Vehicle density based multihop broadcast protocol in VANET

In vehicular ad hoc networks (VANET), the medium access control (MAC) protocol was of crucial importance to provide time-critical multihop broadcast. Contemporary multihop broadcast protocols in VANET usually choose the farthest node in broadcast range as the forwarder to reduce the number of forwarding hops. However, it was demonstrated that the farthest forwarder may experience long contention delay in case of high vehicle density. An IEEE 802.11p-based multihop broadcast protocol vehicle density based forwarding (VDF) was proposed, which adaptively chose the forwarder according to the vehicle density. The evaluation results in safety warning and online game applications show that, VDF could shorten broadcast delay by achieving the proper trade-off between the contention delay and coverage speed.     

Cooperative and Opportunistic Channel Access for Vehicle to Roadside (V2R) Communications

This paper focuses on vehicle to roadside (V2R) communications in vehicular networks based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol. In vehicular networks, roadside units (RSUs) are typically spaced apart along the road and each vehicle can be connected to an RSU only when the vehicle is within its transmission range. Due to the high relative speed between a moving vehicle and a stationary RSU, the residence time of the vehicle within the coverage of each RSU is very short. Thus it is hard for the system to reach a steady state. With multi-hop forwarding, in which a vehicle may be connected to an RSU through relaying over other vehicles, the connection time of each V2R access may be extended. But this is at the expense of introducing wireless interference among vehicles, which may dramatically degrade the system performance. To tackle these challenges, we propose a new mechanism called Proxy-based Vehicle to RSU access (PVR) for V2R communications. This protocol is designed to exploit cooperative and opportunistic forwarding between any two distant RSUs and to emulate back-to-back transmissions within the coverage of an RSU. As a result, it can shorten the access delay by taking advantage of opportunistic forwarding and mitigate the interference problem during the short residence time within the coverage of an RSU. The simulation results show that PVR achieves excellent performance and outperforms all existing solutions for V2R communications in vehicular networks.     

DCMA: A Label Switching MAC for Efficient Packet Forwarding in Multihop Wireless Networks

This paper addresses the problem of efficient packet forwarding in a multihop, wireless "mesh" network. We present an efficient interface contained forwarding (ICF) architecture for a "wireless router," i.e., a forwarding node with a single wireless network interface card (NIC) in a multihop wireless network that allows a packet to be forwarded entirely within the NIC of the forwarding node without requiring per-packet intervention by the node's CPU. To effectively forward packets in a pipelined fashion without incurring the 802.11-related overheads of multiple independent channel accesses, we specify a slightly modified version of the 802.11 MAC, called data driven cut-through multiple access (DCMA) that uses multiprotocol label switching (MPLS)-like labels in the control packets, in conjunction with a combined ACK/RTS packet, to reduce 802.11 channel access latencies. Our proposed technique can be used in combination with "frame bursting" as specified by the IEEE 802.11e standard to provide an end-to-end cut-through channel access. Using extensive simulations, we compare the performance of DCMA with 802.11 DCF MAC with respect to throughput and latency and suggest a suitable operating region to get maximum benefits using our mechanism as compared to 802.11     

Adaptive per hop differentiation for end-to-end delay assurance in multihop wireless networks

As the rapid growth of smart hand-held devices, multihop wireless access networks have a lot of potential applications in a variety of fields in civilian and military environments. Many of these applications, such as realtime audio/video streaming, will require some form of end-to-end QoS assurance. In this paper, we present an adaptive per hop differentiation (APHD) scheme towards achieving end-to-end delay assurance in multihop wireless networks. Our scheme is based on EDCA technique which is proposed in 802.11e draft. In EDCA, data packets of different priorities will use different MAC contention parameter set, which translate into different delays. Our APHD scheme extends the capability of EDCA into multihop environment by taking end-to-end delay requirement into consideration at each intermediate hop. Following a cross-layer design approach, APHD is aimed to be a distributed and localized technique. Individual nodes keep track of the channel state independently without any intercommunication overhead. Data packets carry end-to-end delay requirement along with other important information in the packet header. At an intermediate node, based on data packet’s end-to-end requirement, its accumulative delay so far, and the current node’s channel status, APHD smartly adjusts data packet’s priority level in order to satisfy its end-to-end delay requirement. Simulation results show that APHD scheme can provide excellent end-to-end delay assurance while achieving much higher network utilization, compared to a pure EDCA scheme.     

Profit-Based Routing for Multihop Coverage Extension in Wireless Networks

In future wireless systems, the coverage of a base station will decrease due to the characteristics of the channel at high-frequency bands. To expand the service coverage, a hybrid network that combines an ad hoc network with a cellular (or wireless LAN) network, appears to have great potential. In such systems, some mobile users outside the service area can access the network with the aid of other intermediate mobiles. However, this method incurs energy consumption in routing users, which could be a serious obstacle for wide-spread deployment of multihop wireless networks. Therefore we consider a revenue-cost model and propose a profit-based routing strategy that encourages routing users to actively participate in the relaying service because they are compensated for their energy consumption cost. Our strategy enables each mobile node to find an appropriate multihop path to a base station (or access point) that satisfies the interests of the service provider and the users. Numerical results show that our model successfully expands the network coverage area while ensuring the profit of each system involved.     

Designing multihop wireless backhaul networks with delay guarantees

As wireless access technologies improve in data rates, the problem focus is shifting towards providing adequate backhaul from the wireless access points to the Internet. Existing wired backhaul technologies such as copper wires running at DSL, T1, or T3 speeds can be expensive to install or lease, and are becoming a performance bottleneck as wireless access speeds increase. Longhaul, non-line-of-sight wireless technologies such as WiMAX (802.16) hold the promise of enabling a high speed wireless backhaul as a cost-effective alternative. However, the biggest challenge in building a wireless backhaul is achieving guaranteed performance (throughput and delay) that is typically provided by a wired backhaul. This paper explores the problem of efficiently designing a multihop wireless backhaul to connect multiple wireless access points to a wired gateway. In particular, we provide a generalized link activation framework for scheduling packets over this wireless backhaul, such that any existing wireline scheduling policy can be implemented locally at each node of the wireless backhaul. We also present techniques for determining good interference-free routes within our scheduling framework, given the link rates and cross-link interference information. When a multihop wireline scheduler with worst case delay bounds (such as WFQ or Coordinated EDF) is implemented over the wireless backhaul, we show that our scheduling and routing framework guarantees approximately twice the delay of the corresponding wireline topology. Finally, we present simulation results to demonstrate the low delays achieved using our framework.     

EARQ: Energy Aware Routing for Real-Time and Reliable Communication in Wireless Industrial Sensor Networks

Wireless industrial sensor networks are wireless sensor networks which have been adapted to industrial applications. Most techniques for wireless sensor networks can be applied to wireless industrial sensor networks. However, for industrial applications of wireless industrial sensor networks, new requirements such as real-time, reliable delivery need to be considered. In this paper, we propose EARQ, which is a novel routing protocol for wireless industrial sensor networks. It provides real-time, reliable delivery of a packet, while considering energy awareness. In EARQ, a node estimates the energy cost, delay and reliability of a path to the sink node, based only on information from neighboring nodes. Then, it calculates the probability of selecting a path, using the estimates. When packet forwarding is required, it randomly selects the next node. A path with lower energy cost is likely to be selected, because the probability is inversely proportional to the energy cost to the sink node. To achieve real-time delivery, only paths that may deliver a packet in time are selected. To achieve reliability, it may send a redundant packet via an alternate path, but only if it is a source of a packet. Experimental results show that EARQ is suitable for industrial applications, due to its capability for energy efficient, real-time, reliable communications.      

High-performance architectures for IP-based multihop 802.11 networks

The concept of a forwarding node, which receives packets from upstream nodes and then transmits these packets to downstream nodes, is a key element of any multihop network, wired or wireless. While high-speed IP router architectures have been extensively studied for wired networks, the concept of a "wireless IP router" has not been addressed so far. We examine the limitations of the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol in supporting a low-latency and high-throughput IP datapath comprising multiple wireless LAN hops. We first propose a wireless IP forwarding architecture that uses MPLS with modifications to 802.11 MAC to significantly improve packet forwarding efficiency. We then study further enhancements to 802.11 MAC that improve system throughput by allowing a larger number of concurrent packet transmissions in multihop 802.11-based IP networks. With 802.11 poised to be the dominant technology for wireless LANs, we believe a combined approach to MAC, packet forwarding, and transport layer protocols is needed to make high-performance multihop 802.11 networks practically viable.     

Towards an end-to-end delay analysis of wireless multihop networks

In wireless multihop networks, end-to-end (e2e) delay is a critical parameter for quality of service (QoS) guarantees. We employ discrete-time queueing theory to analyze the end-to-end (e2e) delay of wireless multihop networks for two MAC schemes, m-phase TDMA and slotted ALOHA. In one-dimensional (1-D) networks, due to the lack of sufficient multiplexing and splitting, a space–time correlation structure exists, the nodes are spatially correlated with each other, and the e2e performance cannot be analyzed as in general two-dimensional networks by assuming all nodes independent of each other. This paper studies an 1-D network fed with a single flow, an extreme scenario in which there is no multiplexing and splitting. A decomposition approach is used to decouple the whole network into isolated nodes. Each node is modeled as a GI/Geo/1 queueing system. First, we derive the complete per-node delay distribution and departure characterization, accounting for both the queueing delay and access delay. Second, based on the departure process approximation, we define a parameter to measure the spatial correlation and its influence on the e2e delay variance. Our study shows that traffic burstiness of the source flow and MAC together determines the sign of the correlation.     

Scalability and Performance Evaluation of Hierarchical Hybrid Wireless Networks

This paper considers the problem of scaling ad hoc wireless networks now being applied to urban mesh and sensor network scenarios. Previous results have shown that the inherent scaling problems of a multihop ldquoflatrdquo ad hoc wireless network can be improved by a ldquohybrid networkrdquo with an appropriate proportion of radio nodes with wired network connections. In this work, we generalize the system model to a hierarchical hybrid wireless network with three tiers of radio nodes: low-power end-user mobile nodes (MNs) at the lowest tier, higher power radio forwarding nodes (FNs) that support multihop routing at intermediate level, and wired access points (APs) at the highest level. Scalability properties of the proposed three-tier hierarchical hybrid wireless network are analyzed, leading to an identification of the proportion of FNs and APs as well as transmission range required for linear increase in end-user throughput. In particular, it is shown analytically that in a three-tier hierarchical network with nA APs, nF FNs, and nM MNs, the low-tier capacity increases linearly with nF, and the high-tier capacity increases linearly with nA when nA = Omega(radic{nF}) and n _A = O(nF). This analytical result is validated via ns-2 simulations for an example dense network scenario, and the model is used to study scaling behavior and performance as a function of key parameters such as AP and FN node densities for different traffic patterns and bandwidth allocation at each tier of the network.     

An energy-efficient MAC protocol based on IEEE 802.11 in wireless ad hoc networks

Energy efficiency is a measure of the performance of IEEE 802.11 wireless multihop ad hoc networks. The IEEE 802.11 standard, currently used in wireless multihop ad hoc networks, wastes bandwidth capacity and energy resources because of many collisions. Therefore, controlling the contention window size at a given node will increase not only the operating life of the battery but also the overall system capacity. It is essential to develop effective backoff schemes for saving power in IEEE 802.11 wireless multihop ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient backoff scheme and evaluate its performance in an ad hoc network. Our contention window mechanism devised by us grants a node access to a channel on the basis of the node’s percentage of residual energy. We use both an analytical model and simulation experiments to evaluate the effective performance of our scheme in an ad hoc network. Our extensive ns-2-based simulation results have shown that the proposed scheme provides excellent performance in terms of energy goodput, end-to-end goodput, and packet delivery ratio, as well as the end-to-end delay.     

Efficient integration of multihop wireless and wired networks with QoS constraints

This study considers the problem of designing an efficient and low-cost infrastructure for connecting static multihop wireless networks with wired backbone, while ensuring QoS requirements such as bandwidth and delay. This infrastructure is useful for designing low-cost and fast deployed access networks in rural and suburban areas. It may also be used for providing access to sensor networks or for efficient facility placement in wireless networks. In these networks, some nodes are chosen as access points and function as gateways to access a wired backbone. Each access point serves a cluster of its nearby user, and a spanning tree rooted at the access point is used for message delivery. The study addresses both the design optimization and the operation aspects of the system. From the design perspective, we seek for a partition of the network nodes into a minimal number of disjoint clusters that satisfy multiple constraints; each cluster is required to be a connected graph with an upper bound on its radius. We assume that each node has a weight (representing its bandwidth requirement), and the total weight of all cluster nodes is also bounded. We show that these clustering requirements can be formulated as an instance of the capacitated facility location problem (CFLP) with additional constraints. By breaking the problem into two subproblems and solving each one separately, we propose polynomial time approximation algorithms that calculate solutions within a constant factor of the optimal ones. From the operation viewpoint, we introduce an adaptive delivery mechanism that maximizes the throughput of each cluster without violating the QoS constraints.     

A Delay-Aware Wireless Sensor Network Routing Protocol for Industrial Applications

With the rapid development of information communication technologies, industrial manufacturing environments and requirements have changed considerably. Since wireless sensor networks have become more and more popular, our production chains have improved with respect to efficiency, flexibility and security. On the other hand, building a secure, robust and fast network is an essential issue for enterprises. In the past, few experts focused on this issue of industrial applications and most of solutions proposed are not suitable for industrial environments. In this paper, we propose a real-time routing protocol for mobile wireless sensor nodes in industrial environments, which offers superior quality of service in terms of delay time. We use geographic routing and information contained in the nodes routing table to extract location information. Then we calculate the node which is nearest to the target node to reduce hop counts and achieve fast data package transfers. It optimizes the packets forwarding hops, which in turn reduces the delay time effectively. We used OPNET to analyze our protocol and results indicate that this algorithm is useful and suitable for wireless sensor networks     

Cross-Layer Design for QoS Support in Multihop Wireless Networks

Due to such features as low cost, ease of deployment, increased coverage, and enhanced capacity, multihop wireless networks such as ad hoc networks, mesh networks, and sensor networks that form the network in a self-organized manner without relying on fixed infrastructure is touted as the new frontier of wireless networking. Providing efficient quality of service (QoS) support is essential for such networks, as they need to deliver real-time services like video, audio, and voice over IP besides the traditional data service. Various solutions have been proposed to provide soft QoS over multihop wireless networks from different layers in the network protocol stack. However, the layered concept was primarily created for wired networks, and multihop wireless networks oppose strict layered design because of their dynamic nature, infrastructureless architecture, and time-varying unstable links and topology. The concept of cross-layer design is based on architecture where different layers can exchange information in order to improve the overall network performance. Promising results achieved by cross-layer optimizations initiated significant research activity in this area. This paper aims to review the present study on the cross-layer paradigm for QoS support in multihop wireless networks. Several examples of evolutionary and revolutionary cross-layer approaches are presented in detail. Realizing the new trends for wireless networking, such as cooperative communication and networking, opportunistic transmission, real system performance evaluation, etc., several open issues related to cross-layer design for QoS support over multihop wireless networks are also discussed in the paper.     

Improving Transport Layer Performance in Multihop Ad Hoc Networks by Exploiting MAC Layer Information

The traditional TCP congestion control mechanism encounters a number of new problems and suffers a poor performance when the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is used in multihop ad hoc networks. Many of the problems result from medium contention at the MAC layer. In this paper, we first illustrate that severe medium contention and congestion are intimately coupled, and TCP's congestion control algorithm becomes too coarse in its granularity, causing throughput instability and excessively long delay. Further, we illustrate TCP's severe unfairness problem due to the medium contention and the tradeoff between aggregate throughput and fairness. Then, based on the novel use of channel busyness ratio, a more accurate metric to characterize the network utilization and congestion status, we propose a new wireless congestion control protocol (WCCP) to efficiently and fairly support the transport service in multihop ad hoc networks. In this protocol, each forwarding node along a traffic flow exercises the inter-node and intra-node fair resource allocation and determines the MAC layer feedback accordingly. The end-to-end feedback, which is ultimately determined by the bottleneck node along the flow, is carried back to the source to control its sending rate. Extensive simulations show that WCCP significantly outperforms traditional TCP in terms of channel utilization, delay, and fairness, and eliminates the starvation problem     

Fair TDMA scheduling in wireless multihop networks

In wireless multihop networks, communication between two end-nodes is carried out by hopping over multiple wireless links. However, the fact that each node has to transmit not only its own traffic, but also traffic on behalf of other nodes, leads to unfairness among the communication rates of the nodes. Traditional Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) based media access control does not work satisfactory in a multihop scenario, since an intended target of a communication may be subject to mutual interference imposed by concurrent transmissions from nodes, which cannot directly sense each other, thus causing unfair throughput allocation. Although Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) seems to be a more promising solution, careful transmission scheduling is needed in order to achieve error-free communication and fairness. Several algorithms may be found in the literature for scheduling TDMA transmissions in wireless multihop networks. Their main goal is to determine the optimal scheduling, in order to increase the capacity and reduce the delay for a given network topology, though they do not consider the traffic requirements of the active flows of the multihop network or fairness issues. In this paper, we propose a joint TDMA scheduling/load balancing algorithm, called Load-Balanced-Fair Flow Vector Scheduling Algorithm (LB-FFVSA). This algorithm schedules the transmissions in a fair manner, in terms of throughput per connection, taking into account the communication requirements of the active flows of the network. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves improved performance compared to other solutions, not only in terms of fairness, but also in terms of throughput. Moreover, it was proved that when a load balancing technique is used, the performance of the scheduling algorithm is further improved.     

Multihop cognitive radio networks: to route or not to route

Routing is a fundamental issue to consider when dealing with multihop cognitive radio networks. We investigate in this work, the potential routing approaches that can be employed in such adaptive wireless networks. We argue that in multihop cognitive radio environments no general routing solution can be proposed, but cognitive environments can be classified into three separate categories, each requiring specific routing solutions. Basically, this classification is imposed by the activity of the users on the licensed bands that cognitive radios try to access. First, over a relatively static primary band, where primary nodes idleness largely exceeds cognitive users communication durations, static mesh routing solutions can be reused, whereas second, over dynamically available spectrum bands new specific routing solutions have to be proposed, we give some guidelines and insights about designing such solutions. Third, if cognitive radios try to access over highly active and rarely available primary bands, opportunistic forwarding without preestablished routing is to be explored.     

QoS Routing for Mesh-Based Wireless LANs

Wireless LANs with their increased data rate become an attractive technology for connecting mobile users to the Internet. Efficient deployment of wireless LANs will require the ability to extend the wireless LANs coverage without the need to deploy a very large number of access points. Mesh-based wireless LANs are an attractive solution to this problem. These networks extend wireless LAN coverage by using each node in the network as a router, resulting in a multihop topology. In this paper we introduce a novel routing algorithm, wireless mesh routing (WMR), that provides quality-of-service (QoS) support and accounts for the characteristics of both infrastructure-based wireless LANs and ad hoc networks. The algorithm is validated using the OPNET modeler. The simulation results show that the mesh network using WMR protocol can provide QoS support and react dynamically to the network status changes with low control overheads. Using the proposed software architecture the proposed routing protocol can be implemented with any MAC protocol, resulting in easy implementation in existing wireless nodes.     

Distortion-Driven Video Streaming over Multihop Wireless Networks with Path Diversity

Multihop networks provide a flexible infrastructure that is based on a mixture of existing access points and stations interconnected via wireless links. These networks present some unique challenges for video streaming applications due to the inherent infrastructure unreliability. In this paper, we address the problem of robust video streaming in multihop networks by relying on delay- constrained and distortion-aware scheduling, path diversity, and retransmission of important video packets over multiple links to maximize the received video quality at the destination node. To provide an analytical study of this streaming problem, we focus on an elementary multihop network topology that enables path diversity, which we term "elementary cell." Our analysis is considering several cross-layer parameters at the physical and medium access control (MAC) layers, as well as application-layer parameters such as the expected distortion reduction of each video packet and the packet scheduling via an overlay network infrastructure. In addition, we study the optimal deployment of path diversity in order to cope with link failures. The analysis is validated in each case by simulation results with the elementary cell topology, as well as with a larger multihop network topology. Based on the derived results, we are able to establish the benefits of using path diversity in video streaming over multihop networks, as well as to identify the cases where path diversity does not lead to performance improvements.     

A Multichannel TDMA MAC Protocol to Reduce End‐to‐End Delay in Wireless Mesh Networks

Supporting QoS over multihop wireless mesh networks is difficult because end‐to‐end delay increases quickly with the increasing number of hops. This paper introduces a novel multichannel time‐division multiple‐access media access control (McTMAC) protocol that can help to efficiently reduce delay over multihop networks. Performance evaluation results demonstrate that McTMAC outperforms existing alternative protocols. The max‐delay can be reduced by as much as 60% by using McTMAC.