A scalable multimedia QoS architecture for ad hoc networks

Communication demands have grown from separate data and voice to integrated multimedia, paving the way to converging fixed, mobile and IP networks. Supporting Multimedia is a challenging task for wireless ad hoc network designers. Multimedia forms high data rate traffic with stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Wireless ad hoc networks are characterized by frequent topology changes, unreliable wireless channel, network congestion and resource contention. Providing scalable QoS is the most important challenge for multimedia delivery over ad hoc networks. We introduce here a provisioning and routing architecture for ad hoc networks which scales well while provisioning QoS. The proposed architecture is analysed using a mix of HTTP, voice and video streaming applications over 54 Mbps 802.11 g-based ad hoc networks. The architecture is simulated and compared to well-known routing protocols using the OPNET Modeller. The results show that our architecture scales well with increase in the network size, and outperforms well-known routing protocols.     

A distributed channel assignment control for QoS support in mobile ad hoc networks

Recently, one of the most critical issues in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) is providing quality of service (QoS) through routing, access/admission control, resource reservation, and mobility management. However, most existing solutions do not provide QoS effectively due to the interference arising from mobility. In this paper, we refer to interference as a quasi-exposed node problem. To solve this problem, a new algorithm, named a distributed channel assignment control, is proposed that focuses on performance enhancements related to QoS and mathematical analysis techniques for the channel bandwidth. This novel algorithm uses channel assignment control with a power control to reduce the negative effects induced by the quasi-exposed node problem, and then the channels are adaptively negotiated to allow communication in the interference region. The proposed algorithm has been evaluated via extensive simulations, and the results show that it can successfully guarantee QoS by maintaining good throughput, reducing control message overhead, and enhancing delay.     

Providing MAC QoS for multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks

Ad hoc wireless networks with their widespread deployment, now need to support applications that generate multimedia and real-time traffic. Video, audio, real-time voice over IP, and other multimedia applications require the network to provide guarantees on the Quality of Service (QoS) of the connection. The 802.11e Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol was proposed with the aim of providing QoS support at the MAC layer. The 802.11e performs well in wireless LANs due to the presence of Access Points (APs), but in ad hoc networks, especially multi-hop ones, it is still incapable of supporting multimedia traffic.One of the most important QoS parameters for multimedia and real-time traffic is delay. Our primary goal is to reduce the end-to-end delay, thereby improving the Packet Delivery Ratio of multimedia traffic, that is, the proportion of packets that reach the destination within the deadline, in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.Our contribution is threefold: first we propose dynamic ReAllocative Priority (ReAP) scheme, wherein the priorities of packets in the MAC queues are not fixed, but keep changing dynamically. We use the laxity and the hop length information to decide the priority of the packet. ReAP improves the PDR by over 28% in comparison with 802.11e, especially under heavy loads. Second, we introduce Adaptive-TXOP (A-TXOP), where transmission opportunity (TXOP) is the time interval during which a node has the right to initiate transmissions. This scheme reduces the delay of video traffic by reducing the number of channel accesses required to transmit large video frames. It involves modifying the TXOP interval dynamically based on the packets in the queue, so that fragments of the same packet are sent in the same TXOP interval. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of video traffic. ReAP with A-TXOP helps in reducing the delay of video traffic by over 27% and further improves the quality of video in comparison with ReAP without A-TXOP. Finally, we have TXOP-sharing, which is aimed at reducing the delay of voice traffic. It involves using the TXOP to transmit to multiple receivers, in order to utilize the TXOP interval fully. It reduces the number of contentions to the channel and thereby reduces the delay of voice traffic by over 14%. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of voice traffic. The three schemes (ReAP, A-TXOP, and TXOP-sharing) work together to improve the performance of multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.     

Location awareness in ad hoc wireless mobile networks

Networks composed of dynamically repositioning mobile hosts require location awareness to provide new geographic services and to maximize routing efficiency and quality of service. Because wireless networks can operate in a 3D physical environment, exploiting mobile hosts' location information is both natural and inevitable. Emerging geographic services based on mobile ad-hoc networks (manets) must confront several challenges, including how to increase positioning accuracy and how to establish a connection from location information to the vast body of Web data, as in a tour-guide system for example     

Cost-effective mobile ad hoc networks management

As there are more and more mobile devices in use, different mobile networking models such as ad hoc or mesh are attracting a large research interest. Self-organizing mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) allow devices to share their services and resources without any central administration or Internet support. In this respect they can become the backbone of the wireless grid or the gateway to existing grids. To achieve these goals, MANET management must be as effective as that of wired networks. This is, however, a challenging task due to network features like mobility, heterogeneity, limited resources of hosts and feeble communication. This paper presents a set of simple, cost-effective and resilient procedures for the basic tasks of MANET creation and management.     

User-input driven QoS management in ad hoc networks

Though the network quality-of-service (QoS) metrics are defined in terms of technical parameters (e.g., delay, jitter, bandwidth), they are rather subjective when it comes to the end user. Oftentimes, the end user finds it difficult to express his desired QoS in such technical parameters, though he has a fair idea of what QoS he desires. In this paper, we show how translation functions can be devised and used to translate the user inputs to networking parameters that are used by various layers of the protocol stack. In particular, we consider an ad hoc network and show an interface design that uses translation functions to map user supplied inputs to parameters at the medium access control (MAC) and routing layers. These parameters, in turn, choose the right strategies that particular layer functionality can adopt, such that the QoS desired by the user is achieved. We also compute the associated costs due to the different strategies adopted. We implement the interface on ns-2 and conduct simulation experiments with randomly scattered IEEE 802.11 enabled nodes. Results show the functionality of the interface and demonstrate how delay, throughput, and network lifetime are affected when the end user seeks different levels of QoS.     

DEVS modeling of mobile wireless ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networks are self-organizing wireless systems conformed by cooperating neighboring nodes that conform networks with variable topology. Analyzing these networks is a complex task due to their dynamic and irregular nature. Cellular Automata (CA), a very popular technique to study self-organizing systems, can be used to model and simulate ad hoc networks, as the modeling technique resembles the system being modeled. Cell-DEVS was proposed as an extension to CA in which each cell in the system is considered as a DEVS model. The approach permits defining models with asynchronous behavior, and to execute them with high efficiency. We show how these techniques can be used to model mobile wireless ad hoc networks, making easy model definition, analysis and visualization of the results. The use of Cell-DEVS permitted us to easily develop new experiments, which allowed us to extend routing techniques for inter-networking and multicast routing, while permitting seamless integration with traditional networking models.     

QoS routing with traffic distribution in mobile ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) follow a unique organizational and behavioral logic. MANETs’ characteristics such as their dynamic topology coupled with the characteristics of the wireless communication medium make Quality of Service provisioning a difficult challenge. This paper presents a new approach based on a mobile routing backbone for supporting Quality of Service (QoS) in MANETs. In real-life MANETs, nodes will possess different communication capabilities and processing characteristics. Hence, we aim to identify those nodes whose capabilities and characteristics will enable them to take part in the mobile routing backbone and efficiently participate in the routing process. Moreover, the route discovery mechanism we developed for the mobile routing backbone dynamically distributes traffic within the network according to current network traffic levels and nodes’ processing loads. Simulation results show that our solution improves network throughput and packet delivery ratio by directing traffic through lowly congested regions of the network that are rich in resources. Moreover, our protocol incurs lower communication overheads than AODV (ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol) when searching for routes in the network.     

A fuzzy-based Power-aware management for mobile ad hoc networks

In recent years, people have become more dependent on wireless network services to obtain the latest information at any time anywhere. Wireless networks must effectively allow several types of mobile devices send data to one another. The Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is one important type of non-infrastructure mobile network that consists of many mobile hosts, usually cellular phones. The power consumption rate and bandwidth of each mobile host device becomes an important issue and needs to be addressed. For increasing the reliability of the manager in Hierarchical Cellular Based Management (HCBM), this paper proposed a Power-aware protocol to select a stable manager from mobile hosts by fuzzy based inference systems based on the factors of speed, battery power, and location. Further, our protocol can trigger a mobile agent to distribute the managerial workload.     

Revisiting relative neighborhood graph-based broadcasting algorithms for multimedia ad hoc wireless networks

Multimedia broadcasting is a popular application in an ad hoc wireless network, itself composed of battery-operated nodes. Hence, energy conservation and avoidance of frequent re-construction of broadcast paths are crucial to ensure robust and uninterrupted service of multimedia broadcasting applications. This paper introduces a class of distributed broadcast algorithms based on variations of Relative Neighborhood Graphs (RNG). In contrast to the original RNG-based algorithms, the proposed algorithms consider the remaining battery energy of nodes and the distance between nodes as criteria for determining the relative neighborhood of a node. This approach is intended to boost the resiliency of the broadcast path by avoiding the choice of nodes with low remaining battery capacity as rebroadcast nodes. Extensive simulations are conducted, demonstrating that the proposed algorithms improve over the original RNG in several aspects, including the reduction of broadcast storms, longer path lifetime, and shorter broadcast latency.     

Routing and quality of service support for mobile ad hoc networks

OLSR is an optimization over classical link state protocols tailored for mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose the QOLSR protocol which includes quality parameters to the standard OLSR. Three variants of QOLSR are introduced, taking into account the delay measurement together with the hop count metric. Then, we analyze new heuristics for the multipoint relay selection, and evaluate our proposed approaches comparing them with the standard OLSR protocol. Simulation results show that an increased load-balancing and a reduced dropped packets rate are achieved due to the inclusion of the delay information.     

A distributed fault identification protocol for wireless and mobile ad hoc networks

This paper considers the problem of self-diagnosis of wireless and mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) using the comparison approach. In this approach, a network (MANET) consists of a collection of n   independent heterogeneous mobile or stationary hosts interconnected via wireless links, and it is assumed that at most σ$\sigma$ of these hosts are faulty. In order to diagnose the state of the MANET, tasks are assigned to pairs of hosts and the outcomes of these tasks are compared. The agreements and disagreements between the hosts are the basis for identifying the faulty ones. The comparison approach is believed to be one of the most practical fault identification approaches for diagnosing hard and soft faults. We develop a new distributed self-diagnosis protocol, called Dynamic-DSDP, for MANETs that identifies both hard and soft faults in a finite amount of time. The protocol is constructed on top of a reliable multi-hop architecture. Correctness and complexity proofs are provided and they show that our Dynamic-DSDP performs better, from a communication complexity viewpoint, than the existing protocols. We have also developed a simulator, that is scalable to a large number of nodes. Using the simulator, we carried out a simulation study to analyze the effectiveness of the self-diagnosis protocol and its performance with regards to the number of faulty hosts. The simulation results show that the proposed approach is an attractive and viable alternative or addition to present fault diagnosis techniques in MANET environments.     

Middleware support for service discovery in special operations mobile ad hoc networks

Technology can play a significant role in the management and coordination activities of special operations such as emergency response, military combat missions, forest firefighting, etc. Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) can be used quite effectively to manage resource sharing in such operations due to their flexibility and ease of establishment. The concept of service discovery has some appealing characteristics and features that can be adopted and adapted for the nature and needs of these applications. In this study, we present the middleware architecture of a service discovery and allocation system that we propose for the applications of special operations. The main purpose of the proposed system is to locate, reserve and assign a certain service to the party that is in need of this service, with little or no human intervention. The concerned service could be medics, equipment, ambulances, etc. The network participants are divided into service providers, service requestors and anchor nodes. The anchor nodes are the ones which are used to manage resource discovery and allocation. The proposed middleware takes into consideration the classification of these network nodes on the basis of their function. Based on the classification of a certain node, only the middleware modules relevant to its function are activated. We describe the design of this middleware in detail. We also experiment with the proposed technique and present some results that show its capabilities from different performance perspectives.     

Flooding in wireless ad hoc networks

In an ad hoc network, each host assumes the role of a router and relays packets toward final destinations. This paper studies efficient routing mechanisms for packet flooding in ad hoc wireless networks. Because a packet is broadcast to all neighboring nodes, the optimality criteria of wireless network routing are different from that of the wired network routing. We show that the minimum cost flooding tree problem is similar to MCDS (Minimum Connected Dominating Set) problem and prove the NP-completeness of the minimum cost flooding tree problem. Then, we propose two flooding methods: self-pruning and dominant pruning. Both methods utilize the neighbor information to reduce redundant transmissions. Performance analysis shows that both methods perform significantly better than the blind flooding. Especially, dominant pruning performs close to the practically achievable best performance limit.     

Geometric spanners for wireless ad hoc networks

We propose a new geometric spanner for static wireless ad hoc networks, which can be constructed efficiently in a localized manner. It integrates the connected dominating set and the local Delaunay graph to form a backbone of the wireless network. Priori arts showed that both structures can be constructed locally with bounded communication costs. This new spanner has these following attractive properties: 1) the backbone is a planar graph, 2) the node degree of the backbone is bounded from above by a positive constant, 3) it is a spanner for both hops and length, 4) it can be constructed locally and is easy to maintain when the nodes move around, and 5) moreover, the communication cost of each node is bounded by a constant. Simulation results are also presented for studying its practical performance.     

Secure and efficient key management in mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks, due to unreliable wireless media, host mobility and lack of infrastructure, providing secure communications is a big challenge. Usually, cryptographic techniques are used for secure communications in wired and wireless networks. Symmetric and asymmetric cryptography have their advantages and disadvantages. In fact, any cryptographic means is ineffective if its key management is weak. Key management is also a central aspect for security in mobile ad hoc networks. In mobile ad hoc networks, the computational load and complexity for key management are strongly subject to restriction by the node's available resources and the dynamic nature of network topology. We propose a secure and efficient key management (SEKM) framework for mobile ad hoc networks. SEKM builds a public key infrastructure (PKI) by applying a secret sharing scheme and using an underlying multi-cast server groups. We give detailed information on the formation and maintenance of the server groups. In SEKM, each server group creates a view of the certificate authority (CA) and provides certificate update service for all nodes, including the servers themselves. A ticket scheme is introduced for efficient certificate service. In addition, an efficient server group updating scheme is proposed. The performance of SEKM is evaluated through simulation.     

Triangle-based routing for mobile ad hoc networks

Routing protocols for Mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) have been studied extensively in the past decade. Routing protocols for MANETs can be broadly classified as reactive (on-demand), proactive, hybrid and position-based. Reactive routing protocols are attractive because a route between a source and a destination is established only when it is needed. Such protocols, unlike proactive protocols, do not have high overhead for route maintenance and are especially suitable for networks in which not all nodes communicate frequently. One problem with existing reactive routing protocols is the propagation of redundant route request messages during route discovery. In this paper, we present a low-overhead reactive routing protocol which reduces propagation of redundant route request messages. We also compare its performance with the well-known reactive routing protocol AODV.     

Neighborhood tracking for mobile ad hoc networks

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), node mobility causes network topologies to change dynamically over time, which complicates such important tasks as broadcasting and routing. In a typical efficient localized approach, each node makes forwarding decisions based on a neighborhood local view constructed simply by collecting received “Hello” messages. That kind of neighborhood local view can become outdated and inconsistent, which induces a low-coverage problem for efficient broadcasting tasks and a low-delivery ratio problem for efficient routing tasks. In this paper, we propose a neighborhood tracking scheme to guarantee the accuracy of forwarding decisions. Based on historical location information, nodes predict the positions of neighbors when making a forwarding decision, and then construct an updated and consistent neighborhood local view to help derive more precise forwarding decisions. The inaccuracy factors of our scheme are also discussed and an accessory method is provided for possible usage. Simulation results illustrate the accuracy of our proposed tracking scheme. To verify the effectiveness of our scheme, we apply it to existing efficient broadcast algorithms. Simulation results indicate that our neighborhood tracking scheme can improve the protocols coverage ratio greatly.