a streaming architecture simulation model above Network Simulator 2 (NS2) which allows to define specific transport properties. Multimedia contents are specific because they are time-dependent and they can undergo small deterioration if necessary. We simulate such a congestion control that has the ability to decrease the multimedia quality in case of network congestion in order to decrease packet losses and packet delivery delays. We integrate this video congestion control inside DCCP (Datagram Congestion Control Protocol) and TFRC (TCP Friendly Rate Control). The transcoding of the multimedia contents is realized thanks to the NetMoVie simulation model which is an RTP mixer. We compare the adaptive transport solution to the classic transport solution without any adaptive mechanism. The Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (PSNR) of the received multimedia contents is measured and compared for better visualization