A polynomial algorithm for gateway generation from formalspecifications

A systematic procedure that takes exponential time to synthesize protocol converters from formal specifications is presented. The algorithm proceeds in two steps: compute the largest common subset of services provided by the two mismatched protocols, and reduce the converter, retaining common services, without traversing the entire machine that represents the composition of the two mismatched protocols. In a number of cases, the converter can be constructed by a memoryless translation of messages from one protocol to another. Conditions under which such stateless conversion is possible are given. Two examples are presented to illustrate the techniques. In the first example, a converter that interconnects a half-duplex protocol with a full-duplex protocol from their formal specifications is computed. In the second example, the polynomial procedure is applied to computation of a converter for interconnecting the SNR and TCP protocols     

A prioritized resource allocation algorithm for multiple wireless body area networks

This paper presents a prioritized resource allocation algorithm to share the limited communication channel resource among multiple wireless body area networks. The proposed algorithm is designed based on an active superframe interleaving scheme, one of the coexistence mechanisms in the IEEE 802.15.6 standard. It is the first study to consider the resource allocation method among wireless body area networks within a communication range. The traffic source of each wireless body area network is parameterized using the traffic specification, and required service rate for each wireless body area networks can be derived. The prioritized resource allocation algorithm employs this information to allocate the channel resource based on the wireless body area networks’ service priority. The simulation results verified that the traffic specification and the wireless body area network service priority based resource allocation are able to increase quality of service satisfaction, particularly for health and medical services.     

A Novel Optimal Channel Partitioning Algorithm for Integrated Wireless and Mobile Networks

How to efficiently support multi-class services is a very important issue in integrated wireless and mobile networks because each type of services has distinct characteristics and quality of service (QoS) requirements. This paper presents an efficient algorithm for near optimal channel allocation when different types of services are to be provided in the next generation integrated wireless and mobile networks. We specifically propose a preemptive priority scheme for an integrated wireless and mobile network by first dividing channels into three independent groups and classifying traffic into four different types. The proposed system is modeled by a multi-dimension Markov chain model. Then such a model is used to obtain a set of relations that correlate performances with various system parameters. A novel recursive algorithm is developed to determine the minimal number of channels in each channel group that would be necessary to satisfy the QoS requirements. We also investigate the impact of load ratio for different types of traffic on channel assignment. Finally, we discuss some limitations of our approach and indicate possible future work. We believe that the partitioning scheme proposed in this paper can become a starting point for analysis of future integrated wireless and mobile networks.     

Integration of mobile vehicles for automated material handlingusing Profibus and IEEE 802.11 networks

This paper focuses on a method to integrate mobile devices such as a mobile robot, automated guided vehicle, and unmanned container transporter to form an automated material handling system. In this paper, the stationary devices are connected via a Profibus network while the mobile devices are communicating via an IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN. In order to integrate these two networks, a protocol converter is developed on a PC platform that runs two interacting processes with shared internal buffers. The protocol converter performs a role of translator between two different protocols by converting the format of a data frame. In addition to this basic conversion function, the protocol converter has a virtual polling algorithm to reduce the uncertainty involved in accessing the wireless network. Finally, the integrated network. of Profibus and IEEE 802.11 is experimentally evaluated for its data latency and throughput, which shows the feasibility of the Profibus-IEEE 802.11 network for industrial applications involving mobile devices     

Modular design principles for protocols with an application to thetransport layer

A method for specifying services, specifying protocols, and constructing protocol specifications by stepwise refinement of service specifications is presented. The method is based on assertional reasoning and a refinement relation between state transition systems. The method is demonstrated on the transport layer, which is used by application protocols such as electronic mail, file transfer, remote login, etc. A succession of specifications is constructed, starting from a very abstract transport service and culminating in specific transport protocols comparable to TCP and ISO TP4. Each specification offers both connection management and connection-specific data transfer. It is shown how any connection-independent data transfer protocol can be transformed to offer connection-specific data transfer service     

Impact of ARQ protocols on QoS in 3GPP systems

Traffic transmission over the radio channel requires appropriate techniques to preserve information integrity while maintaining the desired quality of service (QoS) and energy constraints. We focus on a possible configuration of the automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol defined in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) technical specifications. A Markov model is developed in order to study the protocol behavior as channel characteristics change. Through this model, we evaluate the impact of the 3GPP ARQ scheme on the QoS of traffic services such as data file transfer and IP telephony. In the case of data transfer, a tradeoff between loss probability and energy efficiency is derived. In the case of IP telephony, we investigate the possibility of guaranteeing low maximum delay and low jitter by adopting the ARQ protocol as an error-recovery scheme.     

Demand assignment multiple access and dynamic channel allocationstrategies for integrating radio dispatch and telephone services overmobile satellite systems

The authors discuss the performance analyses of a novel demand assignment multiple access (DAMA) scheme addressing the special characteristics of the mobile radio service (MRS), and a new method for dynamically allocating a common pool of channels to both MRS and mobile telephone service (MTS) to improve channel utilization. The new DAMA scheme makes use of call queuing, batch processing, and pipelined signaling to minimize call setup overhead for MRS traffic. MRS call setup delays were analyzed by simulation modeling of a mobile satellite system (MSS) with many mobile voice-dispatch networks operating over a multiple spot beam satellite to investigate the effects of traffic volume, batch size, and batch service disciplines. A reserved channel margin algorithm for dynamic channel allocation was shown to be effective in harmonizing the different call setup performance requirements for MTS and MRS. Numerical results show that dynamic channel allocation applied to a common pool of 40 channels enables a 20-25% increase in the number of mobile terminals compared with a fixed allocation of 20 channels to each of the two services     

Cross-layer architecture for scalable video transmission in wireless network

Multimedia applications such as video conference, digital video broadcasting (DVB), and streaming video and audio have been gaining popularity during last years and the trend has been to allocate these services more and more also on mobile users. The demand of quality of service (QoS) for multimedia raises huge challenges on the network design, not only concerning the physical bandwidth but also the protocol design and services. One of the goals for system design is to provide efficient solutions for adaptive multimedia transmission over different access networks in all-IP environment. The joint source and channel coding (JSCC/D) approach has already given promising results in optimizing multimedia transmission. However, in practice, arranging the required control mechanism and delivering the required side information through network and protocol stack have caused problems and quite often the impact of network has been neglected in studies. In this paper we propose efficient cross-layer communication methods and protocol architecture in order to transmit the control information and to optimize the multimedia transmission over wireless and wired IP networks. We also apply this architecture to the more specific case of streaming of scalable video streams. Scalable video coding has been an active research topic recently and it offers simple and flexible solutions for video transmission over heterogeneous networks to heterogeneous terminals. In addition it provides easy adaptation to varying transmission conditions. In this paper we illustrate how scalable video transmission can be improved with efficient use of the proposed cross-layer design, adaptation mechanisms and control information.     

An integrated voice and data multiple-access scheme for a land-mobile satellite system

A Land-Mobile Satellite System (LMSS) is a satellite-based communications network which provides voice and data communications to mobile users in a vast geographical area. By placing a "relay tower" at a height of 22300 mi, an LMSS can provide ubiquitous radio communication to vehicles roaming in remote or thinly populated area. LMSS is capable of supporting a variety of services, such as two-way alphanumeric service, paging service, full-duplex voice service, and half-duplex dispatch service. A Network Management Center (NMC) will handle the channel requests, channel assignments, and in general the network control functions. A pool of channels is managed at the NMC to be shared by all mobile users. An integrated demand-assigned multiple-access protocol has been developed for the experimental LMSS. The pool of channels is divided into reservation channels and information channels. The information channels can be assigned by the NMC to be either voice channels or data channels. Each mobile user must send a request through one of the reservation channels to the NMC via the ALOHA random-access scheme. Once the request is received and processed, the NMC will examine the current traffic condition and assign an information channel to the user. NMC will periodically update the partitions between the reservation channels, voice channels, and data channels to optimize system performance. Data channel requests are queued at the NMC while voice channel requests are blocked calls cleared. Various operational scenarios have been investigated. Tradeoffs between the data and voice users for a given delay requirement and a given voice call blocking probability have been studied. In addition, performance impacts of such technological advancements as satellite on-board switching and variable bandwidth assignment are discussed.     

Authentication and Billing Protocols for the Integration of WLAN and 3G Networks

Wireless communications have developed rapidly and have been applied for many services. Cellular (the third-generation) mobile networks and wireless local area network (WLAN) are two important technologies for providing wireless communications. The third-generation (3G) networks provide wider service areas, and “always-o” and ubiquitous connectivity with low-speed data rate. WLAN networks offer higher data rate and the easy compatibility of wired Internet, but cover smaller areas. In fact, 3G and WLAN possess complementary properties. Integrating 3G and WLAN networks may offer subscribers high-speed wireless data services and ubiquitous connectivity. For integrating two heterogeneous networks, several issues should be involved, authentication, billing, quality of service, and seamless roaming between 3G and WLAN networks. In this paper, we address the authentication and billing problems and propose two protocols that provide both authentication and billing services. One protocol utilizes a one-time password approach to authenticate subscribers. This protocol is efficient in both computation time and authentication procedures. Because of the restrictions of the password-based approach, this protocol could not offer the non-repudiation property for the billing problem. Another protocol is constructed on a public-key-based system (i.e., certificates). Although it requires more computation time than the password-based approach, non-repudiation is guaranteed. Performance analysis simulation results are given to validate our two protocols.     

Forward error correction strategies for media streaming over wireless networks

The success of next-generation mobile communication systems depends on the ability of service providers to engineer new added-value multimedia-rich services, which impose stringent constraints on the underlying delivery/transport architecture. The reliability of real-time services is essential for the viability of any such service offering. The sporadic packet loss typical of wireless channels can be addressed using appropriate techniques such as the widely used packet-level forward error correction. In designing channel-aware media streaming applications, two interrelated and challenging issues should be tackled: accuracy of characterizing channel fluctuations and effectiveness of application-level adaptation. The first challenge requires thorough insight into channel fluctuations and their manifestations at the application level, while the second concerns the way those fluctuations are interpreted and dealt with by adaptive mechanisms such as FEC. In this article we review the major issues that arise when designing a reliable media streaming system for wireless networks.     

Efficient packet scheduling for heterogeneous multimedia provisioning over broadband satellite networks: An adaptive multidimensional QoS‐based design

With their inherent broadcast capabilities and reliable extensive geographical coverage, the broadband satellite networks are emerging as a promising approach for the delivery of multimedia services in 3G and beyond systems. Given the limited capacity of the satellite component, to meet the diverse quality of service (QoS) demands of multimedia applications, it is highly desired that the available resources can be adaptively utilized in an optimized way. In this paper, we draw our attention on the development and evaluation of an efficient packet scheduling scheme in a representative broadband satellite system, namely satellite digital multimedia broadcasting (SDMB), which is positioned as one of the most attractive solutions in the convergence of a closer integration with the terrestrial mobile networks for a cost‐effective delivery of point‐to‐multipoint services. By taking into account essential aspects of a successful QoS provisioning while preserving the system power/resource constraints, the proposed adaptive multidimensional QoS‐based (AMQ) packet scheduling scheme in this paper aims to effectively satisfy diverse QoS requirements and adaptively optimize the resource utilization for the satellite multimedia broadcasting. The proposed scheme is formulated via an adaptive service prioritization algorithm and an adaptive resource allocation algorithm. By taking into account essential performance criteria, the former is capable of prioritizing contending flows based on the QoS preferences and performance dynamics, while the latter allocates the resources, in an adaptive manner, according to the current QoS satisfaction degree of each session. Simulation results show that the AMQ scheme achieves significantly better performance than those of existing schemes on multiple performance metrics, e.g. delay, throughput, channel utilization and fairness. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

QoS-aware TDMA for end-to-end traffic scheduling in ad hoc networks

The proliferation of low-cost broadband air interfaces has paved the way to the introduction of high-definition multimedia services in mobile and wireless networks. The cost for network resources utilization, when provisioning such services, will play a prominent role in their commercial success, since the more spare resources that can be used, the more cheaply the services can be delivered to the end users. In the context of promoting the role of ad hoc networks as service platforms for high quality multimedia applications, this article first discusses and classifies a set of issues involved in quality of service (QoS) provisioning in ad hoc networks and then presents a congestion-free TDMA algorithm for end-to-end network resources assignment via an optimized mechanism that relies on capacity requests and grants. The article also illustrates a method for invoking this algorithm to achieve efficient end-to-end QoS provisioning and concludes by showing the superiority of the proposed algorithm, as compared to other recently proposed TDMA scheduling algorithms     

Simple precoding algorithms using Gram–Schmidt orthonormalization process for multiuser relay communications with optimized power allocation

This paper proposes a new simple precoding solution based on the Gram–Schmidt orthonormalization to be used at the relay station of a multirelay wireless networks where the different mobile stations belong to the same network, in order to mitigate the multiuser interference at each mobile station. The strength of this method is that it only requires the knowledge of all channel impulse responses from a given relay to all the mobile stations. In other words, to compute its precoding vectors, each relay does not need to know the channel impulse responses of the channels of other relays. Unlike the centralized reference method where each mobile station benefits from the same diversity gain, using this algorithm, some mobile stations will improve their diversity gain at the cost of a loss in the diversity gain of other users. This constitutes a simple solution to supply different qualities of service in the case of a multiservices network. Furthermore, this work proposes an optimized power allocation between the relays. Analytical and accurate performance analyses for the different studied contexts are provided.     

A self-adaptive service provisioning framework for 3G+/4G mobile applications

In light of the increasing acceptance of the notion of next generation networks (NGN), which results from the convergence of the fixed and mobile telecommunications, Internet, and entertainment sectors, there is a need for the realization of next-generation service delivery platforms to allow seamless and adaptive provisioning of multimedia information and communication services to mobile users. This means that in such an NGN environment different end systems, access networks, and service platforms have to be integrated. For this highly heterogeneous communications and services environment, we propose a self-adaptive service provisioning middleware framework (ASPF), which, by interoperating with existing wireless and wireline service delivery platforms, aims to enable seamless omnipresent service provisioning to mobile users anywhere, anytime, and in any context. The ASPF is intended to "liberate" applications from space and time limitations, networks, platforms, and device dependences, minimize time-to-market constraints, and eliminate major hurdles that hinder the rapid deployment of new mobile services and applications. Key to this goal is interworking/integration with current SDPs, such as IN/CAMEL, OSA/Parlay, and the emerging IMS.     

MiFi: a framework for fairness and QoS assurance for current IEEE 802.11 networks with multiple access points

In this paper, we present a framework for providing fair service and supporting quality of service (QoS) requirements in IEEE 802.11 networks with multiple access points (APs). These issues becomes critical as IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN are widely deployed in nationwide networks, linking tens of thousands of "hot-spots" for providing both real-time (voice) and non real-time (data) services to a large population of mobile users. However, both fairness and QoS guarantees cannot be supported in the current 802.11 standard. Our system, termed MiFi, relies on centralized coordination of the APs. During any given time of the "contention-free" period only a set of non-interfering APs is activated while the others are silenced. Moreover, the amount of service granted to an AP is proportional to its load and the system's performance is optimized by employing efficient scheduling algorithms. We show that such a system can be implemented without requiring any modification of the underlying MAC protocol standard or the behavior of the mobile stations. Our scheme is complementary to the emerging 802.11e standard for QoS and guarantees to overcome the hidden node and the overlapping cell problems. Our simulations establish that the system supports fairness and hence can provide QoS guarantees for real-time traffic, while maintaining a relative high throughput.     

A Load-Balancing and Push-Out Scheme for Supporting QoS in MANETs

Currently, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) lack load-balancing capabilities, and thus, they fail to provide good performance especially in the case of a large volume of traffic. Ad hoc networks lack also service differentiation. However, in these wireless environments, where channel conditions are variable and bandwidth is scarce, the differentiated services developed for the Internet are suboptimal without lower layers' support. The IEEE 802.11 standard for Wireless LANs is the most widely used WLAN standard today. It has a mode of operation that can be used to provide service differentiation, but it has been shown to perform badly. In this paper, we present a simple but very effective method for support Quality of Service, by the use of load-balancing and push-out scheme. This approach offers to the mobile node: the ability to alleviate congestion by traffic distribution of excessive load, and to support priority of packets in the single MAC buffer. We evaluate the performance of our algorithm and compare it with the original IEEE 802.11b protocol. Simulation results show that this new approach reduces packet loss rate and increases throughput as well as provides service differentiation in the MAC layer.     

A novel single base station location technique for microcellular wireless networks: description and validation by a deterministic propagation model

Positioning algorithms in cellular networks has become increasingly important as a means of supporting emerging services that require a sufficiently precise estimation of the position of the mobile terminal (MT) associated with a given base station (BS). Currently, even the most sophisticated positioning algorithms require at least three BSs to achieve satisfactory precision. This paper presents a novel algorithm that makes use of a single-BS antenna array to locate MTs in cellular networks. A triangulation technique is utilized and supported by some minimal information about the environment in the BS neighborhood. This algorithm is shown to perform well when operating in a microcellular environment with perfect channel-parameter estimation. The effect of finite resolution of the input parameters is also investigated. The performance is analyzed for a universal mobile telecommunications system microcellular scenario through a three-dimensional deterministic channel model. Finally, the performance of the proposed positioning technique is compared to the well-known location method based on the time-of-arrival measurements at three different BSs.