SeCA: A framework for Secure Channel Assignment in wireless mesh networks

To maximize the available throughput in multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks (WMNs), it is a critical issue to design a channel assignment scheme efficiently utilizing orthogonal channels. However, most channel assignment schemes are vulnerable to the misbehaviors of nodes participating in channel assignment, and existing secure channel assignment schemes do not address all of the vulnerabilities. In this paper, we address the threats to channel assignment in WMNs resulting from node misbehaviors and present a generic verification framework to detect such misbehaviors. We develop a concrete verification scheme based on this framework and an existing distributed channel assignment scheme. We validate our approach by implementing the verification scheme and evaluating it through simulation. The results show that our approach improves misbehavior detection with minimum performance overhead.     

Joint topology control and routing for multi-radio multi-channel WMNs under SINR model using bio-inspired techniques

Multi-channel communication in a wireless mesh network (WMN) equipped with multi-radio routers can significantly enhance the network capacity. Channel allocation, power control and routing are three main issues involved in the performance of multi-channel multi-radio WMNs. In this paper, the joint optimization of channel allocation, power control and routing under signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) model for multi-channel multi-radio WMNs is investigated. It is proven to be NP hard. As we know, no optimal polynomial time solutions have been proposed in the previous literatures. In order to tackle this problem, we apply bio-inspired optimization techniques for channel allocation and power control, and use linear programming for routing optimization. To reflect the cross-layer interaction property among these three issues, the routing optimization is further defined as the fitness value of a chromosome in bio-inspired optimization. Further, we propose an effective joint optimization framework, in which two representative bio-inspired optimization methods (genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm) are hybridized to enhance the searching ability. The detailed evolution processes for both genetic algorithm and particle swarm optimization algorithm are demonstrated. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed algorithm converges fast and approaches the sub-optimal solution effectively.     

A cross-layer optimization framework for joint channel assignment and multicast routing in multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks

Existing literature on multicast routing protocols in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) from the view point of the links involved in routing are divided into two categories: schemes are aimed at multicast construction with minimal interference which is known as NP hard problem. In contrast, other methods develop network-coding-based solutions with the main objective of throughput maximization, which can effectively reduce the complexity of finding the optimal routing solution from exponential to polynomial time. The proposed framework in this paper is placed in the second category. In multi-channel multi-radio WMNs (MCMR WMNs), each node is equipped with multiple radios, each tuned on a different channel. In this paper, for the first time, we propose a cross-layer convex optimization framework for joint channel assignment and multicast throughput maximization in MCMR WMNs. The proposed method is composed of two phases: in the first phase, using cellular learning automata, channels are assigned to the links established between the radios of the nodes in a distributed fashion such that the minimal interference coefficient for each link is provided. Then, the resultant channel assignment scheme is utilized in the second phase for throughput maximization within an iterative optimization framework based on Lagrange relaxation and primal problem decomposition. We have conducted many experiments to contrast the performance of our solution against many representative approaches.     

Joint scheduling and routing algorithm with load balancing in wireless mesh network

Wireless mesh network (WMN) is a promising solution for last mile broadband internet access. Mesh nodes or mesh routers are connected via wireless links to form a multi-hop backbone infrastructure and improving throughput is the primary goal. While previous works mainly focused on either link level protocol design or complex mathematical model, in this paper, we investigate the performance gains from jointly optimizing scheduling and routing in a multi-radio, multi-channel and multi-hop wireless mesh network. Then, two optimization objectives are addressed by considering wireless media contention and spatial multiplexing. The first objective is to maximize throughput by exploiting spatial reuse while the second one is to ensure fairness among different links. We design a cross-layer algorithm by considering both MAC layer and network layer. Simulation results show that our joint optimization algorithm can significantly increase throughput as well as fairness.     

On-demand channel reservation scheme for common traffic in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) have recently gained momentum as a new broadband internet access technology to provide internet traffic. These networks have unique characteristics that make them different from ad hoc networks. These differences are as follows. First, WMNs are composed of static mesh routers that are equipped with multiple radio interfaces and turn each interface into a non-overlapping channel. These additional interfaces can create multiple concurrent links between adjacent nodes. Second, most of the traffic in WMNs is directed towards the gateway. Third, both local traffic and internet traffic are relayed by the mesh router to indeed destination. The Multi-Radio Ad hoc On-Demand Distance Vector (AODV-MR) developed to support multi-radio and does not take into account above-mentioned WMNs characteristics. In this paper, we propose an on-demand channel reservation scheme to reserve some of mesh router radio interfaces to support the gateway traffic while the remaining interfaces can be used to support the local traffic. Our scheme establishes high throughput paths for the traffic destined at the gateway, reduces the intra-flow and inter-flow interferences as well as to support full duplex node transmission.The scheme allows the gateway to assign a list of channels for each received gateway routing discovery message. Simulation results show that our proposed scheme significantly improves the performance of multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks.     

双网卡多信道无线MAC协议

多收发器多信道技术能够有效提高无线多跳网络的带宽和吞吐量,成为学术界的研究热点。多收发器多信 道MAC协议研究主要涉及信道资源的分配与管理问题。在现有多信道MAC协议的研究基础上,提出一种基于 IEEE802. 11标准W iFi网卡的双收发器多信道MAC协议—DIM(Dual-Interface Management)。协议采用信道冲 突模型来分配信道资源,以优化网络的信道分布;同时,DIM协议在较少的硬件配置下,充分利用IEEE802. 11标准提 供的信道资源,提高了信道利用率。仿真实验表明,DIM协议具有较大的网络吞吐量和较小的分组传输延迟。     

无线Mesh网络中多射频多信道MAC机制设计

针对无线Mesh网络中多信道分配问题,提出了一种适用于多射频网络的MAC机制MRMC-MAC.整个机制包含节点默认接收信道分配、可切换主信道集分配、节点通信以及可切换主信道集更新4部分.采用一种基于接收负载的分配算法,将接收负载作为信道分配的优先级参数,保证了接收负载重的节点优先分配到负载较小的信道,而接收负载较轻的节点间可以共享同一个默认接收信道,从而平衡了各个信道间的负载.分析了多射频网络中的多信道的隐终端问题并提出了解决方案.仿真结果表明,使用MRMC-MAC协议能够明显地改进MAC层吞吐量、碰撞次数等性能参数.     

On the end-to-end flow allocation and channel assignment in multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks with partially overlapped channels

The performance of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) can be improved significantly with the increase in number of channels and radios. Despite the availability of multiple channels in several of the current wireless standards, only a small fraction of them are non-overlapping and many channels are partially overlapped. In this paper, we formulate the joint channel assignment and flow allocation problem for multi-channel multi-radio WMNs as a Mixed Integer Linear Program (MILP). Unlike most of the previous studies, we consider the case when both non-overlapped and partially overlapped channels are being used. We consider an objective of maximizing aggregate end-to-end throughput and minimizing queueing delay in the network, instead of the sum of link capacities, since the traffic characteristics of a multi-hop WMN are quite different from a single hop wireless network. Our static channel assignment algorithm incorporates network traffic information, i.e., it is load aware. Our formulation takes into consideration several important network parameters such as the transmission power of each node, path loss information, the signal to interference plus noise ratio at a node, and the frequency response of the filters used in the transmitter and receiver. We show by simulations that our MILP formulation makes efficient use of the spectrum, by providing superior channel assignments and flow allocations with the addition of partially overlapped channels, without the use of any additional spectrum. We also justify the need to consider alternative objective functions such as, minimizing average queueing in the network. We also propose a polynomially bounded heuristic algorithm to scale the proposed algorithm to bigger network topologies.     

A mathematical formulation for joint channel assignment and multicast routing in multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks

Multicast routing is generally an efficient mechanism for delivering identical content to a group of receivers. Multicast is also deemed a key enabling service for a wealth of audio and video applications as well as data dissemination protocols over the last-mile backhaul Internet connectivity provided by multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks (MCMR WMNs). Major prior art multicast protocols in these networks center around heuristic or meta-heuristic initiatives in which channel assignment and multicast routing are considered as two separate sub-problems to be solved in sequence. It might even be the cast that the solution for either of these two sub-problems is assumed to be preparatively calculated and given as input to the other. Within this perspective, however, the interplay between the two sub-problems would essentially be ruled out from the computations, resulting in sub-optimal solutions for network configuration. The work in this article is targeted at promoting the adoption of cross-layer design for joint channel assignment and multicast tree construction problem in MCMR WMNs. In the proposed scheme, contrary to the existing methods, these two sub-problems will be solved conjointly and an optimal solution is provided. In particular, a comprehensive cross-optimization framework based on the binary integer programming (BIP) formulation of the problem is presented which also addresses the hidden channel problem in MCMR WMNs. We have, as well, conducted an extensive series of simulation experiments to verify the efficacy of the proposed method. Also, experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method outperforms the genetic algorithm and the simulated annealing based methods proposed by Cheng and Yang (2011) in terms of interference.     

An efficient joint channel assignment and QoS routing protocol for IEEE 802.11 multi-radio multi-channel wireless mesh networks

With the emerging of video, voice over IP (VoIP) and other real-time multimedia services, more and more people pay attention to quality of service (QoS) issues in terms of the bandwidth, delay and jitter, etc. As one effective way of broadband wireless access, it has become imperative for wireless mesh networks (WMNs) to provide QoS guarantee. Existing works mostly modify QoS architecture dedicated for ad hoc or sensor networks, and focus on single radio and single channel case. Meanwhile, they study the QoS routing or MAC protocol from view of isolated layer. In this paper, we propose a novel cross-layer QoS-aware routing protocol on OLSR (CLQ-OLSR) to support real-time multimedia communication by efficiently exploiting multi-radio and multi-channel method. By constructing multi-layer virtual logical mapping over physical topology, we implement two sets of routing mechanisms, physical modified OLSR protocol (M-OLSR) and logical routing, to accommodate network traffic. The proposed CLQ-OLSR is based on a distributed bandwidth estimation scheme, implemented at each node for estimating the available bandwidth on each associated channel. By piggybacking the bandwidth information in HELLO and topology control (TC) messages, each node disseminates information of topology and available bandwidth to other nodes in the whole network in an efficient way. From topology and bandwidth information, the optimized path can be identified. Finally, we conduct extensive simulation to verify the performance of CLQ-OLSR in different scenarios on QualNet platform. The results demonstrate that our proposed CLQ-OLSR outperforms single radio OLSR, multi-radio OLSR and OLSR with differentiated services (DiffServ) in terms of network aggregate throughput, end-to-end packet delivery ratio, delay and delay jitter with reasonable message overheads and hardware costs. In particular, the network aggregate throughput for CLQ-OLSR can almost be improved by 300% compared with the single radio case.     

无线网状网的QoS研究

作为下一代无线通信网络的关键技术,无线网状网能够融合异构网络,满足多类型的业务需求,因此必须提供一定的服务质量(QoS)保证.对目前各种QoS体系结构进行了分析,讨论了无线网状网的QoS体系结构.针对无线网状网网络层以下各层的QoS问题,对近年来国内外在功率控制、无线环境感知、支持QoS的MAC协议、QoS路由以及跨层QoS设计等方向所取得的研究成果进行了全面的概括总结和比较分析.最后对未来的研究发展趋势提出了自己的观点.     

多信道无线网状网跨层优化研究

针对多网卡多信道无线Mesh网络容量问题,基于无线信道干扰模型,在给定各节点物理层发射功率的条件下,联合考虑无线Mesh网络传输层的流速控制、网络层的路由算法和MAC层的信道分配等问题,通过采用二次路由计算策略,提出了一个跨层联合优化算法,仿真结果表示,提出的算法能提高网络吞吐量。     

Large-scale access scheduling in wireless mesh networks using social centrality

Wireless mesh networking is an economic and convenient way to provide last mile Internet access through ad hoc peer-to-peer communication links. However, without systematic network configuration and channel resource management, these networks suffer from scalability, performance degradation and service disruption issues due to overwhelming co-channel interference, unscrupulous channel utilization and inherent network mobility. The IEEE 802.11 DCF and EDCA mechanisms based on CSMA/CA are the most widely used random channel access mechanisms, but unfortunately these cannot effectively eliminate hidden terminal and exposed terminal problems in multi-hop scenarios. Social network analysis techniques proposed for economic and social studies have recently been shown to be a successful approach for characterizing information propagation in multi-hop wireless networks. We propose a set of efficient resource allocation algorithms and channel access scheduling protocols based on Latin squares and social centrality metrics for wireless mesh networks (WMNs) with multi-radio multi-channel (MRMC) communication capabilities, called LaSo$LaSo$, which can coexist with IEEE 802.11 DCF and be effectively applied in large scale WMNs. Based on interference information provided by the interference graph, LaSo$LaSo$ uses nodal degree centrality to form cliques for intra-cluster communication, and betweenness centrality to choose bridge nodes to form cliques for inter-cluster communication in WMNs, and then applies Latin squares to map the clique-based clustering structure to radios and channels for wireless communication purposes. Afterwards, LaSo$LaSo$ again applies Latin squares to schedule the channel access amongst nodes within each cluster in a collision-free manner. We evaluate LaSo$LaSo$ using simulations, and results show that LaSo$LaSo$ achieves much better performance than existing IEEE 802.11 standards and other multi-channel access control protocols.     

XCHARM: A routing protocol for multi-channel wireless mesh networks

Recent experimental results have pointed out the impact of physical layer multi-path fading and co-channel interference as the key factors influencing packet delivery among mesh routers (MRs) in wireless mesh networks. In addition, in a multi-channel environment, there exists significant power spectral overlap among channels used by MRs, leading to adjacent channel interference. In this paper, a cross-layer multi-radio, multi-channel routing protocol, XCHARM, is proposed in which the key contribution is the selection of the next hop, channel and transmission rate based on fading and interference concerns. The key features of our proposed protocol are as follows: (i) Routes are chosen based on the availability of channels that support high data rates, exhibit acceptable interference levels and long term resilience to fading related losses, (ii) The path latency is analytically calculated in advance for the candidate routes, accounting for channel induced errors, link layer contention, forward error correcting (FEC) codes, and the allowed data rates over the chosen channels, (iii) The route maintenance is performed by first attempting to identify and correct the point of failure before undertaking a global recovery action. An extensive performance evaluation, spanning the network, link and physical layers, reveals the benefits of adopting our cross-layer routing solution for wireless mesh networks.     

LAMR: learning automata based multicast routing protocol for multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks

Multicast routing is a crucial issue in wireless networks in which the same content should be delivered to a group of recipients simultaneously. Multicast is also considered as a key service for audio and video applications as well as data dissemination protocols over the last-mile backhaul Internet connectivity provided by multi-channel multi-radio wireless mesh networks (MCMR WMNs). The multicast problem is essentially related to a channel assignment strategy which determines the most suitable channel-radio associations. However, channel assignment brings about its own complications and hence, solving the multicast problem in MCMR WMNs will be more complicated than that of traditional networks. This problem has been proved to be NP-hard. In the major prior art multicast protocols developed for these networks, channel assignment and multicast routing are considered as two separate sub-problems to be solved sequentially. The work in this article is targeted at promoting the adoption of learning automata for joint channel assignment and multicast routing problem in MCMR WMNs. In the proposed scheme named LAMR, contrary to the existing methods, these two sub-problems will be solved conjointly. Experimental results demonstrate that LAMR outperforms the LCA and MCM proposed by Zeng et al. (IEEE Trans. Parallel. Distrib. Syst. 21(1):86–99, 2010) as well as the genetic algorithm-, tabu search-, and simulated annealing-based methods by Cheng and Yang (Int. J. Appl. Soft Comput. 11(2):1953–1964, 2011) in terms of achieved throughput, end-to-end delay, average packet delivery ratio, and multicast tree total cost.     

A hierarchical architecture for detecting selfish behaviour in community wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) consist of dedicated nodes called mesh routers which relay the traffic generated by mesh clients over multi-hop paths. In a community WMN, all mesh routers may not be managed by an Internet Service Provider (ISP). Limited capacity of wireless channels and lack of a single trusted authority in such networks can motivate mesh routers to behave selfishly by dropping relay traffic in order to provide a higher throughput to their own users. Existing solutions for stimulating cooperation in multi-hop networks use promiscuous monitoring or exchange probe packets to detect selfish nodes and apply virtual currency mechanism to compensate the cooperating nodes. These schemes fail to operate well when applied to WMNs which have a multi-radio environment with a relatively static topology. In this paper we, propose architecture for a community WMN which can detect selfish behaviour in the network and enforce cooperation among mesh routers. The architecture adopts a decentralized detection scheme by dividing the mesh routers into manageable clusters. Monitoring agents hosted on managed mesh routers monitor the behaviour of mesh routers in their cluster by collecting periodic reports and sending them to the sink agents hosted at the mesh gateways. To make the detection more accurate we consider the quality of wireless links. We present experimental results that evaluate the performance of our scheme.     

一种异构多接口多信道无线网络的信道分配算法

多接口多信道技术是无线网络环境中减少链路干扰、提高网络吞吐量的有效途径,但如何合理有效地进行信道分配已成为多接口多信道无线网络所面临的主要问题之一.针对自私的网络节点,本文使用非合作博弈对异构条件下多接口节点的信道分配问题进行建模分析,其纳什均衡解为解决该问题所需的稳定的信道分配方案.本文首先讨论纳什均衡的存在条件并提出实现纳什均衡的分布式算法.此外,考虑到实际网络中节点仅能感知局部信道信息以及接口工作信道受限等因素,本文进一步改进算法并通过仿真实验对其收敛性进行证明.     

无线Mesh网络中MAC协议的研究分析

无线Mesh网络由于其低花销,普遍存在的特性正成为一种最有前途的宽带接入网.由于WNNs自身的多跳特性,使得标准IEEE802.11MAC协议不适合WMNs的要求.首先对WMNs做了简要介绍,分析了WMNs MAC协议设计面临的问题,对当前较受关注的MAC协议进行综述分析比较,为下一步对MAC协议的研究提出了展望.     

TDMC:长距离无线MESH网络中面向流量比的动态多信道MAC协议

基于IEEE 802.11的长距离无线mesh网络(LDmesh)是一种远距离无线传输技术。目前,在LDmesh中的研究热点是基于TDMA的MAC协议。现有的单信道MAC协议存在链路利用率低的问题,多信道MAC协议缺少一种可行的方案。设计一种分布式的、实时的、面向流量比的动态多信道MAC协议(TDMC)。TDMC以实时流量比作为依据,遵循提出的信道分配规则,使用一种可行的划分区间法动态分配信道。仿真结果表明:TDMC的性能显著优于JazzyMac;中等负载时TDMC性能比静态多信道协议优15%-54%。     

User density sensitive P2P streaming in wireless mesh networks

Link rate allocation is very important for supporting high video playback rate in Peer-to-Peer video streaming. Although many studies can be found on resource allocation in P2P streaming in wired networks, very few studies have studied the problem in wireless networks, especially in Wireless multi-hop Mesh Networks (WMNs), which is still challenging. To maximize the users’ satisfaction of P2P streaming in WMNs, this paper focuses on link rate allocation problem and proposes a fully distributed algorithm to efficiently utilize the upload and download bandwidth of wireless mesh nodes. We first build an efficient P2P streaming system based on the experimental results from real deployment of our wireless mesh testbed. Then we design an efficient distributed algorithm based on the solution to a linear optimization model, which optimizes towards a user-density-related objective to decide the best streaming rates among peers. Our scheme is resilient to network dynamics that is characteristic in wireless multi-hop peer-to-peer networks. The simulation experiments demonstrate the significant performance enhancement by using the proposed rate allocation algorithm in WMNs.