A distributed protocol for dynamic address assignment in mobile ad hoc networks

A Mobile Ad hoc NETwork (MANET) is a group of mobile nodes that form a multihop wireless network. The topology of the network can change randomly due to unpredictable mobility of nodes and propagation characteristics. Previously, it was assumed that the nodes in the network were assigned IP addresses a priori. This may not be feasible as nodes can enter and leave the network dynamically. A dynamic IP address assignment protocol like DHCP requires centralized servers that may not be present in MANETs. Hence, we propose a distributed protocol for dynamic IP address assignment to nodes in MANETs. The proposed solution guarantees unique IP address assignment under a variety of network conditions including message losses, network partitioning and merging. Simulation results show that the protocol incurs low latency and communication overhead for an IP address assignment.     

A hotspot mitigation protocol for ad hoc networks

Hotspots represent transient but highly congested regions in wireless ad hoc networks that result in increased packet loss, end-to-end delay, and out-of-order packets delivery. We present a simple, effective, and scalable hotspot mitigation protocol (HMP) where mobile nodes independently monitor local buffer occupancy, packet loss, and MAC contention and delay conditions, and take local actions in response to the emergence of hotspots, such as, suppressing new route requests and rate controlling TCP flows. We use analysis, simulation, and experimental results from a wireless testbed to demonstrate the effectiveness of HMP in mobile ad hoc networks. HMP balances resource consumption among neighboring nodes, and improves end-to-end throughput, delay, and packet loss. Our results indicate that HMP can also improve the network connectivity preventing premature network partitions. We present analysis of hotspots, and the detailed design of HMP. We evaluate the protocol’s ability to effectively mitigate hotspots in mobile ad hoc networks that are based on on-demand and proactive routing protocols.     

A secure incentive protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

The proper functioning of mobile ad hoc networks depends on the hypothesis that each individual node is ready to forward packets for others. This common assumption, however, might be undermined by the existence of selfish users who are reluctant to act as packet relays in order to save their own resources. Such non-cooperative behavior would cause the sharp degradation of network throughput. To address this problem, we propose a credit-based Secure Incentive Protocol (SIP) to stimulate cooperation among mobile nodes with individual interests. SIP can be implemented in a fully distributed way and does not require any pre-deployed infrastructure. In addition, SIP is immune to a wide range of attacks and is of low communication overhead by using a Bloom filter. Detailed simulation studies have confirmed the efficacy and efficiency of SIP. This work was supported in part by the U.S. Office of Naval Research under Young Investigator Award N000140210464 and under grant N000140210554. Yanchao Zhang received the B.E. degree in Computer Communications from Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Nanjing, China, in July 1999, and the M.E. degree in Computer Applications from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, Beijing, China, in April 2002. Since September 2002, he has been working towards the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA. His research interests are network and distributed system security, wireless networking, and mobile computing, with emphasis on mobile ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks, wireless mesh networks, and heterogeneous wired/wireless networks. Wenjing Lou is an assistant professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She obtained her Ph.D degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Florida in 2003. She received the M.A.Sc degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 1998, the M.E degree and the B.E degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Xi'an Jiaotong University, China, in 1996 and 1993 respectively. From Dec 1997 to Jul 1999, she worked as a Research Engineer in Network Technology Research Center, Nanyang Technological University. Her current research interests are in the areas of ad hoc and sensor networks, with emphases on network security and routing issues. Wei Liu received his B.E. and M.E. in Electrical and Information Engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 1998 and 2001. In August 2005, he received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Florida. Currently, he is a senior technical member with Scalable Network Technologies. His research interest includes cross-layer design, and communication protocols for mobile ad hoc networks, wireless sensor networks and cellular networks. Yuguang Fang received a Ph.D. degree in Systems Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in January 1994 and a Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in May 1997. He was an assistant professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology from July 1998 to May 2000. He then joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Florida in May 2000 as an assistant professor, got an early promotion to an associate professor with tenure in August 2003 and a professor in August 2005. He has published over 150 papers in refereed professional journals and conferences. He received the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Award in 2001 and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award in 2002. He has served on many editorial boards of technical journals including IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and ACM Wireless Networks. He is a senior member of the IEEE.     

A hybrid multi-channel MAC protocol for wireless ad hoc networks

In a regular wireless ad hoc network, the Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol coordinates channel access among nodes, and the throughput of the network is limited by the bandwidth of a single channel. The multi-channel MAC protocols can exploit multiple channels to achieve high network throughput by enabling more concurrent transmissions. In this paper, we propose a hybrid and adaptive protocol, called H-MMAC, which utilizes multi-channel resources more efficiently than other multi-channel MAC protocols. The main idea is to adopt the IEEE 802.11 Power Saving Mechanism and to allow nodes to transmit data packets while other nodes try to negotiate the data channel during the Ad hoc Traffic Indication Message window based on the network traffic load. The analytical and simulation results show that the proposed H-MMAC protocol improves the network performance significantly in terms of the aggregate throughput, average delay, fairness and energy efficiency.     

A region-based routing protocol for wireless mobile ad hoc networks

Flooding-based route discovery is widely assumed in existing routing protocols of wireless ad hoc networks. Network-wide flooding enables the discovery of optimal routes from sources to destinations; however, as all network nodes are required to participate in the relays of route request packets, substantial control overhead is inevitable. Some efficient broadcast schemes can suppress redundant packet relays, but they often suppress the discovery of optimal routes, too. In this article we propose to dynamically create a prerouting region between each source-destination pair and limit the propagations of route request packets only within this region. The prerouting region effectively restricts route discovery activities to the nodes that most likely constitute the optimal or near-optimal routes. Consequently, not only is route construction overhead significantly reduced; route optimality is also guaranteed. The article presents a region-based routing (REGR) protocol covering both new route formation cases and route update cases. Simulations show that our protocol is particularly beneficial to dense and large-scale mobile ad hoc networks.     

Network mobility protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks

The goal of the network mobility management is to effectively reduce the complexity of handoff procedure and keep mobile devices connecting to the Internet. When users are going to leave an old subnet and enter a new subnet, the handoff procedure is executed on the mobile device, and it may break off the real‐time service, such as VoIP or mobile TV, because of the mobility of mobile devices. Because a vehicle is moving so fast, it may cause the handoff and packet loss problems. Both of the problems will lower down the throughput of the network. To overcome these problems, we propose a novel network mobility protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks. In a highway, because every car is moving in a fixed direction at a high speed, a car adopting our protocol can acquire an IP address from the vehicular ad hoc network through the vehicle‐to‐vehicle communications. The vehicle can rely on the assistance of a front vehicle to execute the prehandoff procedure, or it may acquire a new IP address through multihop relays from the car on the lanes of the same or opposite direction and thus may reduce the handoff delay and maintain the connectivity to the Internet. Simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme is able to reduce both the handoff delay and packet loss rate. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A cluster-based trust-aware routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Routing protocols are the binding force in mobile ad hoc network (MANETs) since they facilitate communication beyond the wireless transmission range of the nodes. However, the infrastructure-less, pervasive, and distributed nature of MANETs renders them vulnerable to security threats. In this paper, we propose a novel cluster-based trust-aware routing protocol (CBTRP) for MANETs to protect forwarded packets from intermediary malicious nodes. The proposed protocol organizes the network into one-hop disjoint clusters then elects the most qualified and trustworthy nodes to play the role of cluster-heads that are responsible for handling all the routing activities. The proposed CBTRP continuously ensures the trustworthiness of cluster-heads by replacing them as soon as they become malicious and can dynamically update the packet path to avoid malicious routes. We have implemented and simulated the proposed protocol then evaluated its performance compared to the clustered based routing protocol (CBRP) as well as the 2ACK approach. Comparisons and analysis have shown the effectiveness of our proposed scheme.     

A TDMA MAC protocol for multiservice wireless ad hoc networks

Quality of Service (QoS) provision in wireless ad hoc networks requires the support of efficient MAC protocols and Radio Resource Management strategies to efficiently handle the access process and to achieve a high resource reuse. In this context, we present in this paper a MAC proposal capable of providing resource reservation and service differentiation in the medium access level as a basis for guaranteeing end‐to‐end QoS support in higher levels. We propose a TDMA MAC structure based on a frame subdivision consisting of a broadcast control phase and a data phase. We have designed an adaptive strategy to share the resources between both control and data services and a resource reservation strategy for data services that solves the problems stemmed from the contention for the medium, also adding a service differentiation mechanism based on priorities. In addition, we evaluate the impact of a realistic propagation channel considering multipath fading and users interference on the performance of this scheme. In this scenario, we propose modifications to guarantee the reliability and efficiency of both broadcast control and data services, including power control techniques. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance evaluation of CSMA/ID MAC protocol for IP over WDM ring networks

In this paper, a packet pre‐classification media access control protocol based on a carrier sense multiple access with idle detection (CSMA/ID) scheme is investigated for supporting IP packets over all‐optical WDM ring networks. The purpose of the protocol is to increase throughput and to decrease the packet transmission delay of IP packets over optical networks in a metropolitan area network. This protocol avoids both packet collision and packet fragmentation. In order to improve the utilization of the network, the packets transmitted from a local area network are first pre‐classified into various class queues of an access point (AP) according to their length. After checking the available space based on the wavelength received by the receivers of the AP, the packets in the queues are transmitted. An analytical model is developed to evaluate the performance of the protocol, with simulation results showing good network efficiency. The proposed network has short‐term variations that introduce unfairness conditions. This problem could be overcome by assigning a quota on individual queues to allow all queues fair access. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A routing protocol based on node density for ad hoc networks

Ad hoc networks are a type of mobile network that functions without any fixed infrastructure. One of the weaknesses of ad hoc networks is that a route used between a source and a destination is likely to break during communication. To solve this problem, one approach consists of selecting routes whose nodes have the most stable behavior. Another strategy aims at improving the route repair procedure. This paper proposes a method for improving the success rate of local route repairs in mobile ad hoc networks. This method is based on the density of the nodes in the neighborhood of a route and on the availability of nodes in this neighborhood. Theoretical computation and simulation results show that the data packet loss rate decreased significantly compared to other methods which are well-documented in the literature. In addition, the time required to complete a local route repair following a failure was significantly reduced.     

Secure position-based routing protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

In large and dense mobile ad hoc networks, position-based routing protocols can offer significant performance improvement over topology-based routing protocols by using location information to make forwarding decisions. However, there are several potential security issues for the development of position-based routing protocols. In this paper, we propose a secure geographic forwarding (SGF) mechanism, which provides source authentication, neighbor authentication, and message integrity by using both the shared key and the TIK protocol. By combining SGF with the Grid Location Service (GLS), we propose a Secure Grid Location Service (SGLS) where any receiver can verify the correctness of location messages. We also propose a Local Reputation System (LRS) aiming at detecting and isolating both compromised and selfish users. We present the performance analysis of both SGLS and LRS, and compare them with the original GLS. Simulation results show that SGLS can operate efficiently by using effective cryptographic mechanisms. Results also show that LRS effectively detects and isolates message dropping attackers from the network.     

Ad hoc网络中带宽保证路由协议

研究ad hoc网络中无线链路存在邻近链路干扰及隐藏终端和暴露终端问题，提出新的带宽预留模型及带宽保证路由协议(BGRP)，旨在按需探测符合带宽需要的路由路径并预留可靠的带宽资源。理论分析证明，BGRP探测的路由路径能满足带宽需要，而且预留的带宽资源准确有效。仿真结果表明，就有效带宽而言，BGRP较INSIGNIA和BGSR算法有效，而且消息复杂性较小，具有良好的网络扩展性。     

A distributed transmission power control protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

In this paper, we propose a comprehensive solution for power control in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Our solution emphasizes the interplay between the MAC and network layers, whereby the MAC layer indirectly influences the selection of the next-hop by properly adjusting the power of route request packets. This is done while maintaining network connectivity. Channel-gain information obtained mainly from overheard RTS and CTS packets is used to dynamically construct the network topology. Unlike the IEEE 802.11 approach and previously proposed schemes, ours does not use the RTS/CTS packets to silence the neighboring nodes. Instead, collision avoidance information is inserted in the CTS packets and sent over an out-of-band control channel. This information is used to dynamically bound the transmission power of potentially interfering nodes in the vicinity of a receiver. By properly estimating the required transmission power for data packets, our protocol allows for interference-limited simultaneous transmissions to take place in the neighborhood of a receiving node. Simulation results indicate that, compared to the IEEE 802.11 approach, the proposed protocol achieves a significant increase in the channel utilization and end-to-end network throughput and a significant decrease in the total energy consumption.     

On-demand power management for ad hoc networks

Battery power is an important resource in ad hoc networks. It has been observed that in ad hoc networks, energy consumption does not reflect the communication activities in the network. Many existing energy conservation protocols based on electing a routing backbone for global connectivity are oblivious to traffic characteristics. In this paper, we propose an extensible on-demand power management framework for ad hoc networks that adapts to traffic load. Nodes maintain soft-state timers that determine power management transitions. By monitoring routing control messages and data transmission, these timers are set and refreshed on-demand. Nodes that are not involved in data delivery may go to sleep as supported by the MAC protocol. This soft state is aggregated across multiple flows and its maintenance requires no additional out-of-band messages. We implement a prototype of our framework in the ns-2 simulator that uses the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol. Simulation studies using our scheme with the Dynamic Source Routing protocol show a reduction in energy consumption near 50% when compared to a network without power management under both long-lived CBR traffic and on–off traffic loads, with comparable throughput and latency. Preliminary results also show that it outperforms existing routing backbone election approaches.     

Polarization-based cooperative directional MAC protocol for ad hoc networks

Numerous directional medium access control (DMAC) protocols have been developed to enhance the capacity of ad hoc networks using the underlying advanced physical layer techniques, such as beam-forming, multiuser detection (MUD), and multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO). In this paper, we propose an innovative fully distributed DMAC protocol that cooperatively makes use of polarization diversity in low-mobility urban/suburban outdoor wireless ad hoc network environment. In the proposed cooperative polarization DMAC protocol (CPDMAC), each node directionally senses on both vertical and horizontal polarizations and dynamically adapts polarization that minimizes overall interference in the ad hoc network. Analysis is performed to establish relationship between vertically and horizontally polarized nodes in the network. Further, a theoretical lower bound is derived for probability of successful transmission to show capacity improvement as a function of cross polarization ratio (CPR). Simulation results confirm from 2% up to 400% improvement in average node throughput at data rate of 1.95 Mbps when compared to the traditional DMAC protocol. Moreover, our study clearly shows that the average throughput difference increases with increasing node density when compared to the traditional DMAC protocol.     

Location-aware routing protocol with dynamic adaptation of request zone for mobile ad hoc networks

One possibility direction to assist routing in Mobile Ad Hoc Network (MANET) is to use geographical location information provided by positioning devices such as global positioning systems (GPS). Instead of searching the route in the entire network blindly, position-based routing protocol uses the location information of mobile nodes to confine the route searching space into a smaller estimated range. The smaller route searching space to be searched, the less routing overhead and broadcast storm problem will occur. In this paper, we proposed a location-based routing protocol called LARDAR. There are three important characteristics be used in our protocol to improve the performance. Firstly, we use the location information of destination node to predict a smaller triangle or rectangle request zone that covers the position of destination in the past. The smaller route discovery space reduces the traffic of route request and the probability of collision. Secondly, in order to adapt the precision of the estimated request zone, and reduce the searching range, we applied a dynamic adaptation of request zone technique to trigger intermediate nodes using the location information of destination node to redefine a more precise request zone. Finally, an increasing-exclusive search approach is used to redo route discovery by a progressive increasing search angle basis when route discovery failed. This progressive increased request zone and exclusive search method is helpful to reduce routing overhead. It guarantees that the areas of route rediscovery will never exceed twice the entire network. Simulation results show that LARDAR has lower routing cost and collision than other protocols. Tzay-Farn Shih was with Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University. Tzay-Farn Shih received the B.S. degree in Information Management from Chinese Culture University, Taiwan, in 1992, the M.S. degree in Computer Science Engineering from Tatung University, Taiwan, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 2006. He is presently an assistant professor of Computer Science and Information Engineering at Chaoyang University of Technology, where he initially joined in August 2006. He is currently an overseas member of the Institute of Electronics, Information and Communication Engineers (IEICE). His current research interests include computer simulation, computer networks routing protocol, wireless networks, Mobile Ad Hoc networks and sensor networks. Hsu-Chun Yen was born in Taiwan, Republic of China, on May 29, 1958. He received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering from National Taiwan University, Taiwan, in 1980, the M.S. degree in computer engineering from National Chiao-Tung University, Taiwan, in 1982, and the Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Texas at Austin, U.S.A., in 1986. He is presently a Professor of Electrical Engineering at National Taiwan University, where he initially joined in August 1990. From August 1986 to July 1990, he was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa, U.S.A. His current research interests include Petri net theory, formal methods, design and analysis of algorithms, and complexity theory. Dr. Yen is an editor of International Journal of Foundations of Computer Science (IJFCS, World Scientific Publisher).     

A transport protocol for supporting multimedia streaming in mobile ad hoc networks

Transport protocol design for supporting multimedia streaming in mobile ad hoc networks is challenging because of unique issues, including mobility-induced disconnection, reconnection, and high out-of-order delivery ratios; channel errors and network congestion. In this paper, we describe the design and implementation of a transmission control protocol (TCP)-friendly transport protocol for ad hoc networks. Our key design novelty is to perform multimetric joint identification for packet and connection behaviors based on end-to-end measurements. Our NS-2 simulations show significant performance improvement over wired TCP friendly congestion control and TCP with explicit-link-failure-notification support in ad hoc networks.     

An adaptive transmission-scheduling protocol for mobile ad hoc networks

Transmission-scheduling protocols can support contention-free link-level broadcast transmissions and delay sensitive traffic in mobile, multiple-hop packet radio networks. Use of transmission-scheduling protocols, however, can be very inefficient in mobile environments due to the difficulty in adapting transmission schedules. The paper defines a new adaptive and distributed protocol that permits a terminal to adapt transmission assignments to changes in topology using information it collects from its local neighborhood only. Because global coordination among all the terminals is not required and changes to transmission assignments are distributed to nearby terminals only, the protocol can adapt quickly to changes in the network connectivity. The two key parameters that affect the ability of the protocol to adapt to changes in connectivity are the rate of connectivity changes and the number of terminals near the connectivity changes. Using simulation, we determine the ranges for these parameters for which our adaptive protocol can maintain collision-free schedules with an acceptable level of overhead. The stability of the protocol is also characterized by showing that the protocol can quickly return to a collision-free transmission schedule after a period of very rapid changes in connectivity. Our channel-access protocol does not require a contention-based random-access phase to adapt the transmission schedules, and thus its ability to adapt quickly does not deteriorate with an increase in the traffic load.     

A greedy-based stable multi-path routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks

With the increasing popularity of multimedia, there is a growing tendency in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) to establish stable routes with long route lifetimes, low control overhead and high packet delivery ratios. According to recent analytical result, the lifetime of a route, which can reflect the route stability, depends on the length of the route and the lifetime of each link in the route. This paper presents a Greedy-based Backup Routing (GBR) protocol that considers both route length and link lifetime to achieve high route stability. In GBR, the primary path is constructed primarily based on a greedy forwarding mechanism, whereas the local-backup path for each link is established according to the link lifetime. Both analytical and simulation results demonstrate that GBR has excellent performance in terms of route lifetime, packet delivery ratio, and control overhead.