Tese de mestrado. Redes e Serviços de Comunicação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2007

With advancing technology, Chip Multi-processor (CMP) architectures have emerged as a viable solution for designing processors. Networks-On-Chip (NOCs) provide a scalable communication method for CMP architectures with increasing numbers of cores. Although there has been significant research on NOC designs for unicast traffic, the research on the multicast router design is still in its infant stage. Considering that one-to-many (multicast) and one-to-all (broadcast) traffic are more common in CMP applications, it is important to design a router providing efficient multicasting. In this thesis, a lookahead multicast routing algorithm with limited area overhead is proposed. This lookahead algorithm reduces network latency by removing the need for a separate routing computation (RC) stage. An efficient area optimization technique is put forward to achieve minimal area overhead for the lookahead RC stage. Also, a novel compression scheme is proposed for multicast packet headers to alleviate their big overhead in large networks. Comprehensive simulation results show that with the new route computation logic design and area overhead optimization, providing lookahead routing in the multicast router only costs less than 20 percent area overhead and this percentage keeps decreasing with larger network sizes. Compared with the basic lookahead routing design, our design can save area by over 50 percent. With header compression and lookahead multicast routing, the network performance can be improved on an average by 22 percent for a (16 x 16) network.

Tese de mestrado. Redes e Serviços de Comunicação. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto, INESC Porto. 2009

Header compression is one of the technologies, which enables packet-switched computer networks to operate with higher efficiency even if the underlying physical link is limited. Since its inception, the compression was meant to improve dial-up Telnet connections, and has evolved into a complex multi-faceted compression library, which has been integrated into the third and fourth generation of cellular networks, among others. Beyond the promised benefit of decreased bandwidth usage, header compression has shown that it is capable of improving the quality of already existing services, such as real-time audio calls, and is a developing hot topic to this day, realising, for example, Internet Protocol (IP) version 6 support on resource constrained low-power devices. However, header compression is ill equipped to handle the stringent requirements and challenges, which are posed by the coming fifth generation of wireless and cellular networks (5G) and its applications. Even though it can be considered as an already well developed area of computer networks that can compress protocol headers with unparalleled efficiency, header compression is still operating under some assumptions and restrictions that could deny its employment outside of cellular Voice over IP transmissions to certain degrees. Albeit some improvements in the latency domain could be achieved with its help, the application of header compression in both largely interconnected networks and very dynamic ones – such as the wireless mesh and vehicular networks – is not yet assured, as the topic, in this perspective, is still relatively new and unexplored. The main goal of my theses is the presentation and evaluation of novel ideas, which support the application of header compression concepts for the future wireless use-cases, as it holds alluring benefits for the coming network generations, if applied correctly. The dissertation provides a detailed treatment of my contribution in the specific research areas of header compression and network coding, which encompass novel proposals for their enhancement in 5G uses, such as broadcastability and online optimisation, as well as their subsequent analysis from various perspectives, including the achievable compression gains, delay reduction, transmission efficiency, and energy consumption, to name a few. Besides the focus on enabling header compression in 5G, the development of traffic-agnostic and various network-coded compression concepts are also introduced to attain the benefits of both techniques at the same time, namely, reduced bandwidth usage and high reliability in latency sensitive heterogeneous and error prone mesh networks. The generalisation of compression is achieved by the employment of various machine learning concepts, which could approximate the compression characteristics of any packet-based communication flow, while network coding facilitates the exploitation of the low-latency benefits of error correcting codes in heavily interconnected wireless networks.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-04-11T14:03:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fuad M Abinader Junior.pdf: 1012469 bytes, checksum: 83006b70c65e7b5ac0b070b259981f64 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2006-04-13 / The current wireless networks development scenario indicates that mobile VoIP applications are increasing their appeal among consumers, which creates an increasing demand for bandwidth consuption. However, bandwidth availability for VoIP applications is restricted by phisical and regulatory means. Header compression algorithms are one of the most used bandwidth optimization techniques for VoIP applications in wireless networks. This dissertation presents a performance evaluation of cooperative header compression algoritms for VoIP applications in wireless networks. The results indicate that the use of the single-channel cooperative approach leads to excelent results in terms of bandwidth optimization alied with robust context update. Also, the results indicate that the multi-channel cooperative approach has serious issues regarding parallel asyncrhonous VoIP connections. / O cenário atual do desenvolvimento das redes sem fio indica que o apelo por aplicações VoIP móveis está crescendo entre os consumidores, o que gera uma demanda cada vez maior de consumo de largura de banda. No entanto, a disponibilidade de largura de banda para aplicações VoIP é limitada tanto pelo meio físico quanto por regulamentações governamentais. O uso de algoritmos de compressão de cabeçalho é uma das técnicas mais usadas para otimização de largura de banda para aplicações VoIP em redes sem fio. Esta dissertação apresenta uma avaliação de desempenho de algoritmos de compressão de cabeçalhos cooperativos para aplicações VoIP em redes sem fio. Os resultados indicam que a utilização do algoritmo cooperativo mono-canal leva a excelentes resultados em termos de otimização de largura de banda com a manutenção das atualizações de contexto. Além disso, os resultados indicam que o uso do algoritmo cooperativo multi-canal possui sérias restrições quando utilizado em conjunto com conexões VoIP paralelas e assíncronas.

Abstract Substantially growing data traffic over wireless networks poses increased challenges for mobile network operators in deploying sufficient network resources and managing user mobility. This dissertation considers these challenges to providing satisfactory Quality of Service (QoS) for end-users and studies solutions for better utilization of the heterogeneous network environment. First, the dissertation examines what solutions mobile devices and network management entities can use to dynamically collect valid cross-layer information from different network entities. Cross-layer information allows monitoring of the condition of the network in multiple layers on a user and application basis. The second research topic considers the techniques the network management entities can use to improve resource usage in wireless networks based on the collected cross-layer information. The IEEE 802.21 standard, specified to facilitate handovers between heterogeneous networks, is used as the basis for cross-layer information delivery. This dissertation also focuses on utilization of the standard beyond the inter-access technology handovers. In order to improve resource usage in wireless networks dynamically, event delivery enhancements are proposed for the standard so that it better applies to the requirements of different techniques. Such techniques are traffic priority adjustment, traffic adaptation, packet aggregation, and network protocol header compression. The results show that when a handover is not feasible, these techniques effectively allow sharing of the limited radio resources for the user data according to applications’ importance and type. Mobility management is studied in terms of network information service, one of the main services of IEEE 802.21. The thesis proposes enhancing the information service with a base station cell coverage area database. The database provides significant improvements for the selection of a handover target in a dense base station environment. With all the results taken together, the dissertation provides mobile network operators various means to improve the usage of wireless networks on the basis of applications’ varying QoS requirements. / Tiivistelmä Voimakkaasti kasvava langattomien tietoverkkojen dataliikenne aiheuttaa verkko-operaattoreille haasteita tarjota riittävät verkkoresurssit ja hallita käyttäjien liikkuvuutta. Väitöskirja huomioi nämä haasteet tarjota loppukäyttäjille tyydyttävä palvelunlaatu (QoS) ja tutkii ratkaisuja, joilla heterogeenistä verkkoympäristöä voidaan hyödyntää tehokkaammin. Aluksi väitöskirja tutkii, mitä ratkaisuja päätelaitteet ja verkkohallintatoimijat voivat käyttää keräämään protokollakerrosten välistä (cross-layer) tietoa eri verkkotoimijoilta. Protokollakerrosten välinen tieto mahdollistaa verkon tilan seuraamisen usealla eri kerroksella käyttäjä- ja sovelluskohtaisesti. Toinen tutkimusaihe tarkastelee protokollakerrosten välistä tietoa hyödyntäviä tekniikoita, joita verkonhallintatoimijat voivat käyttää tehostamaan resurssien käyttöä langattomissa verkoissa. IEEE 802.21-standardia, joka on määritetty helpottamaan verkonvaihtoja heterogeenisten verkkojen välillä, käytetään pohjana protokollakerrosten välisen tiedon jakelulle. Väitöskirjassa keskitytään standardin hyödyntämiseen myös muussa kuin verkkoteknologioiden välisen verkonvaihdon yhteydessä. Väitöskirja ehdottaa parannuksia standardin tapahtumatietovälitykseen, jotta se täyttäisi paremmin eri tekniikoiden asettamat vaatimukset dynaamisesti toteutettavista toimista langattomien verkkojen resurssikäytön tehostamiseksi. Nämä tekniikat ovat liikenteen prioriteetin muutokset, liikenteen adaptointi, pakettien yhdistäminen ja verkkoprotokollaotsikoiden pakkaus. Tulokset osoittavat, että kun tukiasema- tai verkonvaihto ei ole mahdollinen, nämä tekniikat mahdollistavat rajattujen verkkoresurssien jakamisen tehokkaasti sovellusten tärkeyden ja tyypin mukaan. Liikkuvuudenhallintaa tutkitaan verkkoinformaatiopalvelun, joka on myös yksi IEEE 802.21-standardin pääpalveluista, kautta. Väitöskirja ehdottaa, että informaatiopalvelua tehostetaan liittämällä siihen tietokanta tukiasemasolujen peittoalueista. Tietokanta tehostaa huomattavasti verkonvaihdon kohteen valintaa tiheissä tukiasemaympäristöissä. Kun väitöskirjan tulokset huomioidaan kokonaisuutena, väitöskirja tarjoaa verkko-operaattoreille useita tapoja tehostaa langattomien verkkojen käyttöä sovellusten vaihtelevien palvelunlaatuvaatimusten perusteella.