Real-time data dissemination in mobile peer-to-peer networks

Mobile peer-to-peer networks have found many uses such as streaming of audio and video data. There are circumstances, such as emergency situations and disaster recovery, when real-time delivery is a fundamental requirement. The problem is challenging due to the limited network capacity, the variable transmission rates and the unpredictability with respect to the network conditions in the mobile peer-to-peer network.In this paper we address the problem of real-time data dissemination of multimedia streams in mobile peer-to-peer networks. Four routing algorithms are proposed based on a packet's deadline, priority or a combination of these metrics. They are simulated under different setups in a mobile peer-to-peer network with Bluetooth connectivity and nodes broadcasting audio and video streams using different priorities. We compare the performance of the algorithms using a number of metrics. Detailed experimental results are presented. Based on these results, propositions on the usage of the algorithms and the design of network requirements are presented.     

Proactive replication for rare objects in unstructured peer-to-peer networks

Unstructured peer-to-peer (P2P) networks have become a very popular architecture for content distribution in large-scale and dynamic environments. The search efficiency problem in unstructured P2P networks has not been adequately addressed so far, especially concerning search for rare objects. In this paper, we propose a proactive replication strategy to improve search efficiency for rare objects. It uses an object-probing technique for peers to decide whether or not to establish replications for their objects when they join the network. This strategy can effectively increase the popularity of rare objects in order to enhance search efficiency. We also present a rare object search algorithm to reduce the overhead caused by the replication strategy. When a peer forwards a search request, the forward probability is calculated according to its neighbors' degrees and the number of neighbors' objects. Therefore, the search request is forwarded to the peers more likely containing target objects. Simulations show that our proactive replication strategy greatly improves search efficiency for rare objects with moderate communication overhead. The rare object search algorithm not only improves search efficiency for rare objects, but also achieves load balance in search.     

A novel approach to improving search efficiency in unstructured peer-to-peer networks

The decentralized peer-to-peer (P2P) technique has been widely used to implement scalable file sharing systems. It organizes nodes in a system into a structured or unstructured network. The advantages of the unstructured P2P systems are that they have lower maintenance complexity and can better adapt to node heterogeneity as well as network dynamics. However, the search process in unstructured systems is not as efficient as in structured P2P systems because the same search message may go through a node multiple times. To facilitate the complex search and improve the search efficiency, we propose a novel approach of assigning identifications to nodes in an unstructured system. Our method can prevent a node from receiving duplicate search messages and retain the low maintenance overhead for the system. The performance evaluations demonstrate that the proposed approach can improve the search efficiency of unstructured P2P systems while keeping the maintenance overhead at a comparable or even lower level, compared with the traditional unstructured systems.     

A weight-aware channel assignment algorithm for mobile multicast in wireless mesh networks

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are one of key technologies for next generation wireless networks. In this paper, we propose a heuristic channel assignment algorithm with weight awareness to support mobile multicast in WMNs. To enhance network throughput, our algorithm is based on the path forwarding weight to perform channel assignment. In addition to non-overlapping channels, partially-overlapping channels are also used in channel assignment. To fully exploit all available channels in channel assignment, we devise a new channel selection metric to consider the channel separation and the distance between nodes. In mobile multicast, the multicast tree structure cannot be fixed due to receiver (multicast member) mobility. The change of the multicast tree structure will result in channel re-assignment. The proposed algorithm is based on a critical-event driven manner to reduce the times of channel re-assignment as much as possible. Finally, we perform simulation experiments to show the effectiveness of the proposed channel assignment algorithm.     

PatchPeer: A scalable video-on-demand streaming system in hybrid wireless mobile peer-to-peer networks

Video-on-demand service in wireless networks is one important step to achieving the goal of providing video services anywhere anytime. Typically, carrier mobile networks are used to deliver videos wirelessly. Since every video stream comes from the base station, regardless of what bandwidth sharing techniques are being utilized, the media stream system is still limited by the network capacity of the base station. The key to overcome the scalability issue is to exploit resources available at mobile clients in a peer-to-peer setting. We observe that it is common to have a carrier mobile network and a mobile peer-to-peer network co-exist in a wireless environment. A feature of such hybrid environment is that the former offers high availability assurance, while the latter presents an opportunistic use of resources available at mobile clients. Our proposed video-on-demand technique, PatchPeer, leverages this network characteristic to allow the video-on-demand system scale beyond the bandwidth capacity of the server. Mobile clients in PatchPeer are no longer passive receivers, but also active senders of video streams to other mobile clients. Our extensive performance study shows that PatchPeer can accept more clients than the current state-of-the-art technique, while maintaining the same Quality-of-Service to clients.

Data management issues in mobile and peer-to-peer environments

Mobile computing is a revolutionary technology, born as a result of remarkable advance in the development of computer hardware and wireless communication. It enables us to access information anytime and anywhere even in the absence of physical network connection. More recently, there has been increasing interest in introducing ad hoc network into mobile computing, resulting in a new distributed computing style known as peer-to-peer (P2P) computing. In this paper, we discuss the data management issues in mobile and P2P environments. The use of wireless communication makes the data availability the most important problem here, so we focus on the problem of data availability and provide detailed discussion about replicating mobile databases. Not only that, we extend our discussion to mobile–P2P environment. At the end, we discuss the general data management issues in P2P environment.     

Decomposition algorithms for maximizing the lifetime of wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks

We address the problem of maximizing the lifetime of a wireless sensor network with energy-constrained sensors and a mobile sink. The sink travels among discrete locations to gather information from all the sensors. Data can be relayed among sensors and then to the sink location, as long as the sensors and the sink are within a certain threshold distance of each other. However, sending information along a data link consumes energy at both the sender and the receiver nodes. A vital problem that arises is to prescribe sink stop durations and data flow patterns that maximally prolong the life of the network, defined as the amount of time until any node exhausts its energy. We describe linear programming and column generation approaches for this problem, and also for a version in which data can be delayed in its transmission to the sink. Our column generation approach exploits special structures of the linear programming formulations so that all subproblems are shortest path problems with non-negative costs. Computational results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.     

Performance analysis of structured peer-to-peer overlays for mobile networks

Distributed Hash Table (DHT) based Peer-to-Peer (P2P) overlays have been widely researched and deployed in many applications such as file sharing, IP telephony, content distribution and media streaming applications. However, their deployment has largely been restricted to fixed, wired networks. This is due to the fact that supporting P2P overlays on wireless networks such as the public mobile data network is more challenging due to constraints in terms of data transmissions on cellular networks, limited battery power of the handsets and increased levels of node churn. However, the proliferation of smartphones makes the use of P2P applications on mobile handsets very desirable. In this article, we have analysed and evaluated the performance and efficiency of five popular DHT based structured P2P overlays (Chord, Pastry, Kademlia, Broose and EpiChord) under conditions as commonly experienced in public mobile data networks. Our results show that the conditions in mobile networks, including a high churn rate and the relatively low bandwidth availability is best matched by Kademlia and EpiChord. These overlays exhibit a high lookup success ratio and low hop count while consuming a moderate amount of bandwidth. These characteristics make these two overlays suitable candidates for use in mobile networks.     

Adaptive location updates for mobile sinks in wireless sensor networks

Mobile sinks can be used to balance energy consumption for sensor nodes in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Mobile sinks are required to inform sensor nodes about their new location information whenever necessary. However, frequent location updates from mobile sinks can lead to both rapid energy consumption of sensor nodes and increased collisions in wireless transmissions. We propose a new solution with adaptive location updates for mobile sinks to resolve this problem. When a sink moves, it only needs to broadcast its location information within a local area other than among the entire network. Both theoretical analysis and simulation studies show that this solution consumes less energy in each sensor node and also decreases collisions in wireless transmissions, which can be used in large-scale WSNs.

A smart node architecture for adding mobility to wireless sensor networks

Adding a few mobile nodes into the conventional wireless sensor networks can greatly improve the sensing and control capabilities of the networks and can help researchers solve many challenges such as network deployment and repair. This paper presents an enhanced node architecture for adding controlled mobility to wireless sensor networks. The structural model, the power model and the networking model of the proposed mobile node have been built respectively for better node control. And it provides a novel robotic platform for experimental research in hybrid sensor networks or other distributed measurement and control systems. A testbed has finally been created for validating the basic functions of the proposed mobile sensor node. The results of a coverage experiment show that the mobile node can provide additional support for network coverage and can ensure that the sensor network will work properly in undesirable environments.     

基于非结构化对等网络的分散式桌面网格平台

描述了一个基于非结构化对等网络、可以共享网络上空闲资源的JVMs虚拟机的桌面网格平台UDDG(unstructureddecentralized desktop grid)。提出了对等实体的最小活跃邻居节点数、更新时间域值等概念,每个对等实体维护了一个最小活跃邻居数的列表,结合非结构化对等网络的网络跳数的机制,通过广播查找消息来寻找资源的虚拟机。通过构建评测环境,运行并行案例程序计算结果表明,UDDG提供了一种构建高性能的桌面网格平台的新思路。     

Proactive Highly Ambulatory Sensor Routing (PHASeR) protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

This paper presents a novel multihop routing protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks called PHASeR (Proactive Highly Ambulatory Sensor Routing). The proposed protocol uses a simple hop-count metric to enable the dynamic and robust routing of data towards the sink in mobile environments. It is motivated by the application of radiation mapping by unmanned vehicles, which requires the reliable and timely delivery of regular measurements to the sink. PHASeR maintains a gradient metric in mobile environments by using a global TDMA MAC layer. It also uses the technique of blind forwarding to pass messages through the network in a multipath manner. PHASeR is analysed mathematically based on packet delivery ratio, average packet delay, throughput and overhead. It is then simulated with varying mobility, scalability and traffic loads. The protocol gives good results over all measures, which suggests that it may also be suitable for a wider array of emerging applications.     

A cellular learning automata-based deployment strategy for mobile wireless sensor networks

One important problem which may arise in designing a deployment strategy for a wireless sensor network is how to deploy a specific number of sensor nodes throughout an unknown network area so that the covered section of the area is maximized. In a mobile sensor network, this problem can be addressed by first deploying sensor nodes randomly in some initial positions within the area of the network, and then letting sensor nodes to move around and find their best positions according to the positions of their neighboring nodes. The problem becomes more complicated if sensor nodes have no information about their positions or even their relative distances to each other. In this paper, we propose a cellular learning automata-based deployment strategy which guides the movements of sensor nodes within the area of the network without any sensor to know its position or its relative distance to other sensors. In the proposed algorithm, the learning automaton in each node in cooperation with the learning automata in the neighboring nodes controls the movements of the node in order to attain high coverage. Experimental results have shown that in noise-free environments, the proposed algorithm can compete with the existing algorithms such as PF, DSSA, IDCA, and VEC in terms of network coverage. It has also been shown that in noisy environments, where utilized location estimation techniques such as GPS-based devices and localization algorithms experience inaccuracies in their measurements, or the movements of sensor nodes are not perfect and follow a probabilistic motion model, the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing algorithms in terms of network coverage.     

Privacy addressing and autoconfiguration for mobile ad hoc networks

Allowing truly spontaneous and infrastructureless networking, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) are the future of wireless networks. However, most autoconfiguration proposals for MANETs lack privacy support, namely anonymity or pseudonymity and unlinkability aspects, which has become important considerations in many practical applications. This paper presents a novel privacy extension approach (PEA) for MANETs, which prevents eavesdroppers from identifying a particular mobile node by its address. In addition to privacy concerns, our scheme also brings some performance benefits, e.g., reducing the possibility of address conflict when the merging of separately configured networks occurs.     

Performance modeling of the LEACH protocol for mobile wireless sensor networks

In many wireless sensor network applications, nodes are mobile, while many protocols proposed for these networks assume a static network. Thus, it is important to evaluate if a traditional protocol designed for a static network can tolerate different levels of mobility. This paper provides an analytic model to investigate the effect of mobility on a well-known cluster-based protocol, LEACH. The model evaluates data loss after construction of the clusters due to node mobility, which can be used to estimate a proper update interval to balance the energy and data loss ratio. Thus, the results can help the network designer to adjust the topology update interval given a value of acceptable data loss threshold. A practical approach to increase the mobility tolerance of the protocol is applying a buffer zone to the transmission ranges of the nodes. The model is extended in order to consider the effect of buffer zone. To validate the analytic evaluations, extensive simulations are conducted and correctness of the evaluations is tightly verified.     

AmbientTalk: programming responsive mobile peer-to-peer applications with actors

The rise of mobile computing platforms has given rise to a new class of applications: mobile applications that interact with peer applications running on neighbouring phones. Developing such applications is challenging because of problems inherent to concurrent and distributed programming, and because of problems inherent to mobile networks, such as the fact that wireless network connectivity is often intermittent, and the lack of centralized infrastructure to coordinate the peers.We present AmbientTalk, a distributed programming language designed specifically to develop mobile peer-to-peer applications. AmbientTalk aims to make it easy to develop mobile applications that are resilient to network failures by design. We describe the language׳s concurrency and distribution model in detail, as it lies at the heart of AmbientTalk׳s support for responsive, resilient application development. The model is based on communicating event loops, itself a descendant of the actor model. We contribute a small-step operational semantics for this model and use it to establish data race and deadlock freedom.     

Adaptive group scheduling mechanism using mobile agents in peer-to-peer grid computing environment

Peer-to-peer grid computing is an attractive computing paradigm for high throughput applications. However, both volatility due to the autonomy of volunteers (i.e., resource providers) and the heterogeneous properties of volunteers are challenging problems in the scheduling procedure. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a scheduling mechanism that adapts to a dynamic peer-to-peer grid computing environment. In this paper, we propose a Mobile Agent based Adaptive Group Scheduling Mechanism (MAAGSM). The MAAGSM classifies and constructs volunteer groups to perform a scheduling mechanism according to the properties of volunteers such as volunteer autonomy failures, volunteer availability, and volunteering service time. In addition, the MAAGSM exploits a mobile agent technology to adaptively conduct various scheduling, fault tolerance, and replication algorithms suitable for each volunteer group. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the MAAGSM improves performance by evaluating the scheduling mechanism in Korea@Home. SungJin Choi is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Korea University. His research interests include mobile agent, peer-to-peer computing, grid computing, and distributed systems. Mr. Choi received a M.S. in computer science from Korea University. He is a student member of the IEEE. MaengSoon Baik is a senior research member at the SAMSUNG SDS Research & Develop Center. His research interests include mobile agent, grid computing, server virtualization, storage virtualization, and utility computing. Dr. Baik received a Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. JoonMin Gil is a professor in the Department of Computer Science Education at Catholic University of Daegu, Korea. His recent research interests include grid computing, distributed and parallel computing, Internet computing, P2P networks, and wireless networks. Dr. Gil received his Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. He is a member of the IEEE and the IEICE. SoonYoung Jung is a professor in the Department of Computer Science Education at Korea University. His research interests include grid computing, web-based education systems, database systems, knowledge management systems, and mobile computing. Dr. Jung received his Ph.D. in computer science from Korea University. ChongSun Hwang is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Korea University. His research interests include distributed systems, distributed algorithms, and mobile computing. Dr. Hwang received a Ph.D. in statistics and computer science from the University of Georgia.     

An efficient trajectory design for mobile sink in a wireless sensor network

Mobile sink trajectory plays a pivotal role for network coverage, data collection and data dissemination in wireless sensor networks. Considering this, we propose a novel approach for mobile sink trajectory in wireless sensor networks. Our proposed approach is based on Hilbert Space Filling Curve, however, the proposed approach is different from the previous work in a sense that the curve order changes according to node density. In this paper, we investigate the mobile sink trajectory based on Hilbert Curve Order which depends upon the size of the network. Second, we calculate the Hilbert Curve Order based on node density to re-dimension the mobile sink trajectory. Finally, we perform extensive simulations to evaluate the effectiveness of proposed approach in terms of network coverage and scalability. Simulation results confirm that our proposed approach outperforms with size based Hilbert Curve in terms of network coverage, packet delivery ratio and average energy consumption.     

An energy-efficient mobile transaction processing method using random back-off in wireless broadcast environments

Broadcast is widely accepted as an efficient technique for disseminating data to a large number of mobile clients over a single or multiple channels. Due to the limited uplink bandwidth from mobile clients to server, conventional concurrency control methods cannot be directly applied. There has been many researches on concurrency control methods for wireless broadcast environments. However, they are mostly for read-only transactions or do not consider exploiting cache. They also suffer from the repetitive aborts and restarts of mobile transactions when the access patterns of mobile transactions are skewed. In this paper, we propose a new optimistic concurrency control method suitable for mobile broadcast environments. To prevent the repetitive aborts and restarts of mobile transactions, we propose a random back-off technique. To exploit the cache on mobile clients, our method keeps the read data set of mobile transactions and prefetches those data items when the mobile transactions are restarted. As other existing optimistic concurrency control methods for mobile broadcast environments does, it works for both read-only and update transactions. Read-only transactions are validated and locally committed without using any uplink bandwidth. Update transactions are validated with forward and backward validation, and committed after final validation consuming a small amount of uplink bandwidth. Our performance analysis shows that it significantly decreases uplink and downlink bandwidth usage compared to other existing methods.     

Distributed network control for mobile multi-modal wireless sensor networks

A sensor network operates on an infrastructure of sensing, computation, and communication, through which it perceives the evolution of events it observes. We propose a fusion-driven distributed dynamic network controller, called MDSTC, for a multi-modal sensor network that incorporates distributed computation for in-situ assessment, prognosis, and optimal reorganization of constrained resources to achieve high quality multi-modal data fusion. For arbitrarily deployed sensors, a certain level of data quality cannot be guaranteed in sparse regions. MDSTC reallocates resources to sparse regions; reallocation of network resources in this manner is motivated by the fact that an increased density of sensor nodes in a region of interest leads to better quality data and enriches the network resilience. Simulation results in NS-2 show the effectiveness of the proposed MDSTC. ¹