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.     

Cross-layer TCP with bitmap error recovery scheme in wireless ad hoc networks

Current TCP is not able to distinguish corruption losses from packet loss events. Hence, high transmission errors and varying inherent latency within a wireless network would cause seriously adverse effects to TCP performance. To improve TCP in IEEE 802.11 multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks, this study proposes an error recovery mechanism based on coordination of TCP and IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols. The simulation results confirm that the proposed error recovery approach could provide a more efficient solution for frequent transmission losses, and enable TCP to distinguish between congestion errors and transmission errors, and thus, to respond with proper remedial actions.     

Assessing the IEEE 802.11e QoS effectiveness in multi-hop indoor scenarios

The IEEE 802.11e technology is receiving much interest due to the enhancements offered to wireless local area networks in terms of QoS. Other application fields for this technology are wireless ad hoc networks, wireless mesh networks, and vehicular ad hoc networks. In the literature, most of the research works available focusing on the IEEE 802.11e technology offer simulation results alone, being hard to find empirical results of implementations that prove its effectiveness in realistic scenarios. Additionally, we consider that studies of IEEE 802.11e based on simulation platforms have not been thoroughly validated using real-life results. In this work we analyze the performance of the IEEE 802.11e technology in real multi-hop ad hoc networks. With this purpose we first we devise a set of experiments where we compare the results obtained on a small testbed to those from the ns-2 simulation platform. A significant consistency in terms of overall trends is found, although remarkable differences can be appreciated in terms of both delay and throughput results. Afterward we proceed with a full deployment of IEEE 802.11e enabled stations throughout the floor of an university building, performing several experiments using both static and dynamic routing. Experimental results show that QoS can be reasonably sustained for both voice and video traffic in multi-hop ad hoc networks, although dynamic routing protocols can hinder performance by provoking frequent on-off connectivity problems.     

TCP Unfairness in Ad Hoc Wireless Networks and a Neighborhood RED Solution

Significant TCP unfairness in ad hoc wireless networks has been reported during the past several years. This unfairness results from the nature of the shared wireless medium and location dependency. If we view a node and its interfering nodes to form a “neighborhood”, the aggregate of local queues at these nodes represents the distributed queue for this neighborhood. However, this queue is not a FIFO queue. Flows sharing the queue have different, dynamically changing priorities determined by the topology and traffic patterns. Thus, they get different feedback in terms of packet loss rate and packet delay when congestion occurs. In wired networks, the Randomly Early Detection (RED) scheme was found to improve TCP fairness. In this paper, we show that the RED scheme does not work when running on individual queues in wireless nodes. We then propose a Neighborhood RED (NRED) scheme, which extends the RED concept to the distributed neighborhood queue. Simulation studies confirm that the NRED scheme can improve TCP unfairness substantially in ad hoc networks. Moreover, the NRED scheme acts at the network level, without MAC protocol modifications. This considerably simplifies its deployment.Kaixin Xu is a Ph.D student of the computer science department at UCLA. He joined the Network Research Lab. (NRL) of UCLA at 2000. His research focuses on the ad hoc wireless networking especially protocols at MAC, Network and Transport layers. His recently work includes enhancing TCP performance in multihop ad hoc networks, TCP performance in IEEE 802.11 MAC based ad hoc networks, as well as MAC protocols for utilizing directional antennas and mobility track. He’s also working on network protocols for building hierarchical ad hoc networks. E-mail: xkx@cs.ucla.eduMario Gerla was born in Milan, Italy. He received a graduate degree in engineering from the Politecnico di Milano, in1966, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from UCLA in 1970 and 1973, respectively. He joined the Faculty of the UCLA Computer Science Department in 1977. His research interests cover the performance evaluation, design and control of distributed computer communication systems; high speed computer networks; wireless LANs (Bluetooth); ad hoc wireless networks. He has been involved in the design, implementation and testing of wireless ad hoc network protocols (channel access, clustering, routing and transport) within the DARPA WAMIS, GloMo projects and most recently the ONR MINUTEMAN project. He has also carried out design and implementation of QoS routing, multicasting protocols and TCP transport for the Next Generation Internet. He is currently an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Networking. E-mail: gerla@cs.ucla.eduLantao Qi received her B.E. and M.S. from the department of computer science at Tianjin University China in 2003. From 2000 to 2003 she engaged in research programs in the field of computer networks. Her major research focuses on buffer management, DIFFServ networks as well as mobile ad hoc networking. She has published many technical papers in this field. He recently joined the Agricultural Bank of China. E-mail: ltqi@tju.edu.cnYantai Shu is a professor of the computer science department at Tianjin University, China. He received his B.E., M.S., and Ph. D. degree in the electronics engineering department at Tianjin University. From 1974 to 1991, he was working as a researcher in the Institute of Plasma Physics, Academia Sinica. He has been serving as the vice president of the university from 1993 to 1997. His current research interests are focused on computer communication networks, wireless networks, real-time systems, modeling and simulation. He is a member of the IEEE and the ACM. He has published more than 120 papers and contributed to one book. E-mail:ytshu@tju.edu.cn     

Reactive routing evaluation using modified 802.11a with realistic vehicular mobility

Realistic mobility dynamics and underlying PHY/MAC layer implementation affect real deployment of routing protocols in vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). Currently, dedicated short range communication devices are using wireless access in vehicular environment (WAVE) mode of operation, but now IEEE is standardizing 802.11p WAVE. This work presents an in-depth simulation-based analysis of two reactive routing protocols, i.e., dynamic source routing (DSR) and ad hoc on-demand distance vector (AODV) with modified IEEE 802.11a PHY/MAC layers (comparable to 802.11p) in modified VANET mobility models (freeway, stop sign, and traffic sign) in terms of load, throughput, delay, number of hops, and retransmission attempts. Results obtained using OPNET simulator show that in urban/highway mobility scenarios, AODV??s performance with forthcoming 802.11p at high bit rate would be better than DSR in terms of high throughput, less delay, and retransmission attempts. Moreover, this comprehensive evaluation will assist to address challenges associated with future deployment of routing protocols integrated upon devices with upcoming IEEE 802.11p, concerning specific macro-/micro-mobility scenarios.     

TCP with delayed ack for wireless networks

This paper studies the TCP performance with delayed ack in wireless networks (including ad hoc and WLANs) which use IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol as the underlying medium access control. Our analysis and simulations show that TCP throughput does not always benefit from an unrestricted delay policy. In fact, for a given topology and flow pattern, there exists an optimal delay window size at the receiver that produces best TCP throughput. If the window is set too small, the receiver generates too many acks and causes channel contention; on the other hand, if the window is set too high, the bursty transmission at the sender triggered by large cumulative acks will induce interference and packet losses, thus degrading the throughout. In wireless networks, packet losses are also related to the length of TCP path; when traveling through a longer path, a packet is more likely to suffer interference. Therefore, path length is an important factor to consider when choosing appropriate delay window sizes. In this paper, we first propose an adaptive delayed ack mechanism which is suitable for ad hoc networks, then we propose a more general adaptive delayed ack scheme for ad hoc and hybrid networks. The simulation results show that our schemes can effectively improve TCP throughput by up to 25% in static networks, and provide more significant gain in mobile networks. The proposed schemes are simple and easy to deploy. The real testbed experiments are also presented to verify our approaches. Furthermore, a simple and effective receiver-side probe and detection is proposed to improve friendliness between the standard TCP and our proposed TCP with adaptive delayed ack.     

The Design and Evaluation of Unified Cellular and Ad-Hoc Networks

In third-generation (3G) wireless data networks, providing service to low data-rate users is required for maintaining fairness, but at the cost of reducing the cell's aggregate throughput. In this paper, we propose the unified cellular and ad hoc network (UCAN) architecture for enhancing cell throughput while maintaining fairness. In UCAN, a mobile client has both 3G interface and IEEE 802.11 -based peer-to-peer links. The 3G base station forwards packets for destination clients with poor channel quality to proxy clients with better channel quality. The proxy clients then use an ad hoc network composed of other mobile clients and IEEE 802.11 wireless links to forward the packets to the appropriate destinations, thereby improving cell throughput. We refine the 3G base station scheduling algorithm so that the throughput gains are distributed in proportion to users' average channel rates, thereby maintaining fairness. With the UCAN architecture in place, we propose novel greedy and on-demand protocols for proxy discovery and ad hoc routing that explicitly leverage the existence of the 3G infrastructure to reduce complexity and improve reliability. We further propose secure crediting mechanisms to motivate users that are not actively receiving to participate in relaying packets for others. Through both analysis and extensive simulations with HDR and IEEE 802.11b, we show that the UCAN architecture can increase individual user's throughput by more than 100 percent and the aggregate throughput of the HDR downlink by up to 50 percent.     

TCP Performance in IEEE 802.11-Based Ad Hoc Networks with Multiple Wireless Lossy Links

We propose a packet-level model to investigate the impact of channel error on the transmission control protocol (TCP) performance over IEEE-802.11-based multihop wireless networks. A Markov renewal approach is used to analyze the behavior of TCP Reno and TCP Impatient NewReno. Compared to previous work, our main contributions are listed as follows: 1) modeling multiple lossy links, 2) investigating the interactions among TCP, Internet Protocol (IP), and media access control (MAC) protocol layers, specifically the impact of 802.11 MAC protocol and dynamic source routing (DSR) protocol on TCP throughput performance, 3) considering the spatial reuse property of the wireless channel, the model takes into account the different proportions between the interference range and transmission range, and 4) adopting more accurate and realistic analysis to the fast recovery process and showing the dependency of throughput and the risk of experiencing successive fast retransmits and timeouts on the packet error probability. The analytical results are validated against simulation results by using GloMoSim. The results show that the impact of the channel error is reduced significantly due to the packet retransmissions on a per-hop basis and a small bandwidth delay product of ad hoc networks. The TCP throughput always deteriorates less than ~ 10 percent, with a packet error rate ranging from 0 to 0.1. Our model also provides a theoretical basis for designing an optimum long retry limit for IEEE 802.11 in ad hoc networks.     

APS-FeW适用于无线网络的TCP增强方案

TCP的控制隐含了一个假设,即分组丢失都是由网络拥塞引起的,而这一点对于无线网络不成立.因此在无线情况下,会引入了冗余控制,使得传输性能下降.浮点窗口算法(FeW)通过限制TCP的分组注入量,减少冗余控制,在此基础上,提出了改进方案自适应包长算法(APS).仿真数据表明,基于FeW的APS算法(APS-FeW)比FeW算法提升了10%～25%的吞吐量.     

Does the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol work well in multihop wireless adhoc networks?

The IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol is the standard for wireless LANs; it is widely used in testbeds and simulations for wireless multihop ad hoc networks. However, this protocol was not designed for multihop networks. Although it can support some ad hoc network architecture, it is not intended to support the wireless mobile ad hoc network, in which multihop connectivity is one of the most prominent features. In this article we focus on the following question: can the IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol function well in multihop networks? By presenting several serious problems encountered in an IEEE 802.11-based multihop network and revealing the in-depth cause of these problems, we conclude that the current version of this wireless LAN protocol does not function well in multihop ad hoc networks. We thus doubt whether the WaveLAN-based system is workable as a mobile ad hoc testbed     

A Cross-Layer Multi-Hop Simulator for IEEE 802.11e

In this work we simulate the ad hoc mode of IEEE 802.11e for routing optimisation. We simulate the behaviour of routing algorithms at the network layer by using a custom-made cross-layer network simulator developed by our team, which simultaneously considers the physical and Medium Access Control (MAC) layers. Although the simulator also supports the infrastructure mode, in this paper we focus on the ad hoc feature which was introduced by the authors. We opted for the simulator approach over the theoretical analysis, but we also present a mathematical model for IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks. Some initial tests were performed by using a simple routing algorithm (to evaluate the behaviour of the system in terms of selection of the path between a source and a destination, and the correctness of the calculated metrics, which include end-to-end delay, packets lost, packets delivered), but more advanced cross-layer design solutions were also tested. When information from the physical and MAC layers is used as an input to the routing algorithm, improvements are achieved in the performance of the network. Several functions were compared and the algorithm that privileges shorter links accounting with the metric “collision rate” achieves the best results. When compared with a standard routing solution, this cross-layer approach allows to increase the number of packets delivered, while not significantly affecting the end-to-end delay of the packets.     

MAC protocols using directional antennas in IEEE 802.11 based ad hoc networks

Using directional antennas can be beneficial for wireless ad hoc networks consisting of a collection of wireless hosts. The most important benefit includes a reduction of the radio interference. Thus, it can significantly increase the spatial reuse, thereby improving the network throughput. To best utilize directional antennas, a suitable Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol must be designed. Current MAC protocols, such as the IEEE 802.11 standard, do not benefit when using directional antennas, because these protocols have been designed for omnidirectional antennas. In this paper, we present modified MAC protocols suitable for 802.11 based ad hoc networks using directional antennas. Our comprehensive simulation results demonstrate the performance improvement obtained with the proposed protocols. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Simulation-based analysis of a multi-hop integrated UMTS and WLAN network

The next generation communication networks will comprise of third-generation (3G) and fourth-generation (4G) cellular and multi-hop ad hoc networks. In particular, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) and the IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks will play a significant role. The UMTS can provide Internet service in wide areas with excellent mobility support while IEEE 802.11 can provide high speed last hop connectivity in indoor environment. The performance of the offered end-to-end TCP connection when these two different technologies come together to serve the users is an important aspect to be studied. In this paper, we build an analytical model to model the complete process of TCP packet transfer over this integrated network. The delay and end-to-end throughput are modeled. We also verify the simulation results considering the usual error rate in UMTS channels. Our analytical results match well with the simulation models that are widely used. Apart from modeling the Internet connectivity, our model can be used for multitude of tasks, such as gateway selection, resource reservation, etc., in the next generation cellular multi-hop networks.     

Evaluating the communication performance of an ad hoc wirelessnetwork

Adaptive and self-organizing wireless networks are gaining in popularity. Several media access and routing protocols were proposed for such networks and the performance of such protocols were evaluated based on simulations. In this paper, we evaluate the practicality of realizing an ad hoc wireless network and investigate on performance issues. Several mobile computers were enhanced with ad hoc routing capability and were deployed in an outdoor environment and communication performance associated with ad hoc communications were evaluated. These computers periodically send beacons to their neighbors to declare their presence. We examined the impact of varying packet size, beaconing interval, and route hop count on route discovery time, communication throughput, end-to-end delay, and packet loss. We had also performed mobility experiments and evaluated the route reconstruction time incurred. File transfer times associated with sending information reliably (via TCP) over multihop wireless links are also presented. The experimental results obtained revealed that it is feasible to augment existing wireless computers with ad hoc networking capability. End-to-end performance in ad hoc routes are less affected by beaconing intervals than packet size or route length. Similarly, communication throughput is more dependent on packet size and route length with the exception at very high beaconing frequencies. Packet loss, on the other hand, is not significantly affected by packet size, route length or beaconing frequency. Finally, route discovery time in ad hoc wireless networks are more dependent on channel conditions and route length than variations in beaconing intervals     

Game theory models for IEEE 802.11 DCF in wireless ad hoc networks

Because wireless nodes decide their channel accesses independently in the IEEE 802.11-based ad hoc networks, and the channel access of a node has an influence on those of its neighboring nodes, game theory naturally becomes a useful and powerful tool to research this kind of network. In this article a game model is proposed to interpret the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function mechanism. In addition, by designing a simple Nash equilibrium backoff strategy, we present a fairness game model. Our simulation results show that the new backoff strategy can improve TCP performance almost perfectly.     

An Investigation of Link Quality Assessment for Mobile Multi-hop and Multi-rate Wireless Networks

Wireless ad hoc networks will be an important component in future communication systems. The performance of wireless ad hoc networks can be improved by link quality-aware applications. Wireless link quality is dynamic in nature, especially in mobile scenarios. Therefore, accurate and fast packet delivery ratio estimation is a prerequisite to good performance in mobile, multi-hop and multi-rate wireless ad hoc networks. In this paper, we propose a novel packet delivery ratio estimation method that improves the accuracy and responsiveness of the packet delivery ratio estimation. The proposed link quality estimation components are implemented in a IEEE 802.11b/g test-bed. The experiment results show that the accuracy of the packet delivery ratio estimation can improve up to 50% in mobile scenarios without introducing overhead. We also show the end-to-end performance impact of this improved estimation on route selection using different routing metrics and configurations. The measurement results show that our packet delivery ratio method leads to better route selection in the form of increased end-to-end throughput compared to traditional methods, which respond slowly to the link dynamics.     

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 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.     

Improving QoS and throughput in single- and multihop WLANs through dynamic traffic prioritization

Nowadays, research efforts are being put into the design of effective mechanisms to provide service quality differentiation in IEEE 802.11-based wireless LANs. In this article we analyze the effects of augmenting the contention-based channel access mechanism of IEEE 802.11e through the assignment of dynamic traffic priorities, that adapt to either the application's quality requirements or the network congestion status. The aim is to show the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed dynamic mechanism in a wireless ad hoc network, in both single-hop and multihop scenarios, under variable traffic and network load conditions.     

Dynamic bandwidth management in IEEE 802.11-based multihop wireless networks

In this paper, we propose a new protocol named dynamic regulation of best-effort traffic (DRBT) which supports quality of service (QoS) throughput guarantees and provides a distributed regulation mechanism for best-effort traffic in multihop wireless networks. By adapting dynamically the rate of best-effort traffic at the link layer, DRBT increases the acceptance ratio of QoS flows and provides a good use of the remaining resources through the network. Our protocol also provides an accurate method to evaluate the available bandwidth in IEEE 802.11-based ad hoc networks which is able to differentiate QoS applications from best-effort traffic. Through extensive simulations, we compare the performance of our proposal scheme with some others protocols like QoS protocol for ad hoc real-time traffic for instance.