Medium Access Control and Network Coding for Wireless Information Flows

This dissertation addresses the intertwined problems of medium access control (MAC) and network coding in ad hoc wireless networks. The emerging wireless network applications introduce new challenges that go beyond the classical understanding of wireline networks based on layered architecture and cooperation. Wireless networks involve strong interactions between MAC and network layers that need to be jointly specified in a cross-layer design framework with cooperative and non-cooperative users. For multi-hop wireless networks, we first rediscover the value of scheduled access at MAC layer through a detailed foray into the questions of throughput and energy consumption. We propose a distributed time-division mechanism to activate dynamic transmitter-receiver assignments and eliminate interference at non-intended receivers for throughput and energy-efficient resource allocation based on stable operation with arbitrary single-receiver MAC protocols. In addition to full cooperation, we consider competitive operation of selfish users with individual performance objectives of throughput, energy and delay. We follow a game-theoretic approach to evaluate the non-cooperative equilibrium strategies at MAC layer and discuss the coupling with physical layer through power and rate control. As a cross-layer extension to multi-hop operation, we analyze the non-cooperative operation of joint MAC and routing, and introduce cooperation stimulation mechanisms for packet forwarding. We also study the impact of malicious transmitters through a game formulation of denial of service attacks in random access and power-controlled MAC. As a new networking paradigm, network coding extends routing by allowing intermediate transmitters to code over the received packets. We introduce the adaptation of network coding to wireless environment in conjunction with MAC. We address new research problems that arise when network coding is cast in a cross-layer optimization framework with stable operation. We specify the maximum throughput and stability regions, and show the necessity of joint design of MAC and network coding for throughput and energy-efficient operation of cooperative or competitive users. Finally, we discuss the benefits of network coding for throughput stability in single-hop multicast communication over erasure channels. Deterministic and random coding schemes are introduced to optimize the stable throughput properties. The results extend our understanding of fundamental communication limits and trade-offs in wireless networks

Network coding in wireless queueing networks: tandem network case

Abstract — In this paper, we compare the effects of the saturated and possibly emptying packet queues on wireless network coding (or plain routing as a special case) in a simple tandem network. We consider scheduled or random access with omnidirectional transmissions and assume the classical collision channel model without simultaneous transmission and reception by any node. For the case of multiple source nodes, we evaluate the multicast throughput rates jointly achievable by different sourcedestination pairs under the separate assumptions of network coding and plain routing only. Particularly, we specify the throughput region for saturated queues and stability region for possibly emptying queues. We also evaluate the fundamental trade-offs among the performance objectives of throughput and transmission and processing energy costs. Finally, we extend the analysis to non-cooperative network operation with selfish nodes competing for limited network resources. We point at the inefficiency of competitive medium access control and network coding (or plain routing) decisions at individual nodes, and introduce a pricing-based cooperation stimulation mechanism to improve the throughput and energy efficiency performance. I

Adaptive Network Coding for Scheduling Real-time Traffic with Hard Deadlines

We study adaptive network coding (NC) for scheduling real-time traffic over a single-hop wireless network. To meet the hard deadlines of real-time traffic, it is critical to strike a balance between maximizing the throughput and minimizing the risk that the entire block of coded packets may not be decodable by the deadline. Thus motivated, we explore adaptive NC, where the block size is adapted based on the remaining time to the deadline, by casting this sequential block size adaptation problem as a finite-horizon Markov decision process. One interesting finding is that the optimal block size and its corresponding action space monotonically decrease as the deadline approaches, and the optimal block size is bounded by the "greedy" block size. These unique structures make it possible to narrow down the search space of dynamic programming, building on which we develop a monotonicity-based backward induction algorithm (MBIA) that can solve for the optimal block size in polynomial time. Since channel erasure probabilities would be time-varying in a mobile network, we further develop a joint real-time scheduling and channel learning scheme with adaptive NC that can adapt to channel dynamics. We also generalize the analysis to multiple flows with hard deadlines and long-term delivery ratio constraints, devise a low-complexity online scheduling algorithm integrated with the MBIA, and then establish its asymptotical throughput-optimality. In addition to analysis and simulation results, we perform high fidelity wireless emulation tests with real radio transmissions to demonstrate the feasibility of the MBIA in finding the optimal block size in real time.Comment: 11 pages, 13 figure

Energy-Efficient MAC in Ad Hoc Networks Inspired by Conflict Resolution Concepts

In this paper, we address the medium access control (MAC) problem in ad-hoc networks from the energy-efficiency perspective and develop a residual-energybased collision resolution algorithm (CRA) for energy-limited terminals. In this interval-splitting-based algorithm, packets involved in a collision are partitioned into subsets according to the amount of residual battery energy left at the corresponding terminals, and retransmissions are scheduled according to a tree structure. To avoid possible performance degradations for cases of not evenly spread battery energies, we propose a hybrid approach that interchangeably uses energybased and first-come-first-served CRA’s to resolve packet conflicts. We extend the proposed energy-based collision resolution (CR) approach to cases without hard energy constraints but, rather, with energy-efficiency objectives. The algorithm then utilizes the distance from the receiver as the criterion. We then address energy-efficient conflict resolution in general multi-hop ad-hoc networks. In this context, a useful but yet simple method is proposed to reduce the interdependence between collision resolution processes at different receivers, which would otherwise distort the general structure of tree-splitting algorithms. We evaluate the proposed algorithms via simulation for communication systems ranging from simple single-cell classical collision channel models to general multi-hop wireless ad-hoc networks