Link stability‐aware reliable packet transmitting mechanism in mobile ad hoc network

To guarantee the QoS of multimedia applications in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), a reliable packet transmitting mechanism in MANET is proposed. In this paper, we introduce an effective link lifetime estimation scheme. According to the current network topology and corresponding estimated link lifetime, the end‐to‐end connection is established adaptively in the best effort manner. Consequently, utilizing the network coding method the relay node combines and forwards the packets on the working path. Furthermore, to keep the balance between the gain in reliability and the amount of redundant packets, the time for sending the redundant packets on the backup path is determined for the link stability intelligently. Simulations show that our mechanisms can provide reliable transmissions for data packets and enhance the performance of the entire network, such as the packet delivery ratio, the end‐to‐end delay and the number of control messages. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A reconstructing approach to end‐to‐end network traffic based on multifractal wavelet model

This paper studies the reconstructing method of end‐to‐end network traffic. Due to the development of current communication networks, our networks become more complex and heterogeneous. Meanwhile, because of time‐varying nature and spatio‐temporal correlations of the end‐to‐end network traffic, to obtain it accurately is a great challenge. We propose to exploit discrete wavelet transforms and multifractal analysis to reconstruct the end‐to‐end network traffic from time–frequency domain. First, its time–frequency properties can be characterized in detail by discrete wavelet transforms. And then, we combine discrete wavelet transforms and multifractal analysis to reconstruct end‐to‐end network traffic from link loads. Furthermore, our method needs to measure end‐to‐end network traffic to build the statistical model named multifractal wavelet model. Finally, simulation results from the real backbone networks suggest that our method can reconstruct the end‐to‐end network traffic more accurately than previous methods. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A compressive sensing‐based network tomography approach to estimating origin–destination flow traffic in large‐scale backbone networks

A traffic matrix can exhibit the volume of network traffic from origin nodes to destination nodes. It is a critical input parameter to network management and traffic engineering, and thus it is necessary to obtain accurate traffic matrix estimates. Network tomography method is widely used to reconstruct end‐to‐end network traffic from link loads and routing matrix in a large‐scale Internet protocol backbone networks. However, it is a significant challenge because solving network tomography model is an ill‐posed and under‐constrained inverse problem. Compressive sensing reconstruction algorithms have been well known as efficient and precise approaches to deal with the under‐constrained inference problem. Hence, in this paper, we propose a compressive sensing‐based network traffic reconstruction algorithm. Taking into account the constraints in compressive sensing theory, we propose an approach for constructing a novel network tomography model that obeys the constraints of compressive sensing. In the proposed network tomography model, a framework of measurement matrix according to routing matrix is proposed. To obtain optimal traffic matrix estimates, we propose an iteration algorithm to solve the proposed model. Numerical results demonstrate that our method is able to pursuit the trace of each origin–destination flow faithfully. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An adaptive end‐to‐end RTO calculation framework for DTNs with scheduled connectivity

In this work, we propose an end‐to‐end retransmission framework for dynamically calculating efficient retransmission time‐out intervals in delay‐tolerant networks (DTNs) with scheduled connectivity. The proposed framework combines deterministic and statistical information about the network state to calculate worst‐case estimates about the expected round trip times. Such information includes connectivity schedules, convergence layer protocols specifics, communication link characteristics, and network statistics about the maximum expected packet error rates and storage congestion. We detail the implementation of the proposed framework within the end‐to‐end application data conditioning layer proposed for the DTN architecture, realized by the Delay‐Tolerant Payload Conditioning protocol, as part of the Interplanetary Overlay Network–DTN reference implementation, and evaluate its performance in a complex deep‐space emulation scenario in our DTN testbed. Our results show that our approach achieves great accuracy in round‐trip time estimations and, therefore, faster retransmissions of lost data, in comparison to the statically configured retransmission mechanism of the original Delay‐Tolerant Payload Conditioning protocol. As a result, in‐order data reception rate and storage requirements on the receiver side are significantly improved, at minimum or even zero extra cost in transmission overhead due to duplicate transmissions.     

Characterizing user‐perceived impairment events using end‐to‐end measurements

Measures of quality of service (QoS) must correlate to end‐user experience. For multimedia services, these metrics should focus on the phenomena that are observable by the end‐user. Metrics such as delay and loss may have little direct meaning to the end‐user because knowledge of specific coding and/or adaptive techniques is required to translate delay and loss to the user‐perceived performance. Impairment events, as defined in this paper, are observable by the end‐users independent of coding, adaptive playout or packet loss concealment techniques employed by their multimedia applications. Time between impairments and duration of impairments are metrics that are easily understandable by a network user. Methods to detect these impairment events using end‐to‐end measurements are developed here. In addition, techniques to identify Layer 2 route changes and congestion events using end‐to‐end measurements are also developed. These are useful in determining what caused the impairments. End‐to‐end measurements were conducted for about 26 days on 9 different node pairs to evaluate the developed techniques. Impairments occurred at a high rate on the two paths on which congestion events were detected. On these two paths, congestion occurred for 6–8 hours during the day on weekdays. Impairments caused by route changes were rare but lasted for several minutes. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Splitting downlink multimedia traffic over WiMAX and WiFi heterogeneous links based on airtime‐balance

We investigate the challenge of splitting a traffic flow over WiMAX and WiFi links. For traffic load distribution over heterogeneous RATs (Radio Access Technologies), heterogeneous link resources need to be commonly measured and fairly compared. To this end, an airtime cost model is considered as a common resource measure. The model can be used to estimate channel time consumed for a successful packet transmission. As a traffic split mechanism, an airtime‐balance method is proposed. Using the airtime cost model, the offered traffic load (in Mbps) is converted into airtime cost required for its transmission, and IP packets are distributed to multiple RATs so that airtime is equally balanced between RATs. We have implemented a practical test‐bed system, including both WiMAX and WiFi systems, and used it to conduct extensive experiments indoor and outdoor. Experimental results confirm that airtime‐balance can achieve an improved flow split to reduce the waiting packets at the reorder buffer of the receiver. Moreover, it could realize a more rapid adaptation to link variations with local measurements, when compared to the RTT‐based method, which also requires extra system overhead due to the use of probe packets. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fair end‐to‐end window‐based congestion control in time‐varying data communication networks

Communication networks are time varying and, hence, fair sharing of network resources among the users in such a dynamic environment is a challenging task. In this context, a time‐varying network model is designed, and the shortest user's route is found. In the designed network model, an end‐to‐end window‐based congestion control scheme is developed with the help of internal nodes or router, and the end user can get implicit feedback (throughput). This scheme is considered as fair if the allocation of resources among users minimizes overall congestion or backlog in the networks. Window update approach is based on a multi‐class fluid model and is updated dynamically by considering delays (communication, propagation, and queuing) and the backlog of packets in the user's routes. Convergence and stability of the window size are obtained using a Lyapunov function. A comparative study with other window‐based methods is also provided.     

Multi‐cost routing for energy and capacity constrained wireless mesh networks

We propose a class of novel energy‐efficient multi‐cost routing algorithms for wireless mesh networks, and evaluate their performance. In multi‐cost routing, a vector of cost parameters is assigned to each network link, from which the cost vectors of candidate paths are calculated using appropriate operators. In the end these parameters are combined in various optimization functions, corresponding to different routing algorithms, for selecting the optimal path. We evaluate the performance of the proposed energy‐aware multi‐cost routing algorithms under two models. In the network evacuation model, the network starts with a number of packets that have to be transmitted and an amount of energy per node, and the objective is to serve the packets in the smallest number of steps, or serve as many packets as possible before the energy is depleted. In the dynamic one‐to‐one communication model, new data packets are generated continuously and nodes are capable of recharging their energy periodically, over an infinite time horizon, and we are interested in the maximum achievable steady‐state throughput, the packet delay, and the energy consumption. Our results show that energy‐aware multi‐cost routing increases the lifetime of the network and achieves better overall network performance than other approaches. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Time‐aware and energy‐efficient opportunistic routing with residual energy collection in wireless sensor networks

In 1‐dimensional queue wireless sensor networks, how to balance end‐to‐end latency and energy consumption is a challenging problem. However, traditional best path routing and existing opportunistic routing protocols do not address them well because relay hop counts are usually much more, and the link appears more unreliable compared with general mesh topology. In this work, we formulate these 2 problems as a multiobjective optimization problem. Specifically, we first classify network packets into types of time tolerant and time critical and introduce a residual energy collection mechanism of neighboring nodes for forwarder set selection. We then propose a time‐aware and energy‐efficient opportunistic routing protocol (TE‐OR) to optimize energy consumption and to reduce latency for time‐critical packets. We evaluate TE‐OR by different parameters and compare it with existing protocols. The performance results show that TE‐OR achieves a trade‐off between energy consumption and time delay and balances energy consumption among nodes while guaranteeing the latency of time‐critical packets is minimized.     

ESLD: An efficient and secure link discovery scheme for software‐defined networking

Software‐defined networking simplifies network management by decoupling the control plane from the data plane and centralizing it to the controller. As the brain of the network, the controller gains up‐to‐date holistic network visibility via topology discovery. However, as a key service of topology discovery, the link discovery service opens problems on efficiency and security. On the one hand, sending link discovery packets to all ports wastes not only the limited controller resources (such as CPU and memory) but also control channel bandwidth. On the other hand, attackers may use these packets to create fake links and perform link fabrication attack. Because of the centralized control paradigm, wasting controller resources may degrade network performance, and all the fake links may severely poison the network topology, even causing the denial of service or man‐in‐the‐middle attack. In this paper, we propose an efficient and secure link discovery scheme to improve link discovery performance and resist link fabrication attack caused by the software‐defined networking link discovery service. By adopting port classification technique and directionally transmitting packets to appropriate ports, our approach can reduce or eliminate redundant packets and improve link discovery performance. Meanwhile, we adopt the directional packet transmitting approach and the time‐marked hash‐based message authentication code authenticate scheme to resist the link fabrication attack. A prototype system is implemented on the basis of POX controller and Mininet simulator to evaluate our scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that our scheme can solve the link fabrication problems with less overload of both the control plane and the data plane.     

SDN‐based fault‐tolerant on‐demand and in‐advance bandwidth reservation in data center interconnects

Geographically distributed data centers are interconnected through provisioned dedicated WAN links, realized by circuit/wavelength–switching that support large‐scale data transfer between data centers. These dedicated WAN links are typically shared by multiple services through on‐demand and in‐advance resource reservations, resulting in varying bandwidth availability in future time periods. Such an inter‐data center network provides a dynamic and virtualized environment when augmented with cloud infrastructure supporting end‐host migration. In such an environment, dynamically provisioned network resources are recognized as extremely useful capabilities for many types of network services. However, the existing approaches to in‐advance reservation services provide limited reservation capabilities, eg, limited connections over links returned by the traceroute over traditional IP‐based networks. Moreover, most existing approaches do not address fault tolerance in the event of node or link failures and do not handle end‐host migrations; thus, they do not provide a reliability guarantee for in‐advance reservation frameworks. In this paper, we propose using multiple paths to increase bandwidth usage in the WAN links between data centers when a single path does not provide the requested bandwidth. Emulation‐based evaluations of the proposed path computation show a higher reservation acceptance rate compared to state‐of‐art reservation frameworks, and such computed paths can be configured with a limited number of static forwarding rules on switches. Our prototype provides the RESTful Web service interface for link‐fail and end‐host migration event management and reroutes paths for all the affected reservations.     

Improving MANET performance by a hop‐aware and energy‐based buffer management scheme

A hop‐aware and energy‐based buffer management scheme (HEB) is proposed in this paper. HEB can provide better quality of service to packets with real‐time requirements and improve MANET power efficiency. In our algorithm, the buffer is divided into real‐time and non‐real‐time partitions. We consider the number of hops passed, the power levels of the transmitting node, the predicted number of remaining hops, and waiting time in the buffer to determine packet transmission priority. In addition, specialized queue management and a probabilistic scheduling algorithm are proposed to decrease retransmissions caused by packet losses. Mathematical derivations of loss rates and end‐to‐end delays are also proposed. Coincidence between mathematical and simulation results is also shown. Finally, the HEB is compared with first in first out, random early detection, and hop‐aware buffering scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm reduces loss rates, power consumption, and end‐to‐end delays for real‐time traffic, considerably improving the efficiency of queue management in MANET. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance optimization of duty‐cycled MAC in delay‐energy constrained sensor network under uniform and nonuniform traffic generation

Duty‐cycle at the media access control (MAC) layer plays a key role in energy savings and network lifetime extension. It consists in putting a node's radio in the sleep state as soon as it has no communication activity. Traditional wireless sensor network MAC protocols are designed with short duty‐cycles at the cost of long delays. Careful design is required for joint energy‐delay constrained applications, where the optimal parameters should be thoroughly derived. The present paper deals with this issue and mathematically derives optimal values of key MAC parameters under low data rate applications for 3 well‐known duty‐cycled MAC protocols, WiseMAC, SCP‐MAC, and LMAC as representatives of 3 MAC protocol categories, respectively, preamble‐sampling, slotted contention‐based, and frame‐based. The analysis provides also the optimum traffic sampling rate that guarantees the minimum energy consumption. It shows the role of these parameters in achieving the targeted end‐to‐end delay constraints under network models with uniform traffic generation, for ring and grid topologies. As a second contribution, the model is extended to nonuniform traffic scenarios, where a certain percentage of deployed nodes are relays whose role is to balance traffic forwarding and save the overall network energy. The results reveal that different optimal internal MAC parameters and traffic generation rates can be found for different configurations of relay nodes deployment, which achieve minimal network energy consumption while satisfying the application required end‐to‐end delay threshold.     

Bounded‐delay and loss‐free guarantees for real‐time video in integrated services packet networks

In this paper, we analyse upper bounds on the end‐to‐end delay and the required buffer size at the leaky bucket and packet switches within the network in the context of the deterministic bandwidth allocation method in integrated services packet networks. Based on that formulation, we then propose a CAC method suitable to ISPN to guarantee the bounded end‐to‐end delay and loss‐free packet transmissions. As an example application, the GOP–CBR MPEG‐2 is considered. In that case, we also show tighter bounds by slightly modifying the coding method of GOP–CBR MPEG‐2. Using the actual traced data of GOP–CBR MPEG‐2, we discuss the applicabilities of our analytical results and proposed CAC by comparing with simulation. Numerical results show that the loose upper bounds can also achieve more utilization even in the context of deterministic bandwidth allocation compared with the peak bandwidth allocation strategy. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

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.     

An end‐to‐end channel allocation scheme for a wireless mesh network

Co‐channel interference seriously influences the throughput of a wireless mesh network. This study proposes an end‐to‐end channel allocation scheme (EECAS) that extends the radio‐frequency‐slot method to minimize co‐channel interference. The EECAS first separates the transmission and reception of packets into two channels. This scheme can then classify the state of each radio‐frequency‐slot as transmitting, receiving, interfered, free, or parity. A node that initiates a communication session with a quality of service requirement can propagate a channel allocation request along the communication path to the destination. By checking the channel state, the EECAS can determine feasible radio‐frequency‐slot allocations for the end‐to‐end path. The simulation results in this study demonstrate that the proposed approach performs well in intra‐mesh and inter‐mesh communications, and it outperforms previous channel allocation schemes in end‐to‐end throughput. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transmission scheduling in a multi‐channel wireless network with bidirectional relaying links

Using network coding in a wireless network can potentially improve the network throughput. On the other hand, it increases the complexity of resource allocations as the quality of one transmission is affected by the link conditions of the transmitter to multiple receivers. In this work, we study time slot scheduling and channel allocations jointly for a network with bidirectional relaying links, where the two end nodes of each link can exchange data through a relay node. Two scenarios are considered when the relay node forwards packets to the end nodes. In the first scenario, the relay node always forwards network‐coded packets to both end nodes simultaneously; in the second scenario, the relay node opportunistically uses network coding for two‐way relaying and traditional one‐way relaying. For each scenario, an optimization problem is first formulated for maximizing the total network throughput. The optimum scheduling is not causal because it requires future information of channel conditions. We then propose heuristic scheduling schemes. The slot‐based scheduling maximizes the total transmission rate of all the nodes at each time slot, and the node‐based scheduling schedules transmissions based on achievable transmission rates of individual nodes at different channels. The node‐based one has lower complexity than the slot‐based one. Our results indicate that although the node‐based scheduling achieves slightly lower throughput than the slot‐based one, both the proposed scheduling schemes are very effective in the sense that the difference between their throughput and the optimum scheduling is relatively small in different network settings. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimized link state routing for quality‐of‐service provisioning: implementation,measurement, and performance evaluation

This paper provides a measurement‐based performance evaluation of the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol. Two versions of OLSR, OLSR‐ETX and OLSR‐ETT, are implemented and evaluated on a mesh network that we built from off‐the‐shelf commercial components and deployed within our department building. OLSR‐ETX uses the Expected Transmission Count (ETX) metric, whereas OLSR‐ETT uses the Expected Transmission Time (ETT) metric as a means of assessing link quality. The paper describes our implementation process of the ETT metric using the plug‐in feature of OLSRd, and our calculation method of link bandwidth using the packet‐pair technique. A series of measurements are conducted in our testbed to analyze and compare the performance of ETX and ETT metrics deemed useful for quality of service. Our measurements show that OLSR‐ETT outperforms OLSR‐ETX significantly in terms of packet loss, end‐to‐end delay, jitter, route changes, bandwidth, and overall stability, yielding much more robust, reliable, and efficient routing. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive frequency‐hopping schemes for CR‐based multi‐link satellite networks

In this paper, we study two dynamic frequency hopping (DFH)–based interference mitigation approaches for satellite communications. These techniques exploit the sensing capabilities of a cognitive radio to predict future interference on the upcoming frequency hops. We consider a topology where multiple low Earth orbit satellites transmit packets to a common geostationary equatorial orbit satellite. The FH sequence of each low Earth orbit–geostationary equatorial orbit link is adjusted according to the outcome of out‐of‐band proactive sensing scheme, performed by a cognitive radio module in the geostationary equatorial orbit satellite. On the basis of sensing results, new frequency assignments are made for the upcoming slots, taking into account the transmit powers, achievable rates, and overhead of modifying the FH sequences. In addition, we ensure that all satellite links are assigned channels such that their minimum signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise ratio requirements are met, if such an assignment is possible. We formulate two multi‐objective optimization problems: DFH‐Power and DFH‐Rate. Discrete‐time Markov chain analysis is used to predict future channel conditions, where the number of states are inferred using k‐means clustering, and the state transition probabilities are computed using maximum likelihood estimation. Finally, simulation results are presented to evaluate the effects of different system parameters on the performance of the proposed designs.     

A delay‐centric parallel multi‐path routing protocol for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

In this paper, we develop a delay‐centric parallel multi‐path routing protocol for multi‐hop cognitive radio ad hoc networks. First, we analyze the end‐to‐end delay of multi‐path routing based on queueing theory and present a new dynamic traffic assignment scheme for multi‐path routing with the objective of minimizing end‐to‐end delay, considering both spectrum availability and link data rate. The problem is formulated as a convex problem and solved by a gradient‐based search method to obtain optimal traffic assignments. Furthermore, a heuristic decentralized traffic assignment scheme for multi‐path routing is presented. Then, based on the delay analysis and the 3D conflict graph that captures spectrum opportunity and interference among paths, we present a route discovery and selection scheme. Via extensive NS2‐based simulation, we show that the proposed protocol outperforms the benchmark protocols significantly and achieves the shortest end‐to‐end delay. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.