Terrestrial free-space optical (FSO) communication uses visible or infrared wavelengths to broadcast high speed data wirelessly through the atmospheric channel. The performance of terrestrial FSO channel mainly depends on the local atmospheric conditions. Ad hoc networks offer cost-effective solutions for communications in areas where infrastructure is unavailable, e.g., intelligent transport system, disaster recovery and battlefield scenarios. Traditional ad hoc networks operate in the radio frequency (RF) spectrum, where the available bandwidth faces the challenge of rapidly increasing demands. FSO is an attractive alternative for RF in ad-hoc networks because of its high bandwidth and interference-free operation. This thesis investigates the influencing factors for routing traffic from given s-d pair while satisfying certain Quality of Services in terrestrial FSO ad hoc mesh networks under the effect of stochastic atmospheric turbulence. It starts with a comprehensive review of FSO technology, including the history, application, advantages and limitations. Subsequently the principle of operation, the building blocks and safety of FSO communication systems are discussed. The physics of atmosphere is taken into account to investigate how propagation of optical signals is affected in terrestrial FSO links. A propagation model is developed to grade the performance and reliability of the FSO ad hoc links in the network. Based on that model and the K-th shortest path algorithm, the performance of the path with highest reliability, the path with a second highest possible reliability and an independent path with no common links shared with the former two paths, were compared according to the simulation scenarios in node-dense area and node-sparse area. Matlab simulation shows that the short/long range dependent transmission delay are positively proportional to number of hops of the paths. Lower path reliability only dominate the cause of severe delay when traffic flow approaches near its upper link capacity in node-sparse area. In order to route traffic from given s-d pairs with satisfying certain Quality of Services, the path with highest reliability may not be the best choices since they may hold more hops which will degrade the QoS. Meanwhile, in case of exponential traffic congestion, it is recommended that both traffic demand and traffic flow propagating through the links should be pressed below a value close to the effective capacity, where the nonlinearity of the transmission delay curve starts to obviously aggravate.

Handheld devices are becoming increasingly common, and they have varied range of resources. Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) allows resource constrained devices to offload computation and use storage capacities of more resourceful surrogate machines. This enables creation of new and interesting applications for all devices. We propose a scheme that constructs a high-performance de-centralized system by a group of volunteer mobile devices which come together to form a resourceful unit (cloudlet). The idea is to design a model to operate as a public-resource between mobile devices in close geographical proximity. This cloudlet can provide larger storage capability and can be used as a computational resource by other devices in the network. The system needs to watch the movement of the participating nodes and restructure the topology if some nodes that are providing support to the cloudlet fail or move out of the network. In this work, we discuss the need of the system, our goals and design issues in building a scalable and reconfigurable system. We achieve this by leveraging the concept of virtual dominating set to create an overlay in the broads of the network and distribute the responsibilities in hosting a cloudlet server. We propose an architecture for such a system and develop algorithms that are requited for its operation. We map the resources available in the network by first scoring each device individually, and then gathering these scores to determine suitable candidate cloudlet nodes. We have simulated cloudlet functionalities for several scenarios and show that our approach is viable alternative for many applications such as sharing GPS, crowd sourcing, natural language processing, etc.

Video dissemination over Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs) is an attractive technology which supports many novel applications. Hence, the merit of this thesis has twofold. Firstly, we evaluate and compare three routing techniques and two error resilience techniques. We select a sender-based routing technique called SUV and compare it with the other two selected receiver-based routing techniques named REACT-DIS and CDS. The results, more specifically, show that the receiver-based solutions outperform the sender-based solution. In addition, only CDS method fulfils the general quality requirements as it is the best that reduces redundancy packets and covers the whole topology. The results also indicate that the video coding scheme, Interleaving, can fix the multiple consecutive packet losses and guarantee reliable video qualities over VANETs. Network Coding, however, fails to provide satisfactory video quality for urban scenarios. This study next combines the selected receiver based routing techniques and the two error resilience techniques. We find the best combination is Interleaving over CDS. Secondly, we design a quality guaranteed video dissemination protocol for urban VANETs scenarios. Based on our comparison result, our protocol selects the CDS and Interleaving as the routing and error resilient techniques. To fix the single packet loses caused by the topology’s intermittent disconnection and collisions, we propose a store-carry-broadcast scheme for the nodes to re-transmit the local buffer saved packets. The results, when compared to the selected techniques and combinations, show that our proposed protocol is the most efficient one in terms of packet delivery, delay, overhead and video quality.

In this dissertation, we focus on the problem of self-management in distributed systems. In this context, we propose a new methodology for reactive self-management based on multiple criteria decision analysis (MCDA). The general structure of the proposed methodology is extracted from the commonalities of the former well-established approaches that are applied in other problem domains. The main novelty of this work, however, lies in the usage of MCDA during the reaction processes in the context of the two problems that the proposed methodology is applied to. In order to provide a detailed analysis and assessment of this new approach, we have used the proposed methodology to design distributed autonomous agents that can provide self-management in two outstanding problems. These two problems also represent the two distinct ways in which the methodology can be applied to self-management problems. These two cases are: 1) independent self management, and 2) coordinated self-management. In the simulation case study regarding independent self-management, the methodology is used to design and implement a distributed resource consolidation manager for clouds, called IMPROMPTU. In IMPROMPTU, each autonomous agent is attached to a unique physical machine in the cloud, where it manages resource consolidation independently from the rest of the autonomous agents. On the other hand, the simulation case study regarding coordinated self-management focuses on the problem of adaptive routing in mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). The resulting system carries out adaptation through autonomous agents that are attached to each MANET node in a coordinated manner. In this context, each autonomous node agent expresses its opinion in the form of a decision regarding which routing algorithm should be used given the perceived conditions. The opinions are aggregated through coordination in order to produce a final decision that is to be shared by every node in the MANET. Although MCDA has been previously considered within the context of artificial intelligence---particularly with respect to algorithms and frameworks that represent different requirements for MCDA problems, to the best of our knowledge, this dissertation outlines a work where MCDA is applied for the first time in the domain of these two problems that are represented as simulation case studies. / Graduate

In this thesis, we propose a novel trust management scheme for improving routing reliability in wireless ad hoc networks. It is grounded on two classic autoregression models, namely Autoregressive (AR) model and Autoregressive with exogenous inputs (ARX) model. According to this scheme, a node periodically measures the packet forwarding ratio of its every neighbor as the trust observation about that neighbor. These measurements constitute a time series of data. The node has such a time series for each neighbor. By applying an autoregression model to these time series, it predicts the neighbors future packet forwarding ratios as their trust estimates, which in turn facilitate it to make intelligent routing decisions. With an AR model being applied, the node only uses its own observations for prediction; with an ARX model, it will also take into account recommendations from other neighbors. We evaluate the performance of the scheme when an AR, ARX or Bayesian model is used. Simulation results indicate that the ARX model is the best choice in terms of accuracy.

In this dissertation we present deterministic algorithms for reliable and efficient communication in ad hoc networks. In the first part of this dissertation we give a specification for a reliable neighbor discovery layer for mobile ad hoc networks. We present two different algorithms that implement this layer with varying progress guarantees. In the second part of this dissertation we give an algorithm which allows nodes in a mobile wireless ad hoc network to communicate reliably and at the same time maintain local neighborhood information. In the last part of this dissertation we look at the distributed trigger counting problem in the wireless ad hoc network setting. We present a deterministic algorithm for this problem which is communication efficient in terms of the the maximum number of messages received by any processor in the system.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--York University, 2006. Graduate Programme in Computer Science. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves81-86). Also available on the Internet. MODE OF ACCESS via web browser by entering the following URL: http://proquest.umi.com/pqdweb?index=4&did=1240708341&SrchMode=1&sid=2&Fmt=2&VInst=PROD&VType=PQD&RQT=309&VName=PQD&TS=1194977884&clientId=5220

Thesis (M. S.)--Aerospace Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Johnson, Eric N.; Committee Member: Feron, Eric M. J.; Committee Member: Pritchett, Amy R.

Thesis (Ph.D.) - University of Glasgow, 2006. / Ph.D. thesis submitted to the Faculty of Information and Mathematical Sciences, University of Glasgow, 2006. Includes bibliographical references. Print version also available.

Thesis (M.S. in Engineering Acoustics)--Naval Postgraduate School, December 2008. / Thesis Advisor(s): Rice, Joseph A. "December 2008." Description based on title screen as viewed on January 29, 2009. Includes bibliographical references (p. 89-91). Also available in print.