A cross layer multi hop network architecture for wireless Ad Hoc networks

In this paper, a novel decentralized cross-layer multi-hop cooperative network architecture is presented. Our architecture involves the design of a simple yet efficient cooperative flooding scheme,two decentralized opportunistic cooperative forwarding mechanisms as well as the design of Routing Enabled Cooperative Medium Access Control (RECOMAC) protocol that spans and incorporates the physical, medium access control (MAC) and routing layers for improving the performance of multihop communication. The proposed architecture exploits randomized coding at the physical layer to realize cooperative diversity. Randomized coding alleviates relay selection and actuation mechanisms,and therefore reduces the coordination among the relays. The coded packets are forwarded via opportunistically formed cooperative sets within a region, without communication among the relays and without establishing a prior route. In our architecture, routing layer functionality is submerged into the MAC layer to provide seamless cooperative communication while the messaging overhead to set up routes, select and actuate relays is minimized. RECOMAC is shown to provide dramatic performance improvements, such as eight times higher throughput and ten times lower end-to-end delay as well as reduced overhead, as compared to networks based on well-known IEEE 802.11 and Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) protocols

RECOMAC: a cross-layer cooperative network protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

A novel decentralized cross-layer multi-hop cooperative protocol, namely, Routing Enabled Cooperative Medium Access Control (RECOMAC) is proposed for wireless ad hoc networks. The protocol architecture makes use of cooperative forwarding methods, in which coded packets are forwarded via opportunistically formed cooperative sets within a region, as RECOMAC spans the physical, medium access control (MAC) and routing layers. Randomized coding is exploited at the physical layer to realize cooperative transmissions, and cooperative forwarding is implemented for routing functionality, which is submerged into the MAC layer, while the overhead for MAC and route set up is minimized. RECOMAC is shown to provide dramatic performance improvements of eight times higher throughput and one tenth of end-to-end delay than that of the conventional architecture in practical wireless mesh networks

Energy distribution control in wireless sensor networks through range optimization

A major objective in wireless sensor networks is to find optimum routing strategies for energy efficient use of nodes. Routing decision and transmission power selection are intrinsically connected since the transmission power of a node is adjusted depending on the location of the next hop. In this paper, we propose a location-based routing framework to control the energy distribution in a network where transmission ranges, hence powers, of nodes are determined based on their locations. We show that the proposed framework is sufficiently general to investigate the minimum-energy and maximum-lifetime routing problems. It is shown that via the location based strategy the network lifetime can be improved by 70% and the total energy consumption can be decreased to three-fourths to one-third of the constant transmission range strategy depending on the propagation medium and the size of the network

Throughput analysis of ALOHA with cooperative diversity

Cooperative transmissions emulate multi-antenna systems and can improve the quality of signal reception. In this paper, we propose and analyze a cross layer random access scheme, C-ALOHA, that enables cooperative transmissions in the context of ALOHA system. Our analysis shows that over a fading channel C-ALOHA can improve the throughput by 30%, as compared to standard ALOHA protocol

Energy-efficient packet forwarding through network partitioning in wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs), multiple sources stream sensed data to the base station. As the base station is approached amount of streamed data becomes disproportionate to the number of forwarding nodes, causing excessive data forwarding at the nodes around the base station. We propose a packet forwarding framework to manage and reduce the energy dissipated at the nodes through partitioning the network into variable size regions. Our approach provides a means to control the transmission ranges of the nodes and the number of nodes serviced by a node as a forwarder. It is shown that the energy consumption in the network can be balanced through the optimal selection of the partition sizes. The proposed framework is shown to provide a simple solution to finding the optimum transmission ranges for balanced energy consumption in a densely deployed WSN, making it a practical forwarding strategy. The proposed framework does not require periodic message updates and it is suitable for implementation in dense networks

A cross-layer multi-hop cooperative network architecture for wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, a novel decentralized cross-layer multi-hop cooperative network architecture is proposed and presented. This cross-layer architecture introduces a new cooperative flooding scheme and two decentralized opportunistic cooperative forwarding mechanisms based on randomized coding, and a Routing Enabled Cooperative Medium Access Control (RECOMAC) protocol that enables cooperative forwarding, while incorporating physical, medium access control (MAC) and routing layers. RECOMAC employs randomized coding to realize cooperative diversity, so that relay selection and actuation mechanisms are alleviated and the MAC costs are reduced. The coded packets are routed in the network via the proposed cooperative forwarding schemes, which opportunistically form cooperative sets within a region, not needing a prior route to be established. Essentially, in the RECOMAC architecture, the routing layer functionality is submerged into the MAC layer to provide seamless cooperative communication, while the messaging overhead to set up routes, select and actuate relays is reduced. We evaluate the performance of RECOMAC in terms of network throughput, delay and MAC and routing overhead, in comparison to the conventional architecture based on the well-known IEEE 802.11 MAC and Ad hoc On Demand Distance Vector (AODV) routing protocols. RECOMAC is shown to provide quite significant improvement by an order of magnitude difference in all investigated performance metrics, under a variety of scenarios, considering different network sizes, static and mobile scenarios and networks with multiple flows

A cooperative routing framework based on randomized coding in wireless ad hoc networks

A distributed cooperative forwarding framework based on randomized coding is proposed, where cooperative links are formed and packets are forwarded on the fly, without explicit relay selection, actuation or resource allocation. In this framework, a cooperative flooding method and two cooperative forwarding schemes that actuate the cooperative transmissions of the nodes within an optimally formed progress region are described. It is shown that by assuring packets' progress cooperatively through a region instead of a string of predetermined nodes, progress of the packets towards the final destination is guaranteed even in sparse networks, under severe fading and mobility conditions. The proposed forwarding schemes are shown to provide reductions in the total number of hops, while causing minimal spatial footprint on the network