Code pruning in opportunistic routing through bidirectional coding traffic comparison

Opportunistic routing (OR) significantly improves transmission reliability and network throughput in wireless mesh networks by utilizing the broadcast nature of the wireless medium. Through the integration of network coding (NC), the complicated coordination to select the best forwarding node (FN) in OR can be bypassed. However, the introduction of NC exacerbates the redundant‐packet‐transmission problem. To mitigate this issue, existing coded OR protocols either adopt the loss‐rate‐based approach, employ orthogonal vectors as coded feedback, or pursue the stream‐based coded OR model. However, these three solutions suffer inaccuracy and obsolescence of the loss‐rate measurement, false‐positive/false‐negative problem, and unavailability of hop‐by‐hop stream‐based OR, respectively. To address the previous problems, we propose a simple but practical coded feedback scheme, cumulative coding coefficient acknowledgement (C³ACK), based on the relevance between forward (coded packets received from upstream nodes) and backward coding traffic (coded packets overheard from downstream nodes), and apply C³ACK to both batch‐based and stream‐based coded OR models in order to prune redundant forward and backward coding traffic. Both testbed evaluation and simulation study show that our code‐pruning schemes can outperform existing approaches in terms of expected throughput and transmission count. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An efficient network coded ARQ for multisource multidestination relay networks over mixed flat fading channels

This paper proposes a new reliable automatic repeat request (ARQ) transmission protocol for wireless multisource multidestination relay networks over mixed fading channels. Conventional application of ARQ protocols to retransmit lost or erroneous packets in relay networks can cause considerable delay latency with a significant increase in the number of retransmissions when networks consist of multiple sources and multiple destinations. To address this issue, a new ARQ protocol based on network coding (NC) is proposed where the relay detects packets from different transmission sources, then uses NC to combine and forward lost packets to their destinations. An efficient means for the retransmission of all lost packets is proposed through two packet-combination algorithms for retransmissions at the relay and sources. The paper derives mathematical formulation of transmission bandwidth for this new NC-based ARQ protocol and compares analytical and simulation results with some other ARQ protocols over both mixed Rayleigh and Rician flat fading channel. The mixed fading model permits investigation of two typical fading scenarios where the relay is located in the neighbourhood of either the sources or the destinations. The transmission bandwidth results show that the proposed NC-based ARQ protocol demonstrates superior performance over other existing ARQ schemes.     

多播网络中基于网络编码的高效丢失恢复机制

网络编码为无线网络中可靠多播通信提供了有效解决途径。该文分析了网络中编码机会的变化规律,研究了解码失败的编码数据包对网络编码性能的影响,提出了新的基于网络编码的丢失恢复算法(NCLR)。NCLR要求节点缓存解码失败的编码数据包,并反馈信息给发送节点。根据各个节点的丢包情况,NCLR通过优先传输对编码性能影响较大的数据包,并在需要重传的已编码数据包和原始数据包中选择编码组合,来充分挖掘网络中的编码机会。仿真结果表明相对于已有算法,NCLR算法可以在重传次数和丢失恢复时延方面有显著性能改善。     

Scalable reliable multicast using multiple multicast channels

We examine an approach for providing reliable, scalable multicast communication, involving the use of multiple multicast channels for reducing receiver processing costs and reducing network bandwidth consumption in a multicast session. In this approach a single multicast channel is used for the original transmission of packets. Retransmissions of packets are done on separate multicast channels, which receivers dynamically join and leave. We first show that protocols using an infinite number of multicast channels incur much less processing overhead at the receivers compared to protocols that use only a single multicast channel. This is due to the fact that receivers do not receive retransmissions of packets they have already received correctly. Next, we derive the number of unwanted redundant packets at a receiver due to using only a finite number of multicast channels, for a specific negative acknowledgment (NAK)-based protocol. We then explore the minimum number of multicast channels required to keep the cost of processing unwanted packets to a sufficiently low value. For an application consisting of a single sender transmitting reliably to many receivers we find that only a small number of multicast channels are required for a wide range of system parameters. In the case of an application where all participants simultaneously act as both senders and receivers a moderate number of multicast channels is needed. Finally, we present two mechanisms for implementing multiple multicast channels, one using multiple IP multicast groups and the other using additional router support for selective packet forwarding. We discuss the impact of both mechanisms on performance in terms of end-host and network resources     

基于网络编码的机会网络高效路由算法

针对采用Epidemic机制的机会网络路由算法在数据分组传送阶段存在通信冗余的问题,提出了一种基于网络编码的高效路由算法--NCBER(network-coding-based epidemic routing）。NCBER在传送数据分组的过程中使用主动异或网络编码和多播,并取消了 Request（请求）控制分组,从而减少数据分组的转发次数和控制分组数量,降低网络开销,缩短分组传输时延。理论分析和仿真结果表明,NCBER 算法在网络开销和数据分组端到端时延性能方面优于经典的Epidemic路由算法及其改进算法MRRMR（message redundancy removal of multi-copy routing）,并且使数据传送成功率保持在100%。     

Optimized multipath network coding in lossy wireless networks

Network coding has been a prominent approach to a series of problems that used to be considered intractable with traditional transmission paradigms. Recent work on network coding includes a substantial number of optimization based protocols, but mostly for wireline multicast networks. In this paper, we consider maximizing the benefits of network coding for unicast sessions in lossy wireless environments. We propose Optimized Multipath Network Coding (OMNC), a rate control protocol that dramatically improves the throughput of lossy wireless networks. OMNC employs multiple paths to push coded packets to the destination, and uses the broadcast MAC to deliver packets between neighboring nodes. The coding and broadcast rate is allocated to transmitters by a distributed optimization algorithm that maximizes the advantage of network coding while avoiding congestion. With extensive experiments on an emulation testbed, we find that OMNC achieves more than two-fold throughput increase on average compared to traditional best path routing, and significant improvement over existing multipath routing protocols with network coding. The performance improvement is notable not only for one unicast session, but also when multiple concurrent unicast sessions coexist in the network.     

OGHAM: On-demand global hosts for mobile ad-hoc multicast services

Recent advances in pervasive computing and wireless technologies have enabled novel multicast services anywhere, anytime, such as mobile auctions, advertisement, and e-coupons. Routing/multicast protocols in large-scale ad-hoc networks adopt two-tier infrastructures to accommodate the effectiveness of the flooding scheme and the efficiency of the tree-based scheme. In these protocols, hosts with a maximal number of neighbors are chosen as backbone hosts (BHs) to forward packets. Most likely, these BHs will be traffic concentrations or bottlenecks of the network and spend significant amount of time forwarding packets. In this paper, a distinct strategy is proposed for constructing a two-tier infrastructure in a large-scale ad-hoc network. Hosts with a minimal number of hops to the other hosts rather than those with a maximal number of neighbors will be adopted as BHs in order to obtain shorter multicast routes. The problem of determining BHs can be formulated with linear programming. BHs thus found have the advantages of shorter relay and less concentration. Besides, BHs are selected on-demand and can be globally reused for different multicast groups without flooding again. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol has shorter transmission latency, fewer control/data packets and higher receiving data packet ratios than other existing multicast protocols. Besides, the two-tier infrastructure constructed by the proposed protocol is more stable.     

Scalable Multicasting: The Core-Assisted Mesh Protocol

Most of the multicast routing protocols for ad hoc networks today are based on shared or source-based trees; however, keeping a routing tree connected for the purpose of data forwarding may lead to a substantial network overhead. A different approach to multicast routing consists of building a shared mesh for each multicast group. In multicast meshes, data packets can be accepted from any router, as opposed to trees where data packets are only accepted from routers with whom a tree branch has been established. The difference among multicast routing protocols based on meshes is in the method used to build these structures. Some mesh-based protocols require the flooding of sender or receiver announcements over the whole network. This paper presents the Core-Assisted Mesh Protocol, which uses meshes for data forwarding, and avoids flooding by generalizing the notion of core-based trees introduced for internet multicasting. Group members form the mesh of a group by sending join requests to a set of cores. Simulation experiments show that meshes can be used effectively as multicast routing structures without the need for flooding control packets.     

Wide-area IP multicast traffic characterization

IP multicast is gaining acceptance among service providers as the protocols and infrastructure mature. However, characteristics of multicast traffic remain poorly understood. Using passive OC-12 monitors, we observed multicast traffic on links connecting aggregated customers and peer networks to our native multicast backbone network. We first refined existing traffic flow profiling methodologies via an exploration of temporal differences in multicast packet trains. Based on this framework, we collected multicast flow traces from four geographically dispersed nodes in the Worldcom vBNS network over a one-month period. We present multicast-specific traffic characteristics including packet and flow sizes, fragmentation, sources per group, and address space distribution. Analysis reveals results contrary to prevailing wisdom, including a preponderance of single-packet flows; a highly variable packet size distribution, with many large packets and strong modes; the existence of fragmented multicast traffic; and an insignificant number of simultaneous multiple-source groups. Based on our analysis, we recommend policies for deployment and improvements to protocol implementations.     

Ad Hoc网络中基于协商机制的QoS多播路由研究

针对移动Ad Hoc网络QoS多播路由中普遍存在的拥塞问题,提出了一种基于协商机制的QoS多播路由协议,节点协商使用以一定QoS约束建立起的多播链路,避免过度使用多播资源引起网络拥塞,从而提高分组投递率和网络吞吐量。通过NS2仿真证明,该协议能够保证不同类型业务在网络中传输的服务质量,提高网络的利用率。     

Efficient cross-layer protocol for bandwidth-satisfied multicast in multi-rate MANETs

Since the multi-rate enhancements have been implemented in 802.11 wireless networks, QoS-constrained multicast protocols for multimedia communication should be adapted to exploit them fully. This work proposes a multicast protocol for data rate selection and bandwidth-satisfied multicast tree determination with an efficient cross-layer design based on the integration of PHY and MAC layers into the network layer. To use bandwidth efficiently and increase network capacity (which is the number of multicast flows supported by the network), we aim to select the combination of data rates and a multicast tree whose total amount of bandwidth consumption to the network is minimal in order to maximize the network capacity. The performance of the proposed protocol is compared with two existing protocols. Simulation results indicate that the proposed protocol has the ability to admit more multicast flows.     

Domain Constrained Multicast: A New Approach for IP Multicast Routing

One of major reasons why IP multicast has not been well deployed is the complexity of IP multicast routing. Since existing IP multicast routing protocols have been designed independently of IP unicast routing protocols, a router must maintain routing tables for both IP mutlicast and unicast routing. This is, in particular, a big burden for an inter-domain router. In addition, by using existing IP multicast routing protocols, we cannot realize an application that a sending host outside the designated domain sends IP multicast packets only towards the designated domain. To resolve above issues, we propose a new architecture for IP multicast, which is called Domain Constrained Multicast (DCM). In this architecture, IP multicast packets are forwarded to a border router of the designated domain using IP unicast routing. And then, IP multicast packets are delivered inside the designated domain using IP multicast. We propose an address format when realizing the DCM architecture using IPv6. We describe the extension of the DCM architecture for applying it to inter-domain IP multicast routing. Finally, we have compared the DCM architecture for inter-domain routing, with existing inter-domain IP multicast routing protocols such as MSDP and BGMP.     

High-throughput multicast routing metrics in wireless mesh networks

The stationary nature of nodes in a mesh network has shifted the main design goal of routing protocols from maintaining connectivity between source and destination nodes to finding high-throughput paths between them. Numerous link-quality-based routing metrics have been proposed for choosing high-throughput routing paths in recent years. In this paper, we study routing metrics for high-throughput tree or mesh construction in multicast protocols. We show that there is a fundamental difference between unicast and multicast routing in how data packets are transmitted at the link layer, and accordingly how the routing metrics for unicast routing should be adapted for high-throughput multicast routing. We propose a low-overhead adaptive online algorithm to incorporate link-quality metrics to a representative multicast routing protocol. We then study the performance improvement achieved by using different link-quality-based routing metrics via extensive simulation and experiments on a mesh-network testbed, using ODMRP as a representative multicast protocol.Our extensive simulation studies show that: (1) ODMRP equipped with any of the link-quality-based routing metrics can achieve higher throughput than the original ODMRP. In particular, under a tree topology, on average, ODMRP enhanced with link-quality routing metrics achieve up to 34% higher throughput than the original ODMRP under low multicast sending rate; (2) the improvement reduces to 21% under high multicast sending rate due to higher interference experienced by the data packets from the probe packets; (3) heavily penalizing lossy links is an effective way in the link-quality metric design to avoid low-throughput paths; and (4) the path redundancy from a mesh data dissemination topology in mesh-based multicast protocols provides another degree of robustness to link characteristics and reduces the additional throughput gain achieved by using link-quality-based routing metrics. Finally, our experiments on an eight-node testbed show that on average, ODMRP using SPP and PP achieves 14% and 17% higher throughput over ODMRP, respectively, validating the simulation results.     

On the optimal flow allocation and information theoretically secure network coding design for multiple multicasts

With linear network coding (LNC), the data packets transmitted in a communication network are coded packets, which are linear combinations of original data packets. Since the coded packets can be useful for multiple destinations in multicast, LNC has been shown as a promising technology to improve the network throughput. On the other hand, the original data packets can be encoded with random symbols and transmitted in the network to make sure that a passive attacker cannot obtain the information of these original data packets when the passive attacker cannot obtain enough coded packets. Therefore, LNC also provides secure transmission without using the traditional encryption and decryption. In this paper, we will study an Information Theoretically Secure Multiple Multicasts (ITSMM) problem with the following objectives: (1) maximizing the secure transmission rate (STR), (2) minimizing the random symbol rate (RSR), and (3) minimizing the bandwidth cost (BC), when the data transmission is information theoretically secure. We firstly theoretically analyze the ITSMM problem, which shows that it is equivalent to a problem of network flow with constraints on each intermediate node. We then formulate the ITSMM problem by 3 linear programmings to get the maximum STR, the minimum RSR, and the minimum BC. After that, we prove the sufficient condition for the size of finite field over which the information theoretically secure linear multicast code (ITSLMC) can be designed. At last, we give extensive simulations, which show that the proposed algorithms are effective and efficient.     

An efficient mesh‐based multicast routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks

Mesh‐based multicast routing protocols for mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) build multiple paths from senders to receivers to deliver packets even in the presence of links breaking. This redundancy results in high reliability/robustness but may significantly increase packet overhead. This paper proposes a mesh‐based multicast protocol, called centered protocol for unified multicasting through announcements (CPUMA), that achieves comparable reliability as existing mesh‐based multicast protocols, however, with significantly much less data overhead. In CPUMA, a distributed core‐selection and maintenance algorithm is used to find the source‐centric center of a shared mesh. We leverage data packets to center the core of each multicast group shared mesh instead of using GPS or any pre‐assignment of cores to groups (the case of existing protocols). The proposed centering scheme allows reducing data packet overhead and creating forwarding paths toward the nearest mesh member instead of the core to reduce latency. We show, via simulations, that CPUMA outperforms existing multicast protocols in terms of data packet overhead, and latency while maintaining a constant or better packet delivery ratio, at the cost of a small increase in control overhead in a few scenarios. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bandwidth-satisfied multicast trees in large-scale ad-hoc networks

The purpose of this paper is to construct bandwidth-satisfied multicast trees for QoS applications in large-scale ad-hoc networks (MANETs). Recent routing protocols and multicast protocols in large-scale MANETs adopt two-tier infrastructures to avoid the inefficiency of the flooding. Hosts with a maximal number of neighbors are often chosen as backbone hosts (BHs) to forward packets. Most likely, these BHs will be traffic concentrations/bottlenecks of the network. In addition, since host mobility is not taken into consideration in BH selection, these two-tier schemes will suffer from more lost packets if highly mobile hosts are selected as BHs. In this paper, a new multicast protocol is proposed for partitioning large-scale MANET into two-tier infrastructures. In the proposed two-tier multicast protocol, hosts with fewer hops and longer remaining connection time to the other hosts will be selected as BHs. The objective is not only to obtain short and stable multicast routes, but also to construct a stable two-tier infrastructure with fewer lost packets. Further, previous MANET quality-of-service (QoS) routing/multicasting protocols determined bandwidth-satisfied routes for QoS applications. Some are implemented as a probing scheme, but the scheme is inefficient due to high overhead and slow response. On the contrary, the others are implemented by taking advantage of routing and link information to reduce the inefficiency. However, the latter scheme suffers from two bandwidth-violation problems. In this paper, a novel algorithm is proposed to avoid the two problems, and it is integrated with the proposed two-tier multicast protocol to construct bandwidth-satisfied multicast trees for QoS applications in large-scale MANETs. The proposed algorithm aims to achieve better network performance by minimizing the number of forwarders in a tree.     

Multi-way relay system with network coding in multi-spot beam satellite networks

In this paper, we consider a multi-way relay system with network coding (NC) in multi-spot beam satellite networks. In particular, we focus on multiparty video conferencing via a satellite. Our proposed protocol uses the multicasting routing information and number of video frame packets to generate coded packets. The proposed protocol ensures the reliable transmission of multicasting data for mobile users using the decoding error rate for the random linear network coding batch. To minimize the delay in the link layer, we propose a resource allocation scheme for multiparty video conferencing with NC in satellite communications. For the resource allocation, we use application information acquired by a performance enhancing proxy. The simulation results show that the achievable rate can be increased by the proposed protocol. The proposed protocol can also reduce the number of packet transmissions, resulting in the efficient usage of satellite radio resources. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed protocol ensures the reliable transmission of multicasting data for mobile users by using resources saved by NC. The average peak signal-to-noise of the video streaming for mobile users is better than that of the conventional system. As a result, the visual quality of video streaming services is improved.     

Priority differentiated multicast flow scheduling method in Ceph cloud storage network

In order to solve the problem that existing flow scheduling method is difficult to meet the different multicast scheduling requirements of multi-service flows in the Ceph cloud storage network,a service priority-based multicast flow scheduling method was tailored.First,the network status was obtained via software defined network (SDN) to support flow scheduling.Then,a multicast task was decomposed into multiple attribute decision problems for multiple unicast path selection,and a method of unicast path selection based on technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) was proposed.The unicast path selection method was used to find the optimal unicast path set for the service flow based on the flow’s network performance requirements.Then,the multicast distribution node was determined by the maximum common sub-path among the optimal unicast path sets for construct a multicast transmission path.The experiment results show that the proposed method can reduce the transmission delay of high priority flows while reduce the redundant traffic and better balance the traffic loads compared with the existing methods.     

Scalable QoS-based IP multicast over label-switching wireless ATMnetworks

A Mobile IP multicast prototype that integrates a label-switching wireless asynchronous transfer mode, the mobile core-based multicast architecture, and an Internet multicast infrastructure is presented. MCOM creates multiple core-based layer 2 multicast trees that are independently established in member networks. They are interconnected via the Internet using layer 3 multicast routing. Gateways on the border of the Internet and wireless ATM networks convert ATM multicast traffic to suitable IP packets as well as converting from IP packets to ATM cells for MCOM. To solve the cell interleaving problem that results, ATM block transfer/immediate transmission capability is reasonably modified. Additionally, class-based block buffer management for ATM multicast connections is built into wireless ATM switches for soft quality of service control. Dynamic group management, multicast channel rerouting, and reliable multicasting are also studied in relation to existing Internet protocols like Mobile IP, Internet group management protocols, and multicast routing protocols     

Improved heuristics for multicast routing in wireless mesh networks

Multicast is a communication technique that allows a source to transmit data to a set of recipients in an efficient manner. Therefore, the primary objective of a multicast routing protocol would be to minimize number of transmissions to conserve bandwidth. The problem of computing multicast trees with minimal bandwidth consumption is similar to Steiner tree problem and has shown to be NP-complete. So, heuristic based algorithms are suitable to approximate such bandwidth optimal trees. This paper proposes a multicast routing protocol based on minimum number of transmission trees using an heuristic approach. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm offers better performance over existing protocols, even in the worst-case scenario when the set of multicast receivers are sparsely distributed across the network.