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.     

Fault-Tolerant Topology Control for All-to-One and One-to-All Communication in Wireles Networks

This paper introduces the problem of fault-tolerant topology control for all-to-one and one-to-all communication in static wireless networks with asymmetric wireless links. This problem is important in both theoretical and practical aspects. We investigate two approaches, namely, the minimum-weight-based approach and the augmentation-based approach, to address this problem. Furthermore, we prove that the minimum-weight-based approach has a k-approximation algorithm for all-to-one fault-tolerant topology control, where k is the number of node-disjoint paths. When k = 1, this approach solves the minimum power sink tree problem. To the best of our knowledge, this paper is the first to study the fault-tolerant topology control for all-to-one and one-to-all communication in asymmetric static wireless networks and is also the first to demonstrate that the minimum power sink tree problem has a polynomial time optimal solution.     

Dynamic proxy tree-based data dissemination schemes for wireless sensor networks

In wireless sensor networks, efficiently disseminating data from a dynamic source to multiple mobile sinks is important for the applications such as mobile target detection and tracking. The tree-based multicasting scheme can be used. However, because of the short communication range of each sensor node and the frequent movement of sources and sinks, a sink may fail to receive data due to broken paths, and the tree should be frequently reconfigured to reconnect sources and sinks. To address the problem, we propose a dynamic proxy tree-based framework in this paper. A big challenge in implementing the framework is how to efficiently reconfigure the proxy tree as sources and sinks change. We model the problem as on-line constructing a minimum Steiner tree in an Euclidean plane, and propose centralized schemes to solve it. Considering the strict energy constraints in wireless sensor networks, we further propose two distributed on-line schemes, the shortest path-based (SP) scheme and the spanning range-based (SR) scheme. Extensive simulations are conducted to evaluate the schemes. The results show that the distributed schemes have similar performance as the centralized ones, and among the distributed schemes, the SR scheme outperforms the SP scheme.     

Flooding Strategy for Target Discovery in Wireless Networks

In this paper, we address a fundamental problem concerning the best flooding strategy to minimize cost and latency for target discovery in wireless networks. Should we flood the network only once to search for the target, or should we apply a so-called “expansion ring” mechanism to reduce the cost? If the “expansion ring” mechanism is better in terms of the average cost, how many rings should there be and what should be the radius of each ring? We separate wireless networks based on network scale and explore these questions. We prove that two-ring and three-ring schemes can reduce the cost of flooding compared to a single attempt, and we provide a general formula to determine good parameters for the two-ring and three-ring hop-based flooding schemes. Through simulations, we show that choosing flooding parameters according to our techniques gives performance close to that of ideal flooding schemes. Afterwards, we extend our work from the single target discovery problem to the multi-target discovery problem. We show that a properly chosen searching radius can save much more searching cost than a simple radius selection scheme for multi-target discovery problems.     

Design and analysis of distributed utility maximization algorithm for multihop wireless network with inaccurate feedback

Distributed network utility maximization (NUM) is receiving increasing interests for cross‐layer optimization problems in multihop wireless networks. Traditional distributed NUM algorithms rely heavily on feedback information between different network elements, such as traffic sources and routers. Because of the distinct features of multihop wireless networks such as time‐varying channels and dynamic network topology, the feedback information is usually inaccurate, which represents as a major obstacle for distributed NUM application to wireless networks. The questions to be answered include if distributed NUM algorithm can converge with inaccurate feedback and how to design effective distributed NUM algorithm for wireless networks. In this paper, we first use the infinitesimal perturbation analysis technique to provide an unbiased gradient estimation on the aggregate rate of traffic sources at the routers based on locally available information. On the basis of that, we propose a stochastic approximation algorithm to solve the distributed NUM problem with inaccurate feedback. We then prove that the proposed algorithm can converge to the optimum solution of distributed NUM with perfect feedback under certain conditions. The proposed algorithm is applied to the joint rate and media access control problem for wireless networks. Numerical results demonstrate the convergence of the proposed algorithm. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Efficient Cache Placement in Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

In this paper, we address the problem of efficient cache placement in multi-hop wireless networks. We consider a network comprising a server with an interface to the wired network, and other nodes requiring access to the information stored at the server. In order to reduce access latency in such a communication environment, an effective strategy is caching the server information at some of the nodes distributed across the network. Caching, however, can imply a considerable overhead cost; for instance, disseminating information incurs additional energy as well as bandwidth burden. Since wireless systems are plagued by scarcity of available energy and bandwidth, we need to design caching strategies that optimally trade-off between overhead cost and access latency. We pose our problem as an integer linear program. We show that this problem is the same as a special case of the connected facility location problem, which is known to be NP-hard. We devise a polynomial time algorithm which provides a suboptimal solution. The proposed algorithm applies to any arbitrary network topology and can be implemented in a distributed and asynchronous manner. In the case of a tree topology, our algorithm gives the optimal solution. In the case of an arbitrary topology, it finds a feasible solution with an objective function value within a factor of 6 of the optimal value. This performance is very close to the best approximate solution known today, which is obtained in a centralized manner. We compare the performance of our algorithm against three candidate cache placement schemes, and show via extensive simulation that our algorithm consistently outperforms these alternative schemes.     

Diverse Path Routing with Interference and Reusability Consideration in Wireless Mesh Networks

Multipath routing has been extensively employed in wireless mesh networks (WMNs) for providing network reliability and survivability, therefore, improves energy consumptions. To provide network survivability, each user should be protected against failures, either node or link failures. For each request, a primary path is set up for normal transmission, and an alternate path (protection path) should also be provided to protect the request in case of network failure. In this paper, we study how to provide survivability using multi-path scheme for dynamic network traffic, where users’ requests have random arrival times. Compared with previous work, our scheme considers interference and reusability factors when providing multiple paths for each request. By applying our scheme, the numerical results show that we can accommodate about 17% more requests than previous schemes. Meanwhile, the results show that our scheme not only accommodates more requests, but also takes less running time to find a solution for each request.     

Improving the multicommodity flow rates with network codes for two sources

In this work we introduce a construction and analysis of network codes for two sources. The region of achievable rates for this problem is still unknown. The scheme we suggest is based on modifying the multicommodity flow solution and thus improving the achievable rate region, w.r.t the uncoded case. The similarity to the flow problem allows our method to be implemented distributively. We show how the construction algorithm can be combined with distributed backpressure routing algorithms for wireless ad-hoc networks. For both the nondistributed case and the distributed case, the computational complexity of our algorithm for network coding is comparable to that of the parallel multicommodity flow problem. We provide non trivial upper and lower bounds on the performance of our scheme, using random coding techniques.     

A batched network coding scheme for wireless networks

Several wireless network coding schemes apply either inter-flow traffic or intra-flow traffic, but not both. This paper proposes a novel batched network coding scheme to deal with both inter-flow and intra-flow traffics, which attempts to combine the advantages of both network coding approaches. Based on the idea in the well-known network coding scheme COPE, our batched network coding scheme allows each node to make use of intra-flow network coding technique to improve the transmission reliability in a lossy environment, consequently obtaining higher throughput. Moreover, we also utilize the multiple-path transmitting scheme to further increase the throughput of wireless networks with low link delivery probability. Finally, using a simplified network topology model, we show theoretically that our proposed scheme outperforms COPE significantly, particularly when the link quality is low.     

A scalable joint routing and scheduling scheme for large-scale wireless sensor networks

The multihop configuration of a large-scale wireless sensor network enables multiple simultaneous transmissions without interference within the network. Existing time division multiple access (TDMA) scheduling schemes exploit gain based on the assumption that the path is optimally determined by a routing protocol. In contrast, our scheme jointly considers routing and scheduling and introduces several new concepts. We model a large-scale wireless sensor network as a tiered graph relative to its distance from the sink, and introduce the notion of relay graph and relay factor to direct the next-hop candidates toward the sink fairly and efficiently. The sink develops a transmission and reception schedule for the sensor nodes based on the tiered graph search for a set of nodes that can simultaneously transmit and receive. The resulting schedule eventually allows data from each sensor node to be delivered to the sink. We analyze our scheduling algorithm both numerically and by simulation, and we discuss the impact of protocol parameters. Further, we prove that our scheme is scalable to the number of nodes, from the perspectives of mean channel capacity and maximum number of concurrent transmission nodes. Compared with the existing TDMA scheduling schemes, our scheme shows better performance in network throughput, path length, end-to-end delay, and fairness index.     

Modeling throughput gain of network coding in multi-channel multi-radio wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we model the network throughput gains of two types of wireless network coding (NC) schemes, including the conventional NC and the analog NC schemes, over the traditional non-NC transmission scheduling schemes in multihop, multi-channel, and multi-radio wireless ad hoc networks. In particular, we first show that the network throughput gains of the conventional NC and analog NC are (2n)/(2n-1) and n/(n-1), respectively, for the n-way relay networks where n ges 2. Second, we propose an analytical framework for deriving the network throughput gain of the wireless NC schemes over general wireless network topologies. By solving the problem of maximizing the network throughput subject to the fairness requirements under our proposed framework, we quantitatively analyze the network throughput gains of these two types of wireless NC schemes for a variety of wireless ad hoc network topologies with different routing strategies. Finally, we develop a heuristic joint link scheduling, channel assignment, and routing algorithm that aims at approaching the optimal solution to the optimization problem under our proposed framework.     

Design and analysis of novel quorum-based sink location service scheme in wireless sensor networks

Geographic routing in wireless sensor networks requires sources nodes to be aware of the location information of sinks to send their data. To provide the sink location service, quorum-based schemes have been proposed, which exploit crossing points between a quorum of a sink location announcement (SLA) message from a sink and a quorum of a sink location query (SLQ) message from a source node. For guaranteeing at least one crossing point in irregular sensor networks with void areas or irregular boundaries, the previous schemes however collect and flood the network boundary information or forward a SLA and SLQ message along the whole network boundary. In this paper, we design a novel quorum-based sink location service scheme that exploits circle and line quorums, which does not require the network boundary information and send a SLA and SLQ message along the whole network boundary. In the proposed scheme, a source node sends a SLQ message to the network center and sends another SLQ message to an edge node in the network boundary, thus generating a SLQ line quorum. On the other hand, a sink node sends a SLA message along a circle path whose center is the network center, thus forming a SLQ circle quorum. By this way, it is guaranteed that the SLQ and SLA quorums have at least one crossing point in irregular sensor networks. Both numerical analysis and extensive simulation results verify that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes in terms of the delivery distance, the delivery hop count, and the energy consumption for providing sink location service.     

Cross-layer optimization of wireless networks using nonlinear column generation

We consider the problem of finding the jointly optimal end-to-end communication rates, routing, power allocation and transmission scheduling for wireless networks. In particular, we focus on finding the resource allocation that achieves fair end-to-end communication rates. Using realistic models of several rate and power adaption schemes, we show how this cross-layer optimization problem can be formulated as a nonlinear mathematical program. We develop a specialized solution method, based on a nonlinear column generation technique, and prove that it converges to the globally optimal solution. We present computational results from a large set of networks and discuss the insight that can be gained about the influence of power control, spatial reuse, routing strategies and variable transmission rates on network performance.     

Trust based negotiation bargaining game model for bandwidth management algorithms

Nowadays, Multi-hop Relaying Network (MRN) has gained wide acceptance as a next step towards future radio networks. MRN can extend the service area as well as improve the performance of wireless networks. To exploit the multi-hop relaying operation, an important issue is how to properly control wireless bandwidth. In this paper, a new bandwidth management scheme is proposed for MRNs. By integrating the random arrival rule and Nash bargaining model, the proposed scheme adaptively controls the wireless bandwidth to maximize network efficiency. In our scheme, trust value and bargaining powers are decided according to the Bayesian inference and real-time negotiation process, respectively. This approach can make the network system be close to the optimized network performance. To prove the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, a simulation has carried out. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in comparison with other existing schemes.     

Genetic Algorithms With Immigrants and Memory Schemes for Dynamic Shortest Path Routing Problems in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

In recent years, the static shortest path (SP) problem has been well addressed using intelligent optimization techniques, e.g., artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms (GAs), particle swarm optimization, etc. However, with the advancement in wireless communications, more and more mobile wireless networks appear, e.g., mobile networks [mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs)], wireless sensor networks, etc. One of the most important characteristics in mobile wireless networks is the topology dynamics, i.e., the network topology changes over time due to energy conservation or node mobility. Therefore, the SP routing problem in MANETs turns out to be a dynamic optimization problem. In this paper, we propose to use GAs with immigrants and memory schemes to solve the dynamic SP routing problem in MANETs. We consider MANETs as target systems because they represent new-generation wireless networks. The experimental results show that these immigrants and memory-based GAs can quickly adapt to environmental changes (i.e., the network topology changes) and produce high-quality solutions after each change.      

An overview of local capacity in wireless networks

This article introduces a metric for performance evaluation of medium access schemes in wireless ad hoc networks known as local capacity. Although deriving the end-to-end capacity of wireless ad hoc networks is a difficult problem, the local capacity framework allows us to quantify the average information rate received by a receiver node randomly located in the network. In this article, the basic network model and analytical tools are first discussed and applied to a simple network to derive the local capacity of various medium access schemes. Our goal is to identify the most optimal scheme and also to see how does it compare with more practical medium access schemes. We analyzed grid pattern schemes where simultaneous transmitters are positioned in a regular grid pattern, ALOHA schemes where simultaneous transmitters are dispatched according to a uniform Poisson distribution and exclusion schemes where simultaneous transmitters are dispatched according to an exclusion rule such as node coloring and carrier sense schemes. Our analysis shows that local capacity is optimal when simultaneous transmitters are positioned in a grid pattern based on equilateral triangles and our results show that this optimal local capacity is at most double the local capacity of ALOHA based scheme. Our results also show that node coloring and carrier sense schemes approach the optimal local capacity by an almost negligible difference. At the end, we also discuss the shortcomings in our model as well as future research directions.     

Efficient Broadcasting Using Network Coding

We consider the problem of broadcasting in an ad hoc wireless network, where all nodes of the network are sources that want to transmit information to all other nodes. Our figure of merit is energy efficiency, a critical design parameter for wireless networks since it directly affects battery life and thus network lifetime. We prove that applying ideas from network coding allows to realize significant benefits in terms of energy efficiency for the problem of broadcasting, and propose very simple algorithms that allow to realize these benefits in practice. In particular, our theoretical analysis shows that network coding improves performance by a constant factor in fixed networks. We calculate this factor exactly for some canonical configurations. We then show that in networks where the topology dynamically changes, for example due to mobility, and where operations are restricted to simple distributed algorithms, network coding can offer improvements of a factor of , where is the number of nodes in the network. We use the insights gained from the theoretical analysis to propose low-complexity distributed algorithms for realistic wireless ad hoc scenarios, discuss a number of practical considerations, and evaluate our algorithms through packet level simulation.     

A scalable multicast key management scheme for heterogeneous wireless networks

Secure multicast applications require key management that provides access control. In wireless networks, where the error rate is high and the bandwidth is limited, the design of key management schemes should place emphasis on reducing the communication burden associated with key updating. A communication-efficient class of key management schemes is those that employ a tree hierarchy. However, these tree-based key management schemes do not exploit issues related to the delivery of keying information that provide opportunities to further reduce the communication burden of rekeying. In this paper, we propose a method for designing multicast key management trees that match the network topology. The proposed key management scheme localizes the transmission of keying information and significantly reduces the communication burden of rekeying. Further, in mobile wireless applications, the issue of user handoff between base stations may cause user relocation on the key management tree. We address the problem of user handoff by proposing an efficient handoff scheme for our topology-matching key management trees. The proposed scheme also addresses the heterogeneity of the network. For multicast applications containing several thousands of users, simulations indicate a 55%-80% reduction in the communication cost compared to key trees that are independent of the network topology. Analysis and simulations also show that the communication cost of the proposed topology-matching key management tree scales better than topology-independent trees as the size of multicast group grows.     

Integrated topology control and routing in wireless sensor networks for prolonged network lifetime

This study considers an integrated topology control and routing problem in wireless sensor networks (WSNs), which are employed to gather data via use of sensors with limited energy resources. We employ a hierarchical topology and routing structure with multiple sinks and devise a topology control scheme via usable energy fraction at the sensors. We develop and examine three different mathematical models whose solutions prescribe clusterhead and sink locations and data routing from sensors to sinks in a period of a deployment cycle. We develop a heuristic solution algorithm which provides very small optimality gaps for the models. The approach utilizes two types of solution representations, a combination of multiple neighborhoods, and objective value-based cut inequalities for improving the evaluation of candidate solutions. We present extensive numerical test results and analysis of the models and the solution approach. We determine that our proposed model, which minimizes average energy usage and the range of remaining energy distribution at the sensors, captures important characteristics of topology control and routing integration in WSN design and exhibits significantly better performance than our benchmark models and a well-known protocol HEED in extending network lifetime.     

无线传感器网络中移动sink节点的路径规划

在无线传感器网络中,大量感知数据汇集到sink节点的采集方法会导致sink节点附近的节点能量耗尽,造成能量空洞。针对该问题,利用移动的sink节点进行数据收集是一种解决方法,其中移动sink的路径规划成为一个重要的问题。提出了一个移动sink路径规划算法,将无线传感器中随机分布的节点划分为不同的子区域,寻找sink节点移动的最佳转向点,最终得到最优的移动路径,以实现无线传感器网络生命周期最大化。仿真实验表明,与现有方案相比,该算法能显著延长网络的生命周期。