Optimal resource allocation in wireless ad hoc networks: a price-based approach

The shared-medium multihop nature of wireless ad hoc networks poses fundamental challenges to the design of effective resource allocation algorithms that are optimal with respect to resource utilization and fair across different network flows. None of the existing resource allocation algorithms in wireless ad hoc networks have realistically considered end-to-end flows spanning multiple hops. Moreover, strategies proposed in wireline networks are not applicable in the context of wireless ad hoc networks, due to their unique characteristics of location-dependent contention. In this paper, we propose a new price-based resource allocation framework in wireless ad hoc networks to achieve optimal resource utilization and fairness among competing end-to-end flows. We build our pricing framework on the notion of maximal cliques in wireless ad hoc networks, as compared to individual links in traditional wide-area wireline networks. Based on such a price-based theoretical framework, we present a two-tier iterative algorithm. Distributed across wireless nodes, the algorithm converges to a global network optimum with respect to resource allocations. We further improve the algorithm toward asynchronous network settings and prove its convergence. Extensive simulations under a variety of network environments have been conducted to validate our theoretical claims.     

Architecture and Experimental Framework for Supporting QoS in Wireless Networks Using Differentiated Services

This paper describes the design and implementation of an enhanced Differentiated Services (Diffserv) architectural framework for providing Quality of Service (QoS) in wireless networks. The Diffserv architecture has been recently proposed to complement the Integrated Services (Intserv) model for providing QoS in the wired Internet. The paper studies whether Diffserv, as defined for wired networks, is suitable for wireless networks. The proposed wireless Diffserv framework takes into consideration several factors, including signaling requirements, mobility, losses, lower wireless bandwidth and battery power constraints. It identifies the need for supporting signaling and mobility in wireless networks. The framework and mechanisms have been implemented in the wireless testbed at Washington State University. Experimental results from this testbed show the validity of the proposed Diffserv model and also provide performance analyses. The framework is also designed to be extensible so that other researchers may use our implementation as a foundation for implementing other wireless network algorithms and mechanisms.     

Wireless ATM LAN with and without infrastructure

We consider wireless ATM concepts for small LANs, especially for SOHO and future consumer applications. We describe a wireless ATM LAN framework architecture that supports wireless ATM communications in environments with and without fixed ATM infrastructure. For the configuration with an ATM infrastructure, a distributed ATM switched backbone is proposed, which enables a smart ATM switching element to be embedded in every wireless and fixed access point. For bandwidth efficiency and ease of operation (place-and-play), we also propose an ad hoc wireless ATM LAN concept based on the same 5 GHz wireless ATM air interface as is currently under standardization in the ETSI/BRAN and ATM Forum. Unlike CSMA-based ad hoc systems such as HIPERLAN and IEEE802.11, our ad hoc wireless ATM system makes QoS management feasible in an infrastructureless environment by using resource reservation and scheduled medium access protocol. Since cost scalability is essential throughout our system design, we consider forwarding between ad hoc subnets and interworking with the fixed network as important but optional features     

Performance benchmarking of wireless Web servers

The advent of mobile computers and wireless networks enables the deployment of wireless Web servers and clients in short-lived ad hoc network environments, such as classroom area networks. The purpose of this paper is to benchmark the performance capabilities of wireless Web servers in such an environment. Network traffic measurements are conducted on an in-building IEEE 802.11b wireless ad hoc network, using a wireless-enabled Apache Web server, several wireless clients, and a wireless network traffic analyzer. The experiments focus on the HTTP transaction rate and end-to-end throughput achievable in such an ad hoc network environment, and the impacts of factors such as Web object size, number of clients, and persistent HTTP connections. The results show that the wireless network bottleneck manifests itself in several ways: inefficient HTTP performance, client-side packet losses, server-side packet losses, network thrashing, and unfairness among Web clients. Persistent HTTP connections offer up to 350% improvement in HTTP transaction rate and user-level throughput, while also improving fairness for mobile clients accessing content from a wireless Web server.     

Cooperative Caching Strategy in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks Based on Clusters

In this paper, we present a scheme, called Cluster Cooperative (CC) for caching in mobile ad hoc networks. In CC scheme, the network topology is partitioned into non-overlapping clusters based on the physical network proximity. For a local cache miss, each client looks for data item in the cluster. If no client inside the cluster has cached the requested item, the request is forwarded to the next client on the routing path towards server. A cache replacement policy, called Least Utility Value with Migration (LUV-Mi) is developed. The LUV-Mi policy is suitable for cooperation in clustered ad hoc environment because it considers the performance of an entire cluster along with the performance of local client. Simulation experiments show that CC caching mechanism achieves significant improvements in cache hit ratio and average query latency in comparison with other caching strategies.     

Management of mobile ad hoc networks: information model and probe‐based architecture

The increasing need for mobility in networks and computing leads to the deployment of wireless networks without fixed infrastructure, called ad hoc networks. These networks raise new challenges towards monitoring and managing them to provide optimal performance. We propose in this paper a management framework to assess the operational state and the behaviour of mobile ad hoc networks. After presenting the management requirements, we define an information model to manage these networks. Simulations provide an overview of how this model can be used. Finally, we describe a probe‐based architecture with an implementation prototype, to use and populate the information model in a realistic environment. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive management architecture for ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networks, where mobile nodes communicate via multihop wireless links, facilitate network connectivity without the aid of any preexisting networking infrastructure. The intrinsic attributes of ad hoc networks, such as dynamic network topology, limited battery power, constrained wireless bandwidth and quality, and large number of heterogeneous nodes, make network management significantly more challenging than stationary and wired networks. In particular, the conventional client/server-based manager/agent management paradigm falls short of addressing these issues. We describe the Guerrilla management architecture to facilitate adaptive and autonomous management of ad hoc networks. The management capability of Guerrilla is scalable to accommodate the sheer number and heterogeneity of nodes, autonomous and survivable to adapt to network dynamics, and economical to minimize management overhead.     

Network mobility and protocol interoperability in ad hoc networks

The integration of various network-level functions, including routing, management, and security, is critical to the efficient operation of a mobile ad hoc network. In this article we focus on network mobility (rather than node mobility), implying the movement of entire subnetworks with respect to one another, while individual users initially associated with one such subnetwork may also move to other domains. One example is a battlefield network that includes ships, aircraft, and ground troops. In this "network of networks", subnets (e.g. shipboard networks) may be interconnected via a terrestrial mobile wireless network (e.g., between moving ships). We discuss the design and implementation of a new ad hoc routing protocol, a suite of solutions for policy-based network management, and approaches for key management and deployment of IPsec in a MANET. These solutions, in turn, are integrated with real-time middleware, a secure radio link, and a topology monitoring tool. We briefly describe each component of the solution, and focus on the challenges and approaches to integrating these components into a cohesive system to support network mobility. We evaluate the effectiveness of the system through experiments conducted in a wireless ad hoc testbed.     

Ad hoc networking with directional antennas: a complete system solution

Directional antennas offer tremendous potential for improving the performance of ad hoc networks. Harnessing this potential, however, requires new mechanisms at the medium access and network layers for intelligently and adaptively exploiting the antenna system. While recent years have seen a surge of research into such mechanisms, the problem of developing a complete ad hoc networking system, including the unique challenge of real-life prototype development and experimentation has not been addressed. In this paper, we present utilizing directional antennas for ad hoc networking (UDAAN). UDAAN is an interacting suite of modular network- and medium access control (MAC)-layer mechanisms for adaptive control of steered or switched antenna systems in an ad hoc network. UDAAN consists of several new mechanisms-a directional power-controlled MAC, neighbor discovery with beamforming, link characterization for directional antennas, proactive routing and forwarding-all working cohesively to provide the first complete systems solution. We also describe the development of a real-life ad hoc network testbed using UDAAN with switched directional antennas, and we discuss the lessons learned during field trials. High fidelity simulation results, using the same networking code as in the prototype, are also presented both for a specific scenario and using random mobility models. For the range of parameters studied, our results show that UDAAN can produce a very significant improvement in throughput over omnidirectional communications.     

无线自组织网中VoIP性能研究

目前,VoIP技术及其业务迅速发展,在无线自组织网络中有广泛的应用,有必要对于VoIP在无线自组网中的传输进行分析研究。利用NS-2作为仿真工具对G.711编码标准下多跳无线自组织网中VoIP的传输进行仿真,使用802.11MAC层协议和AODV路由层协议。实验结果表明,无线自组织网络环境下VoIP系统性能(包括丢包率、时延等)受到多跳影响。     

Cross-Layer Scheduling and Power Control Combined With Adaptive Modulation for Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

Efficient resource management is a major challenge in the operation of wireless systems, especially energy-constrained ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer optimization framework to jointly design the scheduling and power control in wireless ad hoc networks. We study the system performance by combining scheduling, power control, and adaptive modulation. Specifically, the transmitted power and constellation size are dynamically adapted based on the packet arrival, quality of service (QoS) requirements, power limits, and channel conditions. A key feature of the proposed method is that it facilitates a distributed implementation, which is desirable in wireless ad hoc networks. The performance of our proposed methodology will be investigated in ad hoc networks supporting unicast as well as multicast traffic. Simulation results will show that the proposed scheme achieves significant gains in both the single-hop throughput and power efficiency compared with the existing method, which implements the scheduling through a central controller, and adopts power control with fixed modulation     

Ad hoc wireless network traffic-self-similarity and forecasting

Lots of works have been carried out to discuss the self-similarity of Ethernet and World Wide Web traffic. In this letter, we study the ad hoc wireless network traffic collected in an ad hoc network (AHN) testbed and show that the ad hoc wireless network traffic is self-similar, which validates that AHN traffic is forecastable because self-similar time-series can be forecasted. We apply a fuzzy logic system to ad hoc wireless network traffic forecasting and simulation results show that it performs much better than does an LMS adaptive filter. All these studies are very important for evaluating network capacity and determining the battery power mode based on the forecasted traffic workload     

A Flexible QoS-aware Service Gateway for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The integration of different types of wireless access networks, or heterogeneous wireless networks (HWN), is emerging. This article investigates in particular how a combination of UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications System) cellular networks, wireless LAN ad hoc networks, and DVB-H (digital video broadcasting - handheld) broadcasting networks, called UWD networks for short, is constructed and managed to provide users with QoS-aware services. Given the complexity of the UWD networks, a novel policy-based service gateway is proposed. As a software framework sitting over and communicating with the UWD network, this UWD service gateway makes network management decision by reasoning over a set of predefined policies that describe the behaviors of the UWD network. Network variables such as bandwidth, delay, and mobility in policies are fuzzified using fuzzy control theory to make the service gateway (as well as the whole UWD network) more flexible and robust. Both the prototype implementation and the evaluation results indicate the feasibility and effectiveness of the system     

无线白组织网中VoIP性能研究

目前,VoIP技术及其业务迅速发展,在无线自组织网络中有广泛的应用,有必要对于VoIP在无线自组网中的传输进行分析研究。利用NS-2作为仿真工具对G.711编码标准下多跳无线自组织网中VoIP的传输进行仿真,使用802．11MAC层协议和AODV路由层协议。实验结果表明,无线自组织网络环境下voIP系统性能（包括丢包率、时延等）受到多跳影响。     

Low Latency Wireless Ad Hoc Networking: Power and Bandwidth Challenges and a Solution

This paper is concerned with the scaling of the number of relay nodes (i.e., hops) individual messages have to transit through in a large-scale wireless ad hoc network (WANET); we call this hop-count as network latency (NL). A large network latency affects all aspects of data communication in a WANET, including an increase in delay, packet loss, and the power needed to process and store messages in nodes lying on the relay path. We consider network management and data routing challenges in WANETs with scalable network latency, e.g., when NL increases only polylogarithmically in the network size. On the physical side, reducing network latency imposes a significantly higher power and bandwidth demand on nodes, and are captured in a set of new bounds derived in this paper. On the protocol front, designing distributed routing protocols that can guarantee the delivery of data packets within a scalable number of hops is a challenging task. To solve this, we introduce multi-resolution randomized hierarchy (MRRH), a novel power and bandwidth efficient WANET protocol with scalable network latency. MRRH uses a randomized algorithm for building and maintaining a random hierarchical network topology, which together with the proposed routing algorithm, can guarantee efficient delivery of data packets in the wireless network. For a network of size N, MRRH can provide an average latency of only O(log³ N). The power consumption and bandwidth requirements of MRRH are shown to be nearly optimal for the latency it provides. Therefore, MRRH is a provably efficient candidate for truly large-scale wireless ad hoc networking.     

Securing ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networks are a new wireless networking paradigm for mobile hosts. Unlike traditional mobile wireless networks, ad hoc networks do not rely on any fixed infrastructure. Instead, hosts rely on each other to keep the network connected. Military tactical and other security-sensitive operations are still the main applications of ad hoc networks, although there is a trend to adopt ad hoc networks for commercial uses due to their unique properties. One main challenge in the design of these networks is their vulnerability to security attacks. In this article, we study the threats on ad hoc network faces and the security goals to be achieved. We identify the new challenges and opportunities posed by this new networking environment and explore new approaches to secure its communication. In particular, we take advantage of the inherent redundancy in ad hoc networks-multiple routes between nodes-to defend routing against denial-of-service attacks. We also use replication and new cryptographic schemes, such as threshold cryptography, to build a highly secure and highly available key management service, which terms the core of our security framework     

Does the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol work well in multihop wireless adhoc networks?

The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is the standard for wireless LANs; it is widely used in testbeds and simulations for wireless multihop ad hoc networks. However, this protocol was not designed for multihop networks. Although it can support some ad hoc network architecture, it is not intended to support the wireless mobile ad hoc network, in which multihop connectivity is one of the most prominent features. In this article we focus on the following question: can the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol function well in multihop networks? By presenting several serious problems encountered in an IEEE 802.11-based multihop network and revealing the in-depth cause of these problems, we conclude that the current version of this wireless LAN protocol does not function well in multihop ad hoc networks. We thus doubt whether the WaveLAN-based system is workable as a mobile ad hoc testbed     

Dynamic Adaptive Routing for a Heterogeneous Wireless Network

This paper presents an integrated architecture of a Heterogeneous Wireless Network (HWN) and a dynamic adaptive routing protocol (DARP) for a HWN. To allow mobile users versatile communication with anyone or any device at any place and anytime, HWN integrates cellular network with an ad hoc network (independent Basic Service Set) in wireless local area network (WLAN) and reserves advantages of sizable coverage in a cellular network and high data rate in deployable ad hoc network. It also enlarges the scope of communication for ad hoc network and improves the throughput for cellular network. Consequently, nodes in HWN can communicate with each other or access Internet ubiquitously. We also address the routing issues for HWN, because the routing protocol for HWN is different from those used in cellular network or ad hoc network. The dynamic adaptive routing protocol establishes a better path for the source to arrive at the destination across multiple hops or cellular network and provides appropriate QoS (quality of service) in HWN.Through simulation, we will demonstrate the merit of the HWN, proposed routing performance on HWN and overhead of control traffic. A performance analysis of the proposed protocol is depicted. The results of the analysis, and simulations, are presented and discussed.     

Modeling throughput gain of network coding in multi-channel multi-radio wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we model the network throughput gains of two types of wireless network coding (NC) schemes, including the conventional NC and the analog NC schemes, over the traditional non-NC transmission scheduling schemes in multihop, multi-channel, and multi-radio wireless ad hoc networks. In particular, we first show that the network throughput gains of the conventional NC and analog NC are (2n)/(2n-1) and n/(n-1), respectively, for the n-way relay networks where n ges 2. Second, we propose an analytical framework for deriving the network throughput gain of the wireless NC schemes over general wireless network topologies. By solving the problem of maximizing the network throughput subject to the fairness requirements under our proposed framework, we quantitatively analyze the network throughput gains of these two types of wireless NC schemes for a variety of wireless ad hoc network topologies with different routing strategies. Finally, we develop a heuristic joint link scheduling, channel assignment, and routing algorithm that aims at approaching the optimal solution to the optimization problem under our proposed framework.     

TIDS: threshold and identity-based security scheme for wireless ad hoc networks

As various applications of wireless ad hoc network have been proposed, security has received increasing attentions as one of the critical research challenges. In this paper, we consider the security issues at network layer, wherein routing and packet forwarding are the main operations. We propose a novel efficient security scheme in order to provide various security characteristics, such as authentication, confidentiality, integrity and non-repudiation for wireless ad hoc networks. In our scheme, we deploy the recently developed concepts of identity-based signcryption and threshold secret sharing. We describe our proposed security solution in context of dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol. Without any assumption of pre-fixed trust relationship between nodes, the ad hoc network works in a self-organizing way to provide key generation and key management services using threshold secret sharing algorithm, which effectively solves the problem of single point of failure in the traditional public-key infrastructure (PKI) supported system. The identity-based signcryption mechanism is applied here not only to provide end-to-end authenticity and confidentiality in a single step, but also to save network bandwidth and computational power of wireless nodes. Moreover, one-way hash chain is used to protect hop-by-hop transmission.