Statistically optimized minislot allocation for initial andcollision resolution in hybrid fiber coaxial networks

In a two-way hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) network, the headend broadcasts in downstream channels, whereas all stations share the upstream channels. Hence, collision occurs when multiple stations send their bandwidth requests in a minislot. The headend determines how many minislots to allocate to manage collisions. This paper proposes a minislot allocation (SOMA) algorithm to optimize minislot throughput based on statistical estimation. A time proportional scheme is adopted to estimate the number of new requests in the initial resolution process. In addition, the number of retry requests in the collision resolution process is estimated by looking up a predetermined table of the most likely number of requests (MLR). In addition, SOMA is modified to reduce the request access delay by relaxing its allocation policy in a specific situation. We use a self-similar traffic model for simulation and analysis to compare SOMA with the optimal bound and the 3-ary tree algorithm     

Series-parallel resonant UPS with capacitive output DC bus filter for powering HFC networks

This paper presents a single high-frequency transformer full isolated uninterruptible power supply based on series-parallel resonant converters for powering hybrid fiber-coaxial networks. The proposed UPS provides galvanic isolation for the load and the battery, and operates with high input power factor while producing a trapezoidal output voltage waveform either at 60 Hz or at 1 Hz. Small size and light weight are achieved without penalizing the overall efficiency by operating at high frequency and by ensuring zero voltage switching (ZVS) under the different operating conditions. In addition, it is demonstrated that by using a capacitive output DC bus filter it is possible to reduce the current stresses during the backup mode by the appropriate selection of the transformer turns ratio. A design procedure for the selection of the key resonant circuit parameters is developed and exemplified. Experimental results obtained from a laboratory prototype demonstrate the overall performance of the system.     

A comparison of QAM and VSB for hybrid fiber/coax: digitaltransmission

There are two competing transmission systems for downstream digital transmission on hybrid fiber/coax cable networks: quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and vestigial sideband modulation (VSB). Both QAM and VSB are bandwidth efficient, and have the same bandwidth efficiency. Detailed calculations and simulations of QAM and VSB transmission on hybrid fiber/coax are reported here. It is shown that, since VSB has a higher symbol rate, it has at most 1/2 dB less received SNR than QAM at low frequencies because of dispersion and symbol timing jitter. This difference is negligible. Vendors proposing VSB recover the carrier with a pilot tone and a PLL, and vendors proposing QAM use all-digital data-directed carrier recovery. Simulations reported here show that QAM and VSB have very similar carrier recovery performance. It is concluded that for hybrid fiber/coax, VSB and QAM have practically the same overall performance, and the choice between these transmission systems should be based on considerations other than performance     

TCP for high performance in hybrid fiber coaxial broad-band accessnetworks

Motivated by the phenomenal growth of the Internet in recent years, a number of cable operators are in the process of upgrading their cable networks to offer data services to residential subscribers, providing them direct access to a variety of community content as well as to the Internet. Using cable modems that implement sophisticated modulation-demodulation circuitry, these services promise to offer a several hundredfold increase in access speeds to the home compared to conventional telephone modems. Initial experiences indicate that cable networks are susceptible to a variety of radio-frequency (RF) impairments that can result in significant packet loss during data communication. In the face of such losses, the transmission control protocol (TCP) that is predominantly used by data applications degrades dramatically in performance. Consequently, subscribers of broad-band data services may not perceive the projected hundredfold increase in performance. We analyze the performance of TCP under different network conditions using simulations and propose simple modifications that can offer up to threefold increase in performance in access networks that are prone to losses. These modifications require only minor changes to TCP implementations at the local network servers alone (and not at subscribers' PCs)     

Allocation and scheduling algorithms for IEEE 802.14 and MCNS inhybrid fiber coaxial networks

IEEE 802.14 and MCNS (multimedia cable network system) are two standards developed for the hybrid fiber coaxial (HFC) CATV networks. Both standards model an upstream channel as a stream of minislots. But their philosophies on resolving collisions in the shared upstream channel are rather different, where IEEE 802.14 adopts the priority+FIFO first-transmission rule and the n-ary tree retransmission rule, and MCNS adopts the binary exponential backoff algorithm with adjustable window sizes. Both provide reservation access, while IEEE 802.14 and MCNS also support isochronous access and immediate access, respectively. In this paper, we try to prepare a suggestion list for vendors on how to allocate minislots for reservation access and immediate access and how to schedule the reserved bandwidth, which greatly affect the performance of a cable network and are left open by the standards     

A self-organization structure for hybrid networks

This paper focuses on the self-organization of ad hoc and hybrid networks. We propose to organize networks with two integrated virtual structures: a backbone and clusters. The backbone helps to optimize the flooding of control packets, and to offer a natural prolongation of the backbone of wired networks. Clusters help to hierarchize the network, each of which is managed logically by its clusterhead. Since MANETs are mobile, we propose distributed algorithms for both the construction and the maintenance to preserve an efficient virtual structure despite topology changes. Simulations results exhibit the robustness and persistence of the proposed virtual structure.     

A protocol for efficient transfer of data over hybrid fiber/coaxsystems

The cable TV plant is a broad bandwidth channel into the home and community that has been used primarily for the distribution of television. As the plant is upgraded, there is an opportunity to use it for the transport of high-speed digital signals. While the downstream channel is relatively easy to exploit, the topology and physical characteristics of the upstream channel present new challenges at both the physical and the media access layers. We present a media access protocol that efficiently transfers data on this channel. A primary goal of the design is to keep that portion of the protocol resident in the station as simple as possible. Thus, we use centralized control located in the cable head-end. A station wishing to transmit sends a request to the head-end using a contention channel. The head-end acknowledges the request and then schedules the request, informing the station, by means of a grant message, exactly when to transmit. The protocol performs efficiently under a wide range of conditions, and is robust in the presence of channel errors     

UPS: Universal Protocol Stack for emerging wireless networks

Recent devices developed for emerging wireless networks, such as 4G cellular networks, wireless mesh networks, and mobile ad hoc networks, support multiple communication substrates and require execution of multiple protocols within a layer, which cannot be supported efficiently by traditional, layered protocol stack approaches. While cross-layer approaches can be designed to support these new requirements, the lack of modularity makes cross-layer approaches inflexible and hence difficult to adapt for future devices and protocols. Thus, there is a need for a new protocol architecture to provide universal support for cross-layer interactions between layers, while also supporting multiple communication substrates and multiple protocols within a stack. In this paper, we propose Universal Protocol Stack (UPS), which provides such support in a modular way through packet-switching, information-sharing and memory management. To show that UPS is realizable with very low overhead and that it enables concurrent and independent execution of protocols of the same stack layer, first, we present a wireless sensor network test-bed evaluation, where UPS is implemented in TinyOS and installed on individual sensor motes. Two cross-layer routing protocols are implemented and evaluated with UPS and without UPS. We also implemented UPS in the OPNET simulator, where the IP (e.g., Routing Information Protocol (RIP)) and AODV routing protocols are executed concurrently to support networks with both static and mobile wireless nodes. Our implementation shows that the overhead incurred to implement UPS is very low, and little or no modification is required to adapt existing protocols to the UPS framework. Both studies also show the advantage of enabling concurrent protocol execution within a stack layer, improving the successful packet delivery ratio or the total number of packets sent for the investigated scenarios.     

一种重构多信道布拉格光栅的混杂算法

由于光纤光敏性的限制,当信道数N变得很大时,采用幅度取样方式制作多信道光栅将变得非常困难.通过相位取样来制作多信道光栅被证明是一种能有效降低峰值折变量的方法.提出一种采用逆散射技术和优化策略的混杂算法有效地设计多信道光栅.由遗传算法进行优化,得到每一个信道相应的相位因子的最优值,改进了多信道光栅复杂的反射谱.再由Layer-peeling算法为依据引入了相位因子后的频谱响应重构光栅.通过对信道间相对相位的优化,制作这种多信道光栅所需的峰值折变量降低为单信道光栅的√N倍.经过数值仿真,得到8信道光栅的峰值折变量大约为单信道光栅的√8倍.     

Upgrade of coaxial CATV networks for upstream high speed digitalcommunication

There is a growing interest to extend existing coax CATV networks to enable interactive multimedia services. In this paper we describe necessary modifications and additions of CATV network components to provide broadband upstream channels in the range of 6 to 40 MHz. To investigate linear and nonlinear distortions, reflexions, noise and ingress, suitable digital modulation schemes and adaptive equalization, the CATV network-components are modelled and a computer simulation program using PTOLEMY is established. It is shown that all 3370 subscribers of an existing CATV sub-network can be provided with up to 25 kbit/s collision free on the physical network layer. Using appropriate teletraffic and media access control protocols, user bit rates of up to 2 Mbit/s are feasible in the upstream direction     

A hybrid network coding technique for single-hop wireless networks

In this paper, we investigate a hybrid network coding technique to be used at a wireless base station (BS) or access point (AP) to increase the throughput efficiency of single-hop wireless networks. Traditionally, to provide reliability, lost packets from different flows (applications) are retransmitted separately, leading to inefficient use of wireless bandwidth. Using the proposed hybrid network coding approach, the BS encodes these lost packets, possibly from different flows together before broadcasting them to all wireless users. In this way, multiple wireless receivers can recover their lost packets simultaneously with a single transmission from the BS. Furthermore, simulations and theoretical analysis showed that when used in conjunction with an appropriate channel coding technique under typical channel conditions, this approach can increase the throughput efficiency up to 3.5 times over the automatic repeat request (ARQ), and up to 1.5 times over the HARQ techniques.     

A hybrid channel allocation method for wireless communication networks

In this paper a new hybrid channel allocation method is presented, which focuses on both nominal and dynamic channel allocation. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于地理-机会的水下无线传感网的混合路由

水下无线传感网络UWSNs被认为是监测海洋最有前景的技术。然而,声信道特性给UWSNs的数据采集提出了挑战。提高UWSNs数据采集效率的有效方式就是融合水下声通信和高动态网络拓扑的特性,设计高性能的路由协议。为此,提出基于地理-机会的水下无线传感网的混合路由,记为GOHR。在GOHR协议中,源节点先计算候选转发节点集,并计算集内每个节点的归一化权重值,再依据归一化权重值对集内节点进行排序,并形成转发节点簇。然后,计算每个簇的期望权重值,最后,选择期望权重值最大的簇内节点作为数据包转发节点。为了避免簇内节点转发数据包时发生碰撞,设置定时延时转发机制。仿真结果表明,提出的GOHR协议提高了数据包传递率,降低了数据包的传输时延。     

无线传感网混合类MAC协议研究综述

在无线传感网( WSN)体系结构中,介质访问控制( MAC)协议负责调配网络中节点的信道接入,具有保障网络高效通信的重要作用。混合类MAC 协议综合了竞争类MAC 协议以及调度类MAC协议的特点,在融合两种机制的优点的同时克服其缺点,为无线信道资源的分配提供了更加灵活和全面的策略。首先概述了无线传感网MAC协议设计要点及分类,然后重点分析了无线传感网中经典的混合类MAC协议及国内外前沿的研究进展,并进一步归纳对比了各协议运行机制、性能及不足,得出混合类MAC协议的应用相关性及差异性的结论,最后总结了无线传感网混合类MAC协议研究现状并指出了未来的研究重点,以期为相关领域的研究人员提供参考。     

Transmission characteristics of a coaxial optical fiber line

A coaxial optical fiber line is proposed and studied as a long-distance transmission medium. The radial structure consists of a core surrounded by two clads. The inner clad has higher refractive index than the core and the outer clad. Guided modes are thus characterized by a concentrated field in the inner clad and evanescent fields in both the core and the outer clad. Using a rigorous modal analysis, characteristic curves for a monomode coaxial fiber line are presented. It is shown that the zero-dispersion wavelength can be placed at any desired value by proper choice of the refractive index contrast and the fiber dimensions. The proposed coaxial line compares well with the known W-profiled line with respect to ease of manufacture and dispersion characteristics     

Analysis of dielectric loaded hybrid mode coaxial horns

This article presents a numerical solution for radiation from a novel coaxial horn with a partial dielectric loading. The horn is represented as a set of three-layer dielectric loaded coaxial waveguide sections. Characteristic equation has been obtained to calculate phase coefficients for hybrid modes in each section. Applying mode matching technique generalised scattering matrices for each junction between the sections have been obtained, besides that power coupling integrals for each of three different type of junctions have been found in closed-form solutions. Cascading these scattering matrices with transmission matrices of each section yields a generalised scattering matrix of the horn. For the given excitation at the throat of the horn, amplitude and phase of eigenmodes at the aperture of the horn have been determined. Finally, Fourier transform integral of the aperture electric field has been applied to solve radiation problem of the horn. Numerical results on propagation and radiation characteristics of the first four hybrid modes of the horn are presented and it is validated that this solution can be successfully used for full-wave electromagnetic analysis and optimisation of multiband dielectric loaded coaxial feeds.     

同轴型光纤干涉仪温度特性研究

温度特性对测量振动、应力等机械量的光纤干涉型传感器来说至关重要,不仅因为温度漂移会混入待测信号成为噪声,而且温度漂移频率极低,造成解调系统的饱和而无法正常工作。论文结合传热学一般规律,建立了同轴型光纤干涉仪的温度场模型,通过实验得出干涉仪温度系数为：104．1rad／℃／m,并结合温度场模型讨论了减小温度漂移的方法。论文的结论,对于同轴型光纤传感器的优化设计具有重要意义。     

A new hybrid key pre-distribution scheme for wireless sensor networks

This article presents a novel hybrid key pre-distribution scheme based on combinatorial design keys and pair-wise keys. For the presented scheme, the deployment zone is cleft into equal-sized cells. We use the combinatorial design based keys to secure intra-cell communication, which helps to maintain low key storage overhead in the network. For inter-cell communication, each cell maintain multiple associations with all the other cells within communication range and these associations are secured with pair-wise keys. This helps to ensure high resiliency against compromised sensor nodes in the network. We provide in-depth analysis for the presented scheme. We measure the resiliency of the presented scheme by calculating fraction of links effected and fraction of nodes disconnected when adversary compromises some sensor nodes in the network. We find that the presented scheme has high resiliency than majority of existing schemes. Our presented scheme also has low storage overhead than existing schemes.

     

A hybrid reservation-based MAC protocol for underwater acoustic sensor networks

Due to the characteristics of underwater acoustic channel, such as long propagation delay and low available bandwidth, media access control (MAC) protocol designed for the underwater acoustic sensor network (UWASN) is quite different from that for the terrestrial wireless sensor network. However, for the contention-based MAC protocols, the packet transmission time is long because of the long preamble in real acoustic modems, which increase the packet collisions. And the competition phase lasts for long time when many nodes are competing for the channel to access. For the schedule-based MAC protocols, the delay is too long, especially in a UWASN with low traffic load. In order to resolve these problems, a hybrid reservation-based MAC (HRMAC) protocol is proposed for UWASNs in this paper. In the proposed HRMAC protocol, the nodes reserve the channel by declaring and spectrum spreading technology is used to reduce the collision of the control packets. Many nodes with data packets to be transmitted can reserve the channel simultaneously, and nodes with reserved channel transmit their data in a given order. The performance analysis shows that the proposed HRMAC protocol can improve the channel efficiency greatly. Simulation results also show that the proposed HRMAC protocol achieves better performance, namely higher network throughput, lower packet drop ratio, smaller end-to-end delay, less overhead of control packets and lower energy overhead, compared to existing typical MAC protocols for the UWASNs.     

A hybrid handover protocol for local area wireless ATM networks

While handovers of voice calls in a wide area mobile environment are well understood, handovers of multi-media traffic in a local area mobile environment is still in its early stage of investigation. Unlike the public wireless networks, handovers for multi-media Wireless LANs (WLANs) have special requirements. In this paper, the problems and challenges faced in a multi-media WLAN environment are outlined and a multi-tier wireless cell clustering architecture is introduced. Design issues for multi-media handovers are specified and a fast, continuous and efficient hybrid handover protocol is proposed. The protocol is scalable and supports source and destination mobile handovers in a mutually exclusive manner. Crossover switch (CX) discovery is also introduced to support fast inter-cluster handovers with consideration given to Mobile Quality of Service (M-QoS). The resulting wireless ATM LAN exhibits a distributed mobile location management, call admission control and handover management architecture. A prototype of the proposed handover protocol is implemented into a Cambridge Fairisle ATM switch and the results of handovers for a single Mobile Host (MH) with a single on-going connection are evaluated. It was found that implementing transport mobility for a wireless ATM environment is not practical as the cell re-routing function changes the traffic characteristics and is not scalable to increasing cell rate and to the number of mobile connections. The data-link layer mobility implementation however, is found to work well. The protocol provides symmetric data disruption to traffic flows in both directions and up to seventy-five intra-cluster handovers can be supported in a second. Throughout the experiment, cells arrive in sequence with no cell loss observed during the handover, up to the capacity limit of the ATM switch. Finally, zig-zag handovers and handovers for a single MH with multiple on-going unicast connections are performed in order to evaluate the robustness and performance of the protocol under different MHs' migration and communication environment.Parts of this paper appeared in the ACM First International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking (MOBICOM'95), Berkeley, California, November 1995 as The Design & Implementation of A Hybrid Handover Protocol For Multi-Media Wireless LANs.C-K Toh is supported by a King's College Cambridge External Research Studentship and a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust Scholarship.