Distributed Flow Control and Medium Access in Multihop Ad Hoc Networks

Recent studies have shown that the performance of wireless multihop ad hoc networks is very poor. In this paper, we first demonstrate that one important reason of the poor performance is the close coupling between medium contention and network congestion. Therefore, we present a framework of distributed flow control and medium access control to address both medium contention and network congestion. The proposed scheme utilizes the MAC layer control frames to efficiently conduct the network layer's flow control function and only allows the upstream nodes to forward enough packets to make it possible for the downstream nodes to fully utilize the shared channel but never introduce severe MAC collisions and network congestion. Extensive simulations illustrate that the proposed scheme well controls congestion and greatly alleviates medium collisions. It achieves up to 12 times the end-to-end throughput of IEEE 802.11, maintains a short delay and a low control overhead, and improves the fairness regardless of the hop count and the traffic load     

TCP transmission rate control mechanism based on channel utilization and contention ratio in AD hoc networks

In ad hoc networks, both contention and congestion can severely affect the performance of TCP. In our work, we first show that the over-injection of conventional TCP window mechanism results in severe contentions, and medium contentions cause network congestion. Furthermore, introducing two metrics, channel utilization (CU) and contention ratio (CR), we characterize the network status. Then, based on these two metrics, we propose a new TCP transmission rate control mechanism based on Channel utilization and Contention ratio (TCPCC). In this mechanism, each node collects the information about the network busy status and determines the CU and CR accordingly. The CU and CR values fed back through ACK are ultimately determined by the bottleneck node along the flow. The TCP sender controls its transmission rate based on the feedback information. Simulation results show that the proposed TCPCC mechanism significantly outperforms the conventional TCP mechanism and the TCP contention control mechanism in terms of throughput and end-to-end delay.     

ATCP: TCP for mobile ad hoc networks

Transport connections set up in wireless ad hoc networks are plagued by problems such as high bit error rates, frequent route changes, and partitions. If we run the transmission control protocol (TCP) over such connections, the throughput of the connection is observed to be extremely poor because TCP treats lost or delayed acknowledgments as congestion. We present an approach where we implement a thin layer between Internet protocol and standard TCP that corrects these problems and maintains high end-to-end TCP throughput. We have implemented our protocol in FreeBSD, and we present results from extensive experimentation done in an ad hoc network. We show that our solution improves the TCP's throughput by a factor of 2-3     

Vehicle density based multihop broadcast protocol in VANET

In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET), the medium access control (MAC) protocol was of crucial importance to provide time-critical multihop broadcast. Contemporary multihop broadcast protocols in VANET usually choose the farthest node in broadcast range as the forwarder to reduce the number of forwarding hops. However, it was demonstrated that the farthest forwarder may experience long contention delay in case of high vehicle density. An IEEE 802.11p-based multihop broadcast protocol vehicle density based forwarding (VDF) was proposed, which adaptively chose the forwarder according to the vehicle density. The evaluation results in safety warning and online game applications show that, VDF could shorten broadcast delay by achieving the proper trade-off between the contention delay and coverage speed.     

TCP Performance in IEEE 802.11-Based Ad Hoc Networks with Multiple Wireless Lossy Links

We propose a packet-level model to investigate the impact of channel error on the transmission control protocol (TCP) performance over IEEE-802.11-based multihop wireless networks. A Markov renewal approach is used to analyze the behavior of TCP Reno and TCP Impatient NewReno. Compared to previous work, our main contributions are listed as follows: 1) modeling multiple lossy links, 2) investigating the interactions among TCP, Internet Protocol (IP), and media access control (MAC) protocol layers, specifically the impact of 802.11 MAC protocol and dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol on TCP throughput performance, 3) considering the spatial reuse property of the wireless channel, the model takes into account the different proportions between the interference range and transmission range, and 4) adopting more accurate and realistic analysis to the fast recovery process and showing the dependency of throughput and the risk of experiencing successive fast retransmits and timeouts on the packet error probability. The analytical results are validated against simulation results by using GloMoSim. The results show that the impact of the channel error is reduced significantly due to the packet retransmissions on a per-hop basis and a small bandwidth delay product of ad hoc networks. The TCP throughput always deteriorates less than ~ 10 percent, with a packet error rate ranging from 0 to 0.1. Our model also provides a theoretical basis for designing an optimum long retry limit for IEEE 802.11 in ad hoc networks.     

Improving Spatial Reuse in Multihop Wireless Networks - A Survey

In multihop wireless ad-hoc networks, the medium access control (MAC) protocol plays a key role in coordinating the access to the shared medium among wireless nodes. Currently, the distributed coordination function (DCF) of the IEEE 802.11 is the dominant MAC protocol for both wireless LANs and wireless multihop ad hoc environment due to its simple implementation and distributed nature. The current access method of the IEEE 802.11 does not make efficient use of the shared channel due to its conservative approach in assessing the level of interference; this in turn affects the spatial reuse of the limited radio resources and highly affect the achieved throughput of a multihop wireless network. This paper surveys various methods that have been proposed in order to enhance the channel utilization by improving the spatial reuse.     

TCP with delayed ack for wireless networks

This paper studies the TCP performance with delayed ack in wireless networks (including ad hoc and WLANs) which use IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol as the underlying medium access control. Our analysis and simulations show that TCP throughput does not always benefit from an unrestricted delay policy. In fact, for a given topology and flow pattern, there exists an optimal delay window size at the receiver that produces best TCP throughput. If the window is set too small, the receiver generates too many acks and causes channel contention; on the other hand, if the window is set too high, the bursty transmission at the sender triggered by large cumulative acks will induce interference and packet losses, thus degrading the throughout. In wireless networks, packet losses are also related to the length of TCP path; when traveling through a longer path, a packet is more likely to suffer interference. Therefore, path length is an important factor to consider when choosing appropriate delay window sizes. In this paper, we first propose an adaptive delayed ack mechanism which is suitable for ad hoc networks, then we propose a more general adaptive delayed ack scheme for ad hoc and hybrid networks. The simulation results show that our schemes can effectively improve TCP throughput by up to 25% in static networks, and provide more significant gain in mobile networks. The proposed schemes are simple and easy to deploy. The real testbed experiments are also presented to verify our approaches. Furthermore, a simple and effective receiver-side probe and detection is proposed to improve friendliness between the standard TCP and our proposed TCP with adaptive delayed ack.     

A Cross-Layer Approach for Per-Station Fairness in TCP over WLANs

In this paper, we investigate the issue of per-station fairness in TCP over IEEE 802.11-compliant wireless local area networks (WLANs), especially in Wi-Fi hot spot. It is asserted that the hot spot suffers from the unfairness among stations in exploiting the wireless medium. The source of this unfairness is analyzed from two aspects, TCP-induced asymmetry and MAC-induced asymmetry; the former causes TCP congestion control with a cumulative acknowledgment mechanism to prefer the sending stations to receiving stations, while the later exacerbates the unfairness problem in the hot spots. We investigate the interaction between TCP congestion control and MAC contention control, and propose a cross-layer feedback approach to assure per-station fairness and to ensure high channel utilization. In this approach, we introduce the notion of channel access cost to quantify the system-wide traffic load and per-station channel usage. The access cost is estimated at the MAC in an access point and conveyed to the TCP sender. Then, the TCP sender adjusts its sending rate based on the access cost, so as to assure per-station fairness. The simulation results indicate that the proposed approach can provide both per-station fairness and high channel utilization, irrespective of network configurations.     

Tone Dual‐Channel MAC Protocol with Directional Antennas for Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The directional medium access control (MAC) protocol improves the throughput of mobile ad hoc networks but has a deafness problem and requires location information for neighboring nodes. In the dual‐channel directional MAC protocol [12], the use of omnidirectional packets does not require the exact location of destination node. In this letter, we propose a tone dual‐channel MAC protocol with directional antennas to improve the throughput of mobile ad hoc networks. In the proposed MAC protocol, we use a directional CTS and an out‐of‐band directional DATA tone with a new blocking algorithm to improve the spatial reuse. We confirm the throughput performance of the proposed MAC protocol by computer simulations using the Qualnet simulator.     

Distributed cooperative MAC for multihop wireless networks

This article investigates distributed cooperative medium access control protocol design for multihop wireless networks. Cooperative communication has been proposed recently as an effective way to mitigate channel impairments. With cooperation, single-antenna mobile terminals in a multi-user environment share antennas from other mobiles to generate a virtual multipleantenna system that achieves more reliable communication with a higher diversity gain. However, more mobiles conscribed for one communication inevitably induces complex medium access interactions, especially in multihop wireless ad hoc networks. To improve the network throughput and diversity gain simultaneously, we investigate the issues and challenges in designing an efficient MAC scheme for such networks. Furthermore, based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF, a cross-layer designed cooperative MAC protocol is proposed. The MAC scheme adapts to the channel condition and payload length.     

Cross-Layer Interaction of TCP and Ad Hoc Routing Protocols in Multihop IEEE 802.11 Networks

In this research, we first investigate the cross-layer interaction between TCP and routing protocols in the IEEE 802.11 ad hoc network. On-demand ad hoc routing protocols respond to network events such as channel noise, mobility, and congestion in the same manner, which, in association with TCP, deteriorates the quality of an existing end-to-end connection. The poor end-to-end connectivity deteriorates TCP's performance in turn. Based on the well-known TCP-friendly equation, we conduct a quantitative study on the TCP operation range using static routing and long-lived TCP flows and show that the additive-increase, multiplicative-decrease (AIMD) behavior of the TCP window mechanism is aggressive for a typical multihop IEEE 802.11 network with a low-bandwidth-delay product. Then, to address these problems, we propose two complementary mechanisms, that is, the TCP fractional window increment (FeW) scheme and the Route-failure notification using BUIk-losS Trigger (ROBUST) policy. The TCP FeW scheme is a preventive solution used to reduce the congestion-driven wireless link loss. The ROBUST policy is a corrective solution that enables on-demand routing protocols to suppress overreactions induced by the aggressive TCP behavior. It is shown by computer simulation that these two mechanisms result in a significant improvement of TCP throughput without modifying the basic TCP window or the wireless MAC mechanisms.     

无线自组织网络TCP容量优化

为了计算无线自组织网络中准确的TCP容量,并利用其进行有效的窗口控制,以避免拥塞窗口增长过速的问题,提出一种适用于无线自组织网络TCP容量的优化计算。此方法基于时延和空间复用率,考虑网络中竞争干扰,解决了以往的计算方法对拓扑不能广泛适用的问题。模拟结果显示,基于文章的TCP容量进行拥塞窗口调节,能有效地提高网络的吞吐量。     

A Hybrid Collision Avoidance Scheme for Ad Hoc Networks

A novel hybrid collision avoidance scheme that combines both sender-initiated and receiver-initiated collision-avoidance handshake is proposed for multi-hop ad hoc networks. The new scheme is compatible with the popular IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol and involves only some additional queue management and book-keeping work. Simulations of both UDP- and TCP-based applications are conducted with the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol, a measurement-based fair scheme and the new scheme. It is shown that the new scheme can alleviate the fairness problem with almost no degradation in throughput. More importantly, it is shown that without explicit information exchange among nodes, the fairness problem cannot be solved conclusively if reasonable throughput is to be maintained. Hence it calls for further work to integrate the new collision avoidance scheme with other schemes that approximate fair queueing and use more contention information in channel access to achieve some QoS assurances in ad hoc networks.     

无线自组织网络TCP速率联合调制

TCP在无线自组织网络中受到信道竞争和队列拥塞的双重影响,因而不能准确地调节数据发送速率从而降低了传输性能。本文针对该问题提出一种基于对信道竞争和排队拥塞联合检测的TCP速率调制策略。实验结果显示,本策略在吞吐量和端到端时延上均明显提高了TCP的性能。     

Local data control and admission control for QoS support in wireless ad hoc networks

Wireless ad hoc networks consist of nodes having a self-centrically broadcasting nature of communication. To provide quality of service (QoS) for ad hoc networks, many issues are involved, including routing, medium-access control (MAC), resource reservation, mobility management, etc. Carefully designed distributed medium-access techniques must be used for channel resources, so that mechanisms are needed to efficiently recover from inevitable frame collisions. For ad hoc wireless networks with a contention-based distributed MAC layer, QoS support and guarantee become extremely challenging. In this paper, we address this challenging issue. We first consider MAC and resource-reservation aspects for QoS support in one-hop ad hoc wireless networks. We propose two local data-control schemes and an admission-control scheme for ad hoc networks with the IEEE 802.11e MAC standard. In the proposed fully distributed local data control schemes, each node maps the measured traffic-load condition into backoff parameters locally and dynamically. In the proposed distributed admission-control scheme, based on measurements, each node makes decisions on the acceptances/rejections of flows by themselves, without the presence of access points. The proposed mechanisms are evaluated via extensive simulations. Studies show that, with the proposed schemes, QoS can be guaranteed under a clear channel condition while maintaining a good utilization. Discussions on applying the proposed schemes into multihop ad hoc networks are also included.     

PASA: power adaptation for starvation avoidance to deliver wireless multimedia

In recent years, there has been an increasing interest to deliver multimedia services over wireless ad hoc networks. Due to the existence of hidden terminal and absence of central control, the medium access control protocol as used in the ad hoc networks may lead to channel capture, where some flows monopolize the channel while others suffer from starvation. As a consequence, the system throughput and fairness are greatly degraded. After showing that static power control leads to channel capture, we propose and study a distributed dynamic power control scheme termed "power adaptation for starvation avoidance" (PASA), which dynamically adjusts the transmission power of a node so as to avoid starvation. PASA is shown to be effective in breaking channel captures, hence improving short-term fairness among contending flows. It is simple, fully autonomous and requires no communication overhead. Via extensive simulations, we show that our power control algorithm achieves much better fairness without compromising system throughput through better spatial reuse. Our experiments with video sequences transmitting over different network topologies show that PASA achieves much better video quality with lower start-up delay and buffer requirement.     

Medium access control with coordinated adaptive sleeping for wireless sensor networks

This paper proposes S-MAC, a medium access control (MAC) protocol designed for wireless sensor networks. Wireless sensor networks use battery-operated computing and sensing devices. A network of these devices will collaborate for a common application such as environmental monitoring. We expect sensor networks to be deployed in an ad hoc fashion, with nodes remaining largely inactive for long time, but becoming suddenly active when something is detected. These characteristics of sensor networks and applications motivate a MAC that is different from traditional wireless MACs such as IEEE 802.11 in several ways: energy conservation and self-configuration are primary goals, while per-node fairness and latency are less important. S-MAC uses a few novel techniques to reduce energy consumption and support self-configuration. It enables low-duty-cycle operation in a multihop network. Nodes form virtual clusters based on common sleep schedules to reduce control overhead and enable traffic-adaptive wake-up. S-MAC uses in-channel signaling to avoid overhearing unnecessary traffic. Finally, S-MAC applies message passing to reduce contention latency for applications that require in-network data processing. The paper presents measurement results of S-MAC performance on a sample sensor node, the UC Berkeley Mote, and reveals fundamental tradeoffs on energy, latency and throughput. Results show that S-MAC obtains significant energy savings compared with an 802.11-like MAC without sleeping.     

无线自组网与Internet互连中TCP流公平性分析与改进

通过实验与分析揭示了基于IEEE 802.11 MAC的无线自组网与Internet互连时TCP流间的不公平性现象及其产生原因,并基于网关带宽占用对互连环境下TCP流间的公平性进行定义,提出了一种基于网关动态带宽控制的TCP流公平性解决方案TCP-GAFC。TCP-GAFC只在网关节点上进行实现,无需修改TCP协议和MAC协议,具有很好的适用性和可扩展性。仿真实验表明,TCP-GAFC显著地改进了互连环境下TCP流间的公平性,并能达到合理的总吞吐量。     

ATP: a reliable transport protocol for ad hoc networks

Existing works have approached the problem of reliable transport in ad hoc networks by proposing mechanisms to improve TCP's performance over such networks, In this paper, we show through detailed arguments and simulations that several of the design elements in TCP are fundamentally inappropriate for the unique characteristics of ad hoc networks. Given that ad hoc networks are typically stand-alone, we approach the problem of reliable transport from the perspective that it is justifiable to develop an entirely new transport protocol that is not a variant of TCP. Toward this end, we present a new reliable transport layer protocol for ad hoc networks called ATP (ad hoc transport protocol). We show through ns2-based simulations that ATP outperforms default TCP as well as TCP-ELFN and ATCP.     

基于名声、可用带宽和最小跳数的多量度自适应Ad hoc路由协议

通过对实际Ad hoc网络中节点通信情况的研究,考虑到网络中节点的自私性以及单纯使用最小跳数选路方法的缺陷,综合考虑名声、可用带宽和最小跳数,该文提出了一种新的参数量度。基于这个量度,借鉴TOPP(Trains Of Packet Pairs)测量可用带宽的思想,设计了一种快速测量逐跳可用带宽的方法,并通过MAC层和网络层的跨层设计,提出了一个基于以上混合量度的路由协议(Ad hoc Routing Based on Fame,Available Bandwidth and Minimum Hops, ARBFAM)。通过使用该协议在不同场景的网络环境中仿真证明,该路由协议在节点公平性,网络的拥塞控制和负载均衡,网络的平均寿命,网络的端到端吞吐量,平均端到端延迟方面较DSR都有较大的改善。