Mobile Hotspot Network System for High‐Speed Railway Communications Using Millimeter Waves

We propose a millimeter wave (MMW)‐based mobile hotspot network (MHN) system for application in high‐speed railways that is capable of supporting a peak backhaul link throughput of 1 Gbps per train at 400 km/h. The MHN system can be implemented in subways and high‐speed trains to support passengers with smart devices and provide access to the Internet. The proposed system can overcome the inherent high path loss in MMW through system designs and high antenna gains. We present a simulation of the system performance that shows that a fixed beamforming strategy can provide high signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise‐ratio similar to those of an adaptive beamforming strategy, with the exception of 15% of the train path in which the network can use link adaptation with low‐order modulation formats or trigger a handover to maintain the connection. We also demonstrate the feasibility of the MHN system using a test bed deployed in Seoul subway line 8. The backhaul link throughput varies instantaneously between 200 Mbps and 500 Mbps depending on the SNR variations while the train is running. During the field trial, the smartphones used could make connections through offloading.     

On network bandwidth sharing for transporting rate‐adaptive packet video using feedback

While existing research shows that feedback‐based congestion control mechanisms are capable of providing better video quality and higher link utilization for rate‐adaptive packet video, there has been relatively little study on how to share network bandwidth among competing rate‐adaptive video connections, when feedback control is used in a fully distributed network. This paper addresses this issue by presenting a framework of network bandwidth sharing for transporting rate‐adaptive packet video using feedback. We show how a weight‐based bandwidth sharing policy can be used to allocate network bandwidth among competing video connections and design a feedback control algorithm using an Available Bit Rate (ABR)‐like flow control mechanism. A novel video source rate adaptation algorithm is also introduced to decouple a video source's actual transmission rate from the rate used for distributed protocol convergence. Our feedback control algorithm provides guaranteed convergence and smooth source rate adaptation to our weight‐based bandwidth sharing policy under any network configuration and any set of link distances. Finally, we show the on‐line minimum rate renegotiation and weight adjustment options in our feedback control algorithm, which offer further flexibility in network bandwidth sharing for video connections. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Link repair in managed multi‐domain connections with end‐to‐end quality guarantees

The Internet is a platform providing connection channels for various services. Whereas for services like email the best‐effort nature of the Internet can be considered sufficient, other services strongly depend on service‐specific connection quality parameters. This quality dependence has led to dedicated content distribution networks as a workaround solution for services like YouTube. Such workarounds are applicable to a small number of services only. With the global application of the Internet, the impact of quality of service varies from annoyance due to jitter in VoIP communication to endangering human lives in telemedicine applications. Thus network connections with end‐to‐end quality guarantees are indispensable for various existing and evolving services. In this paper we consider point‐to‐point multi‐domain network connections for which the end‐to‐end quality has to be assured. Our contribution includes the classification of fault cases in general and countermeasures against end‐to‐end performance degradation. By correlating events and reasonable countermeasures, this work provides the foundation for quality assurance during the operation phase of end‐to‐end connections. We put our contribution in the context of a vision of global‐goal‐aware self‐adaptation in computer networks and outline further research areas that require a similar classification to the work provided here. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An opportunistic cross‐layer architecture for voice in multi‐hop wireless LANs

We propose an opportunistic cross‐layer architecture for adaptive support of Voice over IP in multi‐hop wireless LANs. As opposed to providing high call quality, we target emergencies where it is important to communicate, even if at low quality, no matter the harshness of the network conditions. With the importance of delay on voice quality in mind, we select adaptation parameters that control the ratio of real‐time traffic load to available bandwidth. This is achieved in two ways: minimizing the load and maximizing the bandwidth. The PHY/MAC interaction improves the use of the spectral resources by opportunistically exploiting rate‐control and packet bursts, while the MAC/application interaction controls the demand per source through voice compression. The objective is to maximize the number of calls admitted that satisfy the end‐to‐end delay budget. The performance of the protocol is studied extensively in the ns‐2 network simulator. Results indicate that call quality degrades as load increases and overlonger paths, and a larger packet size improves performance. For long paths having low‐quality channels, forward error correction, header compression, and relaxing the delay budget of the system are required to maintain call admission and quality. The proposed adaptive protocol achieves high performance improvements over the traditional, non‐adaptive approach. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

End-to-End QoS for Video Delivery Over Wireless Internet

Providing end-to-end quality of service (QoS) support is essential for video delivery over the next-generation wireless Internet. We address several key elements in the end-to-end QoS support, including scalable video representation, network-aware end system, and network QoS provisioning. There are generally two approaches in QoS support: the network-centric and the end-system centric solutions. The fundamental problem in a network-centric solution is how to map QoS criterion at different layers respectively, and optimize total quality across these layers. We first present the general framework of a cross-layer network-centric solution, and then describe the recent advances in network modeling, QoS mapping, and QoS adaptation. The key targets in end-system centric approach are network adaptation and media adaptation. We present a general framework of the end-system centric solution and investigate the recent developments. Specifically, for network adaptation, we review the available bandwidth estimation and efficient video transport protocol; for media adaptation , we describe the advances in error control, power control, and corresponding bit allocation. Finally, we highlight several advanced research directions.     

Adaptive systems for improved media streaming experience

Supporting streaming media applications over current packet network infrastructures represents a challenging task in many regards. For one, the lack of quality of service (QoS) guarantees in existing networks such as the Internet means that time-constrained media packets will face dynamic variations in bandwidth, loss rate, and delay as they traverse the network from the sender to the receiver. The variable rate of media traffic represents yet another difficulty when transmission constraints need to be met. Finally, the heterogeneity of client devices and access bandwidth coupled with custom user preferences exacerbate the problem of smooth and quality-optimized media playback even further. In this article we provide an overview of the various techniques for media and streaming strategy adaptation, which can be employed to deal with the difficulties imposed by such dynamic environments. These techniques depend on the characteristics of the media application, in particular on the network streaming infrastructure and the timing constraints imposed on the media packets' delivery. We survey adaptation techniques that act on the encoding of the multimedia information, on the scheduling of the media packets, or that try to combat transmission errors. We also briefly overview some media-friendly networking solutions, which contribute to increased QoS by incorporating some level of intelligence in intermediate network nodes. Finally, we describe a few open challenges in media streaming, emphasizing strategies based on promising cross-layer approaches where adaptation strategies are applied in a coordinated manner, across different layers of the network protocol stack     

A fairness adaptive TDMA scheduling algorithm for wireless sensor networks with unreliable links

Wireless sensor networks consist of a large number of wireless sensor nodes that organize themselves into multihop radio networks. With different link quality, different distance to the sink, nodes in a network are not treated equally, especially in a network with high traffic. In this paper, we propose a fairness adaptive time division multiple access scheduling algorithm (FATS) considering the fairness of network resource allocation. This algorithm, combining several heuristic algorithms, can assign network resources to the nodes to lead to maximizing the minimum end‐to‐end packet delivery success ratio. Because the wireless link is usually time‐varying, this algorithm can also assign the time slots to the nodes adaptively and energy‐efficiently according to the variation of link quality. We define several criteria for the slot assignment and adjustment. The change in slot assignment can be finished quickly during normal packet transmission, which causes little affect to the network. Meanwhile, considering the required data rate, FATS can achieve the maximum transmission capacity of the network with specified static or dynamic reliability. The simulation results show that the FATS can significantly reduce the difference of the end‐to‐end packet delivery ratio, track the variation of link quality quickly, and achieve the fairness of resource allocation.Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive low‐priority transfer for high bandwidth and delay product networks

As the exponential growth of the Internet, there is an increasing need to provide different types of services for numerous applications. Among these services, low‐priority data transfer across wide area network has attracted much attention and has been used in a number of applications, such as data backup and system updating. Although the design of low‐priority data transfer has been investigated adequately in low speed networks at transport layer, it becomes more challenging for the design of low‐priority data transfer with the adaptation to high bandwidth delay product networks than the previous ones. This paper proposes an adaptive low‐priority protocol to achieve high utilization and fair sharing of links in high bandwidth delay product networks, which is implemented at transport layer with an end‐to‐end approach. The designed protocol implements an adaptive congestion control mechanism to adjust the congestion window size by appropriate amount of spare bandwidth. The improved congestion mechanism is intent to make as much use of the available bandwidth without disturbing the regular transfer as possible. Experiments demonstrate that the adaptive low‐priority protocol achieve efficient and fair bandwidth utilization, and remain non‐intrusive to high priority traffic. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using Quick‐Start to enhance TCP‐friendly rate control performance in bidirectional satellite networks

In the not so distant future, we envisage an Internet where the biggest share of capacity is used by streaming applications. To avoid congestion collapse from unresponsive flows calls for a robust and ubiquitous end‐to‐end multimedia congestion control mechanism, such as TCP‐friendly rate control (TFRC), which provides fair sharing with the other Internet traffic. This paper therefore analyses the implications of using rate‐adaptive congestion control over satellite links that utilize demand allocation multiple access (DAMA) to maximize satellite transponder utilization. The interaction between TFRC and DAMA is explored using simulations supported by fluidic flow models. The analysis shows that DAMA reduces the start‐up phase of TFRC, causing non‐negligible delays. To mitigate this problem, we propose a new cross‐layer method based on the Quick‐Start mechanism. This can accelerate the start‐up of multimedia flows by a judicious allocation of additional capacity derived from cross‐layer signalling. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Algebra-Based Scalable Overlay Network Monitoring: Algorithms, Evaluation, and Applications

Overlay network monitoring enables distributed Internet applications to detect and recover from path outages and periods of degraded performance within seconds. For an overlay network with end hosts, existing systems either require measurements, and thus lack scalability, or can only estimate the latency but not congestion or failures. Our earlier extended abstract [Y. Chen, D. Bindel, and R. H. Katz, ldquoTomography-based overlay network monitoring,rdquo Proceedings of the ACM SIGCOMM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC), 2003] briefly proposes an algebraic approach that selectively monitors linearly independent paths that can fully describe all the paths. The loss rates and latency of these paths can be used to estimate the loss rates and latency of all other paths. Our scheme only assumes knowledge of the underlying IP topology, with links dynamically varying between lossy and normal. In this paper, we improve, implement, and extensively evaluate such a monitoring system. We further make the following contributions: i) scalability analysis indicating that for reasonably large n (e.g., 100), the growth of k is bounded as O(n log n), ii) efficient adaptation algorithms for topology changes, such as the addition or removal of end hosts and routing changes, iii) measurement load balancing schemes, iv) topology measurement error handling, and v) design and implementation of an adaptive streaming media system as a representative application. Both simulation and Internet experiments demonstrate we obtain highly accurate path loss rate estimation while adapting to topology changes within seconds and handling topology errors.     

A bio‐inspired OSPF path selection scheme based on an adaptive attractor selection model

Current Internet Protocol routers only support equal cost multi‐path routing, which performs the random path selection or the traffic uniform distribution among equal‐cost paths. In biology, an adaptive attractor selection model is presented to simulate the concentration changes of two kinds of Escherichia coli 's mRNA in changing nutrition environments with bistability equations. Inspired by the metabolism behaviors of E. coli , we propose an adaptive path selection scheme Open Shortest Path First‐path selection by attractor selection to dynamically select the transmission path by the real‐time path quality. Here, the mRNA concentration is analogous to the path quality. Then, to reflect the multipath quality, multi‐stability equations are adopted and redesigned. Our scheme consists of two main features. The first one is a redefined path‐activity to indicate multipath transmission goodness, which is inversely proportional to the offset between current path quality and best path quality. And the second one is a new attractor expression of the multi‐stability equations to concretely specify the effect of a stochastic item noise in the equations on the path selection. Compared with the greedy selection and the uniform random selection in file transfer protocol (FTP) service, our scheme gains better performance on reducing file transmission time, traffic throughput, and traffic dropped. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive backoff scheme for ad hoc networks based on IEEE 802.11

The performance of backoff scheme plays an important role in designing efficient Medium Access Protocols for ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose an adaptive backoff scheme and evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme for ad hoc networks. The backoff mechanism devised by us grants a node access to the channel based on its probability of collision for a transmitted frame in comparison to the nodes in the two‐hop contention area. We use both an analytical model and simulation experiments to evaluate the performance of our adaptive backoff mechanism in an ad hoc network. The results show that our protocol exhibits a significant improvement in power saving, end‐to‐end goodput, packet delivery ratio, and hop‐put, compared with the existing IEEE 802.11 DCF. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Robust security framework for DVB‐RCS satellite networks (RSSN)

Satellites represent a solution for Internet access in locations with no other telecom infrastructures, for example, on high mobility platforms such as planes, ships or high‐speed trains, or for disaster recovery applications. However, due to peculiar characteristics, satellite networks are prone to different security threats. In this paper, we introduce a novel, robust security architecture for securing digital video broadcasting‐return channel via satellite satellite networks, inspired by the robust security mechanism available in the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11i wireless local area network. We propose an efficient authentication and key management mechanism, which is exploited through three round‐trips only, demonstrating that it is as secure as IEEE 802.11i. Furthermore, the simulation results show that the proposed security framework needs a very small data overhead and shows better performance than internet protocol security (IPSec), which is commonly used as an end‐to‐end security solution over internet protocol satellite networks. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Priority‐based adaptive routing in NGEO satellite networks

In a non‐geostationary satellite constellation with inter satellite links (ISLs), there could be many shortest paths between two satellites in terms of hop count. An efficient routing algorithm should effectively use these paths in order to distribute traffic to ISLs in a balanced way and to improve the performance of the system. This paper presents and evaluates a novel priority‐based adaptive shortest path routing (PAR) scheme in order to achieve this goal. PAR sets the path towards the destination in a distributed manner, using a priority mechanism depending on the past utilization and buffering information of the ISLs. Moreover, to avoid unnecessary splitting of a flow and to achieve better utilization of ISLs, enhanced PAR (ePAR) scheme is proposed. This paper evaluates performance of the proposed techniques by employing an extensive set of simulations. Furthermore, since there are a number of ePAR parameters that should be adjusted depending on the network and traffic characteristics, a detailed analysis of ePAR scheme is provided to form a framework for setting the parameters. This paper also includes a method for adaptation of the proposed algorithms to minimum‐delay path routing. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Saturation throughput analysis of multi‐rate IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

IEEE 802.11 protocol supports adaptive rate mechanism, which selects the transmission rate according to the condition of the wireless channel, to enhance the system performance. Thus, research of multi‐rate IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) performance has become one of the hot research topics. In this paper, we study the performance of multi‐rate IEEE 802.11 MAC over a Gaussian channel. An accurate analytical model is presented to compute the system saturation throughput. We validate our model in both single‐rate and multi‐rate networks through various simulations. The results show that our model is accurate and channel error has a significant impact on system performance. In addition, our numerical results show that the performance of single‐rate IEEE 802.11 DCF with basic access method is better than that with RTS/CTS mechanism in a high‐rate and high‐load network and vice versa. In a multi‐rate network, the performance of IEEE 802.11 DCF with RTS/CTS mechanism is better than that with basic access method in a congested and error‐prone wireless environment. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multi‐hour design of survivable classical IP networks

Most of Internet intra‐domain routing protocols (OSPF, RIP, and IS–IS) are based on shortest path routing. The path length is defined as the sum of metrics associated with the path links. These metrics are often managed by the network administrator. In this context, the design of an Internet backbone network consists in dimensioning the network (routers and transmission links) and establishing the metric. Many requirements have to be satisfied. First, Internet traffic is not static as significant variations can be observed during the day. Second, many failures can occur (cable cuts, hardware failures, software failures, etc.). In this paper, we present algorithms (meta‐heuristics and greedy heuristic) to design Internet backbone networks, taking into account the multi‐hour behaviour of traffic and some survivability requirements. Many multi‐hour and protection strategies are studied and numerically compared in this paper. Our algorithms can be extended to integrate other quality of service constraints. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Cross‐layer and cognitive QoS management system for next‐generation networking

Owing to limited wireless network resources, network applications must provide an adaptive quality‐guaranteed service to satisfy user requirements. Different applications are associated with different quality of service (QoS) concerns, as well as different QoS control parameters. This work presents an adaptive QoS algorithm by discussing the QoS specifications of three wireless access technologies, i.e. 3G, WiMAX and WiFi. Based on cross‐layer and cognition concepts, these environmental parameters are integrated with the sensing of spectral and received signal strength from a cognitive radio paradigm. An adaptive QoS algorithm is then proposed to select the optimal access network for services. Simulation results indicate that the proposed adaptive QoS algorithm outperforms available ones in real‐time applications. Compared with traditional algorithms, the proposed algorithm reduces not only the average delay time and jitter for VoIP services to 0.16 s and 0.09 ms, respectively, but also the packet loss ratio for high‐definition video streaming by 3.4%. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Implementing PacketEconomy: Distributed money‐based QoS in OMNET++

In this work we examine how quality of service (QoS) can be achieved in a real network by allowing packets to coordinate using fiat money in a market economy for router queue positions. In this context we implement and evaluate the PacketEconomy mechanism in the discrete‐event simulator OMNET++, using the standard INET library for simulating Internet Protocol version 6 networks and evaluate throughput, end‐to‐end delay, and packet drop rates. Additionally, we examine whether the flows have a game‐theoretic incentive to participate in the market economy, while covering both Transmission Control Protocol– and User Datagram Protocol–based flows in multiple different cases. The mechanism achieves QoS by allowing packets with different QoS requirements waiting to be served in router queues to mutually trade positions by exchanging money. Notably, each flow can independently and selfishly define the ask and bid prices of its packets. In this manner, packets can coordinate to be able to self‐regulate their packet‐specific access to shared network resources. The results are promising and show that the innovative PacketEconomy mechanism provides robust, effective, and fine‐grained QoS while maintaining end‐user control for both rate‐ and window‐based flows.     

Performance of delay‐sensitive traffic in multi‐layered satellite IP networks with on‐board processing capability

In this article, performance of delay‐sensitive traffic in multi‐layered satellite Internet Protocol (IP) networks with on‐board processing (OBP) capability is investigated. With OBP, a satellite can process the received data, and according to the nature of application, it can decide on the transmission properties. First, we present a concise overview of relevant aspects of satellite networks to delay‐sensitive traffic and routing. Then, in order to improve the system performance for delay‐sensitive traffic, specifically Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), a novel adaptive routing mechanism in two‐layered satellite network considering the network's real‐time information is introduced and evaluated. Adaptive Routing Protocol for Quality of Service (ARPQ) utilizes OBP and avoids congestion by distributing traffic load between medium‐Earth orbit and low‐Earth orbit layers. We utilize a prioritized queueing policy to satisfy quality‐of‐service (QoS) requirements of delay‐sensitive applications while evading non‐real‐time traffic suffer low performance level. The simulation results verify that multi‐layered satellite networks with OBP capabilities and QoS mechanisms are essential for feasibility of packet‐based high‐quality delay‐sensitive services which are expected to be the vital components of next‐generation communications networks. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.