Cluster-Based Autoconfiguration for Mobile Ad hoc Networks

IP address autoconfiguration of mobile nodes is highly desirable in the practical usage of most mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). This paper proposes cluster-based autoconfiguration, a novel approach for the efficient address autoconfiguration of MANETs. The cluster structure derived from clustering techniques is used to manage address assignment and conflict resolution. By introducing the concept of virtual address agents (AAs), the proposed approach can be applicable to many existing clustering protocols. Finally, analysis and simulation demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the previous autoconfiguration approaches.

Agent-Based Passive Autoconfiguration for Large Scale MANETs

The autoconfiguration algorithm of the mobile node addresses is important in the practical usage of most mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). The passive Duplicate Address Detection (PDAD) protocols can detect address conflicts in a passive manner and thus have very low protocol overhead. However, the blindly random assignment algorithm used in PDAD leads to a high initial conflict probability. In this paper, we propose a novel concept of address agent, based on which arises a novel autoconfiguration approach, to obtain the least address conflict probability. Most features of PDAD are inherited, e.g., address conflicts are still detected in a passive manner based on anomalies in routing protocol traffic. Analysis and simulation show that our algorithm outperforms existing methods.     

Extending Global IP Connectivity for Ad Hoc Networks

Ad hoc networks have thus far been regarded as stand-alone networks without assumed connectivity to wired IP networks and the Internet. With wireless broadband communications and portable devices with appropriate CPU, memory and battery performance, ad hoc connectivity will become more feasible and demand for global connectivity through ad hoc networking is likely to rapidly grow. In this paper we propose an algorithm and describe a developed prototype for connectivity between an ad hoc network running the ad hoc on-demand distance-vector protocol and a wired IP network where mobile IP is used for mobility management. Implementation issues and performance metrics are also discussed.     

AMRoute: Ad Hoc Multicast Routing Protocol

The Ad hoc Multicast Routing protocol (AMRoute) presents a novel approach for robust IP Multicast in mobile ad hoc networks by exploiting user-multicast trees and dynamic logical cores. It creates a bidirectional, shared tree for data distribution using only group senders and receivers as tree nodes. Unicast tunnels are used as tree links to connect neighbors on the user-multicast tree. Thus, AMRoute does not need to be supported by network nodes that are not interested/capable of multicast, and group state cost is incurred only by group senders and receivers. Also, the use of tunnels as tree links implies that tree structure does not need to change even in case of a dynamic network topology, which reduces the signaling traffic and packet loss. Thus AMRoute does not need to track network dynamics; the underlying unicast protocol is solely responsible for this function. AMRoute does not require a specific unicast routing protocol; therefore, it can operate seamlessly over separate domains with different unicast protocols. Certain tree nodes are designated by AMRoute as logical cores, and are responsible for initiating and managing the signaling component of AMRoute, such as detection of group members and tree setup. Logical cores differ significantly from those in CBT and PIM-SM, since they are not a central point for data distribution and can migrate dynamically among member nodes. Simulation results (using ns-2) demonstrate that AMRoute signaling traffic remains at relatively low level for typical group sizes. The results also indicate that group members receive a high proportion of data multicast by senders, even in the case of a highly dynamic network.     

智能环境——全新概念的无线通信网络

引入了最近刚提出的一种全新的无线通信网络－－智能环境的概念。首先,简要讨论了几种相关的无线网络模型;其次,从以技术为中心的观点和以人为中心的观点出发来阐述智能环境;最后,指出智能环境的发展趋势。     

Location-aware resource management in mobile ad hoc networks

We propose an innovative resource management scheme for TDMA based mobile ad hoc networks. Since communications between some important nodes in the network are more critical, they should be accepted by the network with high priority in terms of network resource usage and quality of service (QoS) support. In this scheme, we design a location-aware bandwidth pre-reservation mechanism, which takes advantage of each mobile node’s geographic location information to pre-reserve bandwidth for such high priority connections and thus greatly reduces potential scheduling conflicts for transmissions. In addition, an end-to-end bandwidth calculation and reservation algorithm is proposed to make use of the pre-reserved bandwidth. In this way, time slot collisions among different connections and in adjacent wireless links along a connection can be reduced so that more high priority connections can be accepted into the network without seriously hurting admissions of other connections. The salient feature of our scheme is the collaboration between the routing and MAC layer that results in the more efficient spatial reuse of limited resources, which demonstrates how cross-layer design leads to better performance in QoS support. Extensive simulations show that our scheme can successfully provide better communication quality to important nodes at a relatively low price. Finally, several design issues and future work are discussed. Xiang Chen received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively. Afterwards, he worked as a MTS (member of technical staff) in Bell Laboratories, Beijing, China. He is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Florida. His research is focused on protocol design and performance evaluation in wireless networks, including cellular networks, wireless LANs, and mobile ad hoc networks. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and a student member of IEEE. Wei Liu received the BE and ME degrees in electrical engineering from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, in 1998 and 2001, respectively. He is currently pursuing the P.hD. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida, Gainesville, where he is a research assistant in the Wireless Networks Laboratory (WINET). His research interest includes QoS, secure and power efficient routing, and MAC protocols in mobile ad hoc networks and sensor networks. He is a student member of the IEEE. Hongqiang Zhai received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in July 1999 and January 2002 respectively. He worked as a research intern in Bell Labs Research China from June 2001 to December 2001, and in Microsoft Research Asia from January 2002 to July 2002. Currently he is pursuing the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Florida. He is a student member of IEEE. Yuguang Fang received a Ph.D. degree in Systems and Control Engineering from Case Western Reserve University in January 1994, and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from Boston University in May 1997. From June 1997 to July 1998, he was a Visiting Assistant Professor in Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. From July 1998 to May 2000, he was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at New Jersey Institute of Technology. In May 2000, he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at University of Florida where he got the early promotion to Associate Professor with tenure in August 2003 and to Full Professor in August 2005. He has published over 180 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 is currently serving as an Editor for many journals including IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEETransactions on Mobile Computing, and ACM Wireless Networks. He is also actively participating in conference organization such as the Program Vice-Chair for IEEE INFOCOM’2005, Program Co-Chair for the Global Internet and Next Generation Networks Symposium in IEEE Globecom’2004 and the Program Vice Chair for 2000 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC’2000).     

移动自组网的单播地址自动分配方案

移动自组网（MANET）是无固定基础设施的无线网络,具有多跳、拓扑结构动态变化、带宽、能量有限等特点。因此常规的地址配置方案,如动态主机配置（DHCP）并不适于MANET。MANET中的节点可以借助IPv6的自动配置机制,利用MAC地址或随机号来自动配置其地址。丈中对几种基于IPv6的MANET单播地址自动分配方案进行了讨论,从地址唯一性、简单性、适应性、健壮性等方面进行了综合比较。对移动自组网的地址分配方案提出了一些建议,并指出了进一步研究的问题。     

Maximum lifetime broadcast communications in cooperative multihop wireless ad hoc networks: Centralized and distributed approaches

We investigate the problem of broadcast routing in energy constrained stationary wireless ad hoc networks with an aim to maximizing the network lifetime measured as the number of successive broadcast sessions that can be supported. We propose an energy-aware spanning tree construction scheme supporting a broadcast request, considering three different signal transmission schemes in the physical layer: (a) point-to-point, (b) point-to-multipoint, and (c) multipoint-to-point. First we present a centralized algorithm that requires global topology information. Next, we extend this to design an approximate distributed algorithm, assuming the availability of k-hop neighborhood information at each node, with k as a parameter. We prove that the centralized scheme has time complexity polynomial in the number of nodes and the distributed scheme has a message complexity that is linear in the number of nodes. Results of numerical experiments demonstrate significant improvement in network lifetime following our centralized scheme compared to existing prominent non-cooperative broadcasting schemes proposed to solve the same lifetime maximization problem in wireless ad hoc networks. Due to lack of global topology information, the distributed solution does not produce as much advantage as the centralized solution. However, we demonstrate that with increasing value of k, the performance of the distributed scheme also improves significantly.     

Adaptive audio streaming in mobile ad hoc networks using neural networks

We design a transport protocol that uses artificial neural networks (ANNs) to adapt the audio transmission rate to changing conditions in a mobile ad hoc network. The response variables of throughput, end-to-end delay, and jitter are examined. For each, statistically significant factors and interactions are identified and used in the ANN design. The efficacy of different ANN topologies are evaluated for their predictive accuracy. The Audio Rate Cognition (ARC) protocol incorporates the ANN topology that appears to be the most effective into the end-points of a (multi-hop) flow, using it to adapt its transmission rate. Compared to competing protocols for media streaming, ARC achieves a significant reduction in packet loss and increased goodput while satisfying the requirements of end-to-end delay and jitter. While the average throughput of ARC is less than that of TFRC, its average goodput is much higher. As a result, ARC transmits higher quality audio, minimizing root mean square and Itakura–Saito spectral distances, as well as several parametric distance measures. In particular, ARC minimizes linear predictive coding cepstral (sic) distance, which closely correlates to subjective audio measures.     

Stimulating Node Cooperation in Mobile Ad hoc Networks

Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) rely on the cooperation of nodes for packet routing and forwarding. Much of the existing work in MANETs assume that mobile nodes (possibly owned by selfish users) will follow prescribed protocols without deviation. However, a user may misbehave due to several advantages resulting from noncooperation, the most obvious being power saving. As such, the network availability is severely endangered. Hence, enforcing the cooperation among nodes becomes a very important issue. Several different approaches have been developed to detect non-cooperative nodes or deal with the non-cooperative behavior of mobile nodes in MANETs. These protocols are first surveyed in details in this paper. It is found that the proposed approaches have several concerns that prevent them from really enforcing the node cooperation in MANETs. Thus, a new scheme that can stimulate and also enforce nodes to cooperate in a selfish ad hoc environment is presented. We also present a mechanism to detect and exclude potential threats of selfish mobile nodes. The simulation results indicate that by using the proposed scheme, MANETs can be robust against nodes’ misbehaving and the performance of the network is enhanced many folds when compared to other existing schemes.

Querying time indexed information in mobile Ad hoc networks

Time indexed information refers to information whose instance producing time is used as the search key for its access. One common scenario of querying time indexed information is to discover the information instance whose producing time is the closest to a given queried time. However, in the context of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), lack of infrastructure support, node mobility, and potential packet loss in wireless communications make querying time indexed information a challenging task. This paper describes a Self-Organizing Mechanism for querying Time indexed Information in MANETs, termed SOMTI. Using SOMTI, each instance producer h discovers routes to a set of instance producers whose instance producing times are the closest to a set of computed time points both before and after h’s instance producing time. These routes form a web of search indices, which allow queries received by any instance producer to be forwarded in the manner of n-ary search for the instance producer whose instance producing time is the closest to the queried time. Both mathematical analysis and simulation study show that SOMTI is scalable with the number of nodes and the query producing rate. In addition, simulations results demonstrate that the goodness, in terms of the closeness to the queried time, of the discovered instance is always better than competing approaches under various node mobility speeds, query generation rates, and the number of nodes in the network, which demonstrates the effectiveness of SOMTI.     

Service discovery in mobile ad hoc networks: an overall perspective on architectural choices and network layer support issues

Service discovery is indispensable to ad hoc networking where establishing a stand-alone and self-configurable communication environment is the main objective. In this paper, we first discuss possible service discovery architectures along with the required network support for their implementation in mobile ad hoc networks. We then propose a distributed service discovery architecture that relies on a virtual backbone for locating and registering available services within a dynamic network topology. Our proposal consists of two independent components: (i) formation of a virtual backbone and (ii) distribution of service registrations, requests, and replies. The first component creates a mesh structure from a subset of a given network graph that includes the nodes acting as service brokers and also a subset of paths (which we refer to as virtual links) connecting them. Service broker nodes (SBNs) constitute a dominating set, i.e. all the nodes in the network are either in this set or only one-hop away from at least one member of the set. The second component establishes sub-trees rooted at service requesting nodes and registering servers for efficient dissemination of the service discovery control messages. Extensive simulation results are provided for comparison of performance measures, i.e. latency, success rate, and control message overhead, when different architectures and network support mechanisms are utilized in service discovery.     

移动Ad hoc网络中的密钥管理

首先阐述了移动adhoc网络中密钥管理的重要性,接着探讨了几种密钥管理的方法,包括局部分布式认证授权中心、完全分布式认证授权中心、自发证书、安全Pebblenets、指示性标志、基于口令验证的密钥交换等,并对这些方法进行了较完整的概括总结和深入的比较分析,最后提出了一些研究移动adhoc网络中密钥管理方法所必须注意的问题。     

A routing framework for providing robustness to node failures in mobile ad hoc networks

Nodes in a mobile ad hoc network are often vulnerable to failures. The failures could be either due to fading effects, battery drainage, or as a result of compromised nodes that do not participate in network operations. Intermittent node failures can disrupt routing functionalities. As such, it is important to provide redundancy in terms of providing multiple node-disjoint paths from a source to a destination. In line with this objective, we first propose a modified version of the widely studied ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing protocol to facilitate the discovery of multiple node-disjoint paths from a source to a destination. We find that very few of such paths can be found. Furthermore, as distances between sources and destinations increase, bottlenecks inevitably occur and thus, the possibility of finding multiple paths is considerably reduced. We conclude that it is necessary to place what we call reliable nodes (in terms of both being robust to failure and being secure) in the network to support efficient routing operations. We propose a deployment strategy that determines the positions and the trajectories of these reliable nodes such that we can achieve a framework for reliably routing information. We define a notion of a reliable path which is made up of multiple segments, each of which either entirely consists of reliable nodes, or contains a preset number of multiple paths between the end points of the segment. We show that the probability of establishing a reliable path between a random source and destination pair increases tremendously even with a small number of reliable nodes when we use our algorithm to appropriately position these reliable nodes.