Unprecedented traffic growth is expected in future wireless networks and new technologies will be needed to satisfy demand. Optical wireless (OW) communication offers vast unused spectrum and high area spectral efficiency. In this work, optical cells are envisioned as supplementary access points within heterogeneous RF/OW networks. These networks opportunistically offload traffic to optical cells while utilizing the RF cell for highly mobile devices and devices that lack a reliable OW connection. Visible light communication (VLC) is considered as a potential OW technology due to the increasing adoption of solid state lighting for indoor illumination. Results of this work focus on a full system view of RF/OW HetNets with three primary areas of analysis. First, the need for network densication beyond current RF small cell implementations is evaluated. A media independent model is developed and results are presented that provide motivation for the adoption of hyper dense small cells as complementary components within multi-tier networks. Next, the relationships between RF and OW constraints and link characterization parameters are evaluated in order to define methods for fair comparison when user-centric channel selection criteria are used. RF and OW noise and interference characterization techniques are compared and common OW characterization models are demonstrated to show errors in excess of 100x when dominant interferers are present. Finally, dynamic characteristics of hyper dense OW networks are investigated in order to optimize traffic distribution from a network-centric perspective. A Kalman Filter model is presented to predict device motion for improved channel selection and a novel OW range expansion technique is presented that dynamically alters coverage regions of OW cells by 50%. In addition to analytical results, the dissertation describes two tools that have been created for evaluation of RF/OW HetNets. A communication and lighting simulation toolkit has been developed for modeling and evaluation of environments with VLC-enabled luminaires. The toolkit enhances an iterative site based impulse response simulator model to utilize GPU acceleration and achieves 10x speedup over the previous model. A software defined testbed for OW has also been proposed and applied. The testbed implements a VLC link and a heterogeneous RF/VLC connection that demonstrates the RF/OW HetNet concept as proof of concept.

El escenario actual de las redes móviles se caracteriza por la creciente demanda de los usuarios por los servicios de datos, circunstancia que se ha visto potenciada por la popularidad de los teléfonos inteligentes y el auge de aplicaciones que necesitan de una conexión permanente a internet, como aquellas que hacen uso de recursos "en la nube" o los servicios de streaming para vídeo. El consumo de datos crece exponencialmente, tanto para los países desarrollados como en los países en desarrollo, y esto ha llevado a los operadores a plantearse soluciones que permitan proveer dichas condiciones de acceso. Las redes heterogéneas se caracterizan por utilizar diferentes tecnologías de una manera coherente y organizada para proveer a los usuarios con la calidad de servicio requerida en sus comunicaciones, de tal manera que la comunicación sea para estos "transparente". Dicha heterogeneidad se puede dar a nivel de acceso, con la coexistencia de tecnologías como 802.11, WiMAX y redes móviles en sus diferentes generaciones, o incluso a nivel de capas dentro de las redes móviles con la coexistencia de macro, micro, pico y femto celdas. Haciendo un uso organizado de estos múltiples recursos, es posible optimizar las prestaciones de la red y proveer a los usuarios con una mejor calidad de servicio. Pero la posibilidad de mejorar las prestaciones de la red no se da sólo por el uso simultáneo de estas tecnologías de acceso. Para mejorar la eficiencia en el uso del espectro electromagnético, un recurso limitado y subutilizado según diferentes estudios, se propuso la tecnología de cognitive radio. Por medio de esta tecnología es posible que un usuario sea capaz de medir el instante en el que una parte del espectro electromagnético no esta siendo utilizado para enviar información, siempre evitando interferir en las comunicaciones de aquellos usuarios que usan dicho espectro regularmente. En el presente trabajo se proveen diferentes soluciones dentro del contexto de las redes heterogéneas que buscan optimizar el uso de los recursos disponibles en la red para proveer a los usuarios con la calidad de servicio esperada, ya sea por medio del control de acceso o la gestión de recursos. Por un lado se estudia el efecto que la reserva de canales para realizar handoff espectral tiene sobre las prestaciones para los usuarios secundarios en un sistema de cognitive radio. Por otro lado se estudian políticas de acceso para una red en la que dos tecnologías de acceso están disponibles: TDMA y WCDMA, y los usuarios tienen acceso a los servicios de voz y datos. Por otro lado / Performance requirements on mobile networks are tighter than ever as a result of the adoption of mobile devices such as smartphones or tablets, and the QoS levels that mobile applications demand for their correct operation. The data traffic volume carried in mobile networks for 2012 is the same as the total internet traffic in 2000, and this exponential growth tendency will continue in years to come. In order to fulfill users¿ expectations, it is imperative for mobile networks to make the best use of the available resources. Heterogeneous networks (Hetnets) have the ability to integrate several technologies in a coherent and efficient manner in order to enhance users¿ experience. The first challenge of heterogeneous networks is to integrate several radio access technologies, which exist as a result of simultaneous technology developments and a paced replacement of legacy technology. A joint management of several RAT¿s enhances network¿s efficiency, and this influences user¿s experience. Another challenge of heterogeneous networks is the improvement of current macrocells through an efficient use of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some approaches aim to optimize the antennas or use higher-order modulation techniques, but a more disruptive approach is the use of dynamic spectrum techniques through a technology known as cognitive radio. Finally, heterogeneous networks should be able to integrate several layers. In addition to the well studied micro and pico cells, a new generation of cheaper and easily configurable small cell networks have been proposed. However, its success is attached to its ability to adapt to the current context of mobile networks. / Pacheco Páramo, DF. (2013). Performance analysis of access control and resource management methods in heterogeneous networks [Tesis doctoral]. Editorial Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/34782 / Alfresco

No / In this paper, the requirements for personal environments mobility are addressed from terminal and network perspectives. Practical mobility and Quality of Service (QoS) aware solutions are proposed for a heterogeneous network, comprising of satellite and terrestrial access networks connected to an IP core network. The aim, in adopting a heterogeneous environment, is to provide global, seamless service coverage to a specific area, allowing access to services independently of location. An important assumption is that nomadic user terminals attached to a particular segment should be able to exchange information with any other terminal connected to the network. This is to ensure transparency of device technology. Different communication scenarios are investigated in support of IPv4 and IPv6 operating on user platforms and over access segments. The heterogeneous network necessitates the need to perform handover between access segments to enable coverage extension and seamless connectivity. Handover procedures are analyzed, and an approach is presented that enables various operation and segment specific parameters to be taken into account when deciding upon the need to perform handover and in selecting the optimum access segment. In order to ensure transparency of network technology, the need for end-to-end QoS support is discussed, bearing in mind the deployment of both IntServ and DiffServ enabled routers in the core network. Following this, a new admission control scheme, named Gauge&Gate Reservation with Independent Probing (GRIP), is proposed. The paper concludes with a description of a laboratory testbed, which has been developed in order to verify the presented procedures, together with performance measurements of the handover and the GRIP algorithms.

No / This paper proposes a novel call admission control (CAC) algorithm and develops a two-dimensional markov chain processes (MCP) analytical model to evaluate its performance for heterogeneous wireless network. Within the context of this paper, a hybrid UMTS-WLAN network is investigated. The designed threshold-based CAC algorithm is launched basing on the user’s classification and channel allocation policy. In this approach, channels are assigned dynamically in accordance with user class differentiation. The two-dimensional MCP mathematical analytic method reflects the system performance by appraising the dropping likelihood of handover traffics. The results show that the new CAC algorithm increases the admission probability of handover traffics, while guarantees the system quality of service (QoS) requirement.

LTE heterogeneous wireless networks promise significant increase in data rates and improved coverage through (i) the deployment of relays and cell densification, (ii) carrier aggregation to enhance bandwidth usage and (iii) by enabling nodes to have dual connectivity. These emerging cellular networks are complex and large systems which are difficult to optimize with centralized control and where mobiles need to balance spectral efficiency, power consumption and fairness constraints. In this dissertation we focus on how decentralized and autonomous mobiles in multihop cellular systems can optimize their own local objectives by taking into account end-to-end or network-wide conditions. We propose several link-adaptive schemes where nodes can adjust their transmit power, aggregate carriers and select points of access to the network (relays and/or macrocell base stations) autonomously, based on both local and global conditions. Under our approach, this is achieved by disseminating the dynamic congestion level in the backhaul links of the points of access. As nodes adapt locally, the congestion levels in the backhaul links can change, which can in turn induce them to also change their adaptation objectives. We show that under our schemes, even with this dynamic congestion feedback, nodes can distributedly converge to a stable selection of transmit power levels and points of access. We also analytically derive the transmit power levels at the equilibrium points for certain cases. Moreover, through numerical results we show that the corresponding system throughput is significantly higher than when nodes adapt greedily following traditional link layer optimization objectives. Given the growing data rate demand, increasing system complexity and the difficulty of implementing centralized cross-layer optimization frameworks, our work simplifies resource allocation in heterogeneous cellular systems. Our work can be extended to any multihop wireless system where the backhaul link capacity is limited and feedback on the dynamic congestion levels at the access points is available. / Ph. D.

Emerging wireless networks are foreseen as an integration of heterogeneous spectrum bands, wireless access technologies, and backhaul solutions, as well as a large-scale interconnection of devices, people, and vehicles. Such a heterogeneity will range from the proliferation of multi-tasking user devices with different capabilities such as smartphones and tablets to the deployment of multi-mode access points that can operate over heterogeneous frequency bands spanning both sub-6 GHz microwave and high-frequency millimeter wave (mmW) frequencies bands. This heterogeneous ecosystem will yield new challenges and opportunities for wireless resource management. On the one hand, resource management can exploit user and network-specific context information, such as application type, social metrics, or operator pricing, to develop application-driven, context-aware networks. Similarly, multiple frequency bands can be leveraged to meet the stringent and heterogeneous quality-of-service (QoS) requirements of the new wireless services such as video streaming and interactive gaming. On the other hand, resource management in such heterogeneous, multi-band, and large-scale wireless systems requires distributed frameworks that can effectively utilize all available resources while operating with manageable overhead. The key goal of this dissertation is therefore to develop novel, self-organizing, and low-complexity resource management protocols -- using techniques from matching theory, optimization, and machine learning -- to address critical resource allocation problems for emerging heterogeneous wireless systems while explicitly modeling and factoring diverse network context information. Towards achieving this goal, this dissertation makes a number of key contributions. First, a novel context-aware scheduling framework is developed for enabling dual-mode base stations to efficiently and jointly utilize mmW and microwave frequency resources while maximizing the number of user applications whose stringent delay requirements are satisfied. The results show that the proposed approach will be able to significantly improve the QoS per application and decrease the outage probability. Second, novel solutions are proposed to address both network formation and resource allocation problems in multi-hop wireless backhaul networks that operate at mmW frequencies. The proposed framework motivates collaboration among multiple network operators by resource sharing to reduce the cost of backhauling, while jointly accounting for both wireless channel characteristics and economic factors. Third, a novel framework is proposed to exploit high-capacity mmW communications and device-level caching to minimize handover failures as well as energy consumption by inter-frequency measurements, and to provide seamless mobility in dense heterogeneous mmW-microwave small cell networks (SCNs). Fourth, a new cell association algorithm is proposed, based on matching theory with minimum quota constraints, to optimize load balancing in integrated mmW-microwave networks. Fifth, a novel medium access control (MAC) protocol is proposed to dynamically manage the wireless local area network (WLAN) traffic jointly over the unlicensed 60 GHz mmW and sub-6 GHz bands to maximize the saturation throughput and minimize the delay experienced by users. Finally, a novel resource management approach is proposed to optimize device-to-device (D2D) communications and improve traffic offload in heterogeneous wireless SCNs by leveraging social context information that is dynamically learned by the network. In a nutshell, by providing novel, context-aware, and self-organizing frameworks, this dissertation addresses fundamentally challenging resource management problems that mainly stem from large scale, stringent service requirements, and heterogeneity of next-generation wireless networks. / Ph. D.

Le réseau électrique a subi d’importantes évolutions ces dernières décennies, pour devenir ce qu’on appelle le Smart Grid. Le réseau électrique évolue actuellement d’une architecture centralisée vers une architecture décentralisée, tenant compte des consommations et sources d’énergies à caractère imprédictible et irrégulier. L’Advanced Metering Infrastructure est une architecture clé du Smart Grid qui permet des communications bidirectionnelles entre le consommateur et le fournisseur d’énergie. Les réseaux de compteurs intelligents qui constituent notamment cette architecture reposent communément sur des communications à courant porteur, une technologie qui est hautement sensible aux interférences. Malgré l’utilisation de protocoles de niveau 2 spécifiques, les technologies employées ne permettent pas de respecter les exigences de toutes les applications Smart grid. La plupart des technologies considérées pour les réseaux de compteurs intelligents sont de courte portée, chaque compteur ne peut communiquer directement avec le concentrateur. Les noeuds doivent collaborer entre eux, utilisant un protocole de routage tel que RPL pour atteindre la destination. Le but de cette thèse est d’adapter RPL à un environnement multi interfaces, et étudier comment l’hétérogénéité des interfaces peut améliorer la fiabilité et les performances d’un réseau de compteurs intelligents. / Since decades, the power grid is Under going a tremendous evolution, toward what is called the Smart Grid. The grid is actually evolving from a centralized architecture to a decentralized one, taking into account all the unpredictable sources and consumption. The Advanced Metering Infrastructure is the network dedicated to the Smart Grid that allows two-ways communications between the consumers and the energy providers. Smart Meters networks, that are part of this architecture, rely on powerline communications, a technology that is highly sensitive to interference. Despite dedicated layer 2 protocols, the employed technologies cannot fulfill most of smart grid applications requirements. The majority of smart meter network technology candidates are short range, each meter cannot reach the concentrator in one hop. Nodes need to collaborate, using a routing protocol like RPL to reach the destination. The goal of this thesis is to modify RPL to a multi interfaces environment, and study how interface heterogeneity could increase the reliability and the performance of a smart meter network.

Next generation heterogeneous wireless networks are expected to interwork with Internet Protocol (IP)-based infrastructures. Conventional network services operate like silos in that a specific set of services are offered over a specific type of access network. As access networks evolve to provide IP-based packet access, it becomes attractive to break these “service silos” by offering a converged set of IP-based services to users who may access these services using a number of alternative access networks. This trend has started with third generation cellular mobile networks, which have standardized on the use of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to manage user access to a wide variety of multimedia services over the mobile Internet, while facilitating interworking of heterogeneous wireless and landline access networks. The future users of communication systems will subscribe to both IP-based and Circuit Switched (CS) based services and in the foreseeable future a single database that handles user profiles across all domains will be required. Home Subscriber Server (HSS) as an evolved version of Home Location Register (HLR) is one of the key components of IMS. In deploying HSS as a central repository database, in a fully overlapped heterogeneous network setting, changes of access mode are very frequent and conveying this information to HSS imposes excessive signaling load and delay. In our proposed scheme we introduce an Interface Agent (IA) for each location area that caches the location and information about the access mode through which a user can be reached. This method results in significant amount of savings in signaling cost and better delay performance. The existing call delivery approaches in cellular networks may not be well suited for future communication systems because they suffer from unnecessary usage of network resources for call attempts that may fail which adds to excessive signaling delays and queuing costs. Reducing the number of queries and retrievals from the database will have a significant impact on the network performance. We present a new scheme based on Reverse Virtual Call setup (RVC) as a solution to the call delivery problem in heterogeneous wireless networks and evaluate the performance of this framework.

En la presente Tesis se proponen soluciones para aliviar el alto coste, en rendimiento y consumo, de las comunicaciones intra-chip a través de los alambres globales. En concreto, se propone utilizar redes heterogéneas que permiten una mejor adaptación a las necesidades de los diferentes tipos de mensajes de coherencia.Nuestra primera propuesta consiste en dividir las respuestas con datos en un mensaje corto crítico, enviado usando enlaces de baja latencia, y un mensaje largo no crítico enviado usando enlaces de bajo consumo. La segunda propuesta utiliza la compresión de direcciones en el contexto de una red de interconexión heterogénea que permite la compresión de mayoría de los mensajes críticos en unos pocos bytes, siendo transmitidos usando enlaces de muy baja latencia. Finalmente, se explora el uso de la prebúsqueda por hardware para aliviar los problemas derivados de las altas latencias de los enlaces globales. / In this thesis we propose different ways to alleviate the high cost, in terms of performance and power consumption, of the intra-chipcommunications using global wires. In particular, we considerheterogeneous networks to obtain a better match between thenetwork-on-chip and the needs of the different types of coherencemessages.Our first contribution proposes the partitioning of reply messages with data into a short critical message, which is sent using low-latency links, as well as a long non-critical message sent using low-power links. The second contribution exploits the use of address compression in the context of a heterogeneous interconnect to allow most of the critical messages to be compressed in a few bytes and transmitted using very low latency links. Finally, we explore the use of heterogeneous networks in the context of hardware prefetching to alleviate the problems caused by high latencies of global links.

Next generation heterogeneous wireless networks are expected to interwork with Internet Protocol (IP)-based infrastructures. Conventional network services operate like silos in that a specific set of services are offered over a specific type of access network. As access networks evolve to provide IP-based packet access, it becomes attractive to break these “service silos” by offering a converged set of IP-based services to users who may access these services using a number of alternative access networks. This trend has started with third generation cellular mobile networks, which have standardized on the use of the IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) to manage user access to a wide variety of multimedia services over the mobile Internet, while facilitating interworking of heterogeneous wireless and landline access networks. The future users of communication systems will subscribe to both IP-based and Circuit Switched (CS) based services and in the foreseeable future a single database that handles user profiles across all domains will be required. Home Subscriber Server (HSS) as an evolved version of Home Location Register (HLR) is one of the key components of IMS. In deploying HSS as a central repository database, in a fully overlapped heterogeneous network setting, changes of access mode are very frequent and conveying this information to HSS imposes excessive signaling load and delay. In our proposed scheme we introduce an Interface Agent (IA) for each location area that caches the location and information about the access mode through which a user can be reached. This method results in significant amount of savings in signaling cost and better delay performance. The existing call delivery approaches in cellular networks may not be well suited for future communication systems because they suffer from unnecessary usage of network resources for call attempts that may fail which adds to excessive signaling delays and queuing costs. Reducing the number of queries and retrievals from the database will have a significant impact on the network performance. We present a new scheme based on Reverse Virtual Call setup (RVC) as a solution to the call delivery problem in heterogeneous wireless networks and evaluate the performance of this framework.