The combination of infrastructure-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle communications, namely the multi-hop Vehicular Communications Network (VCN) , appears as a promising solution for the ubiquitous access to IP services in vehicular environments. In this thesis, we address the challenges of multi-hop VCN, and investigate the seamless provision of IP services over such network. Three different schemes are proposed and analyzed. First, we study the limitations of current standards for the provision of IP services, such as 802.11p/WAVE, and propose a framework that enables multi-hop communications and a robust IP mobility mechanism over WAVE. An accurate analytical model is developed to evaluate the throughput performance, and to determine the feasibility of the deployment of IP-based services in 802.11p/WAVE networks. Next, the IP mobility support is extended to asymmetric multi-hop VCN. The proposed IP mobility and routing mechanisms react to the asymmetric links, and also employ geographic location and road traffic information to enable predictive handovers. Moreover, since multi-hop communications suffer from security threats, it ensures that all mobility signalling is authenticated among the participant vehicles. Last, we extend our study to a heterogeneous multi-hop VCN, and propose a hybrid scheme that allows for the on-going IP sessions to be transferred along the heterogeneous communications system. The proposed global IP mobility scheme focuses on urban vehicular scenarios, and enables seamless communications for in-vehicle networks, commuters, and pedestrians. The overall performance of IP applications over multi-hop VCN are improved substantially by the proposed schemes. This is demonstrated by means of analytical evaluations, as well as extensive simulations that are carried out in realistic highway and urban vehicular scenarios. More importantly, we believe that our dissertation provides useful analytical tools, for evaluating the throughput and delay performance of IP applications in multi-hop vehicular environments. In addition, we provide a set of practical and efficient solutions for the seamless support of IP tra c along the heterogeneous and multi-hop vehicular network, which will help on achieving ubiquitous drive-thru Internet, and infotainment traffic access in both urban and highway scenarios.

The combination of infrastructure-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle communications, namely the multi-hop Vehicular Communications Network (VCN) , appears as a promising solution for the ubiquitous access to IP services in vehicular environments. In this thesis, we address the challenges of multi-hop VCN, and investigate the seamless provision of IP services over such network. Three different schemes are proposed and analyzed. First, we study the limitations of current standards for the provision of IP services, such as 802.11p/WAVE, and propose a framework that enables multi-hop communications and a robust IP mobility mechanism over WAVE. An accurate analytical model is developed to evaluate the throughput performance, and to determine the feasibility of the deployment of IP-based services in 802.11p/WAVE networks. Next, the IP mobility support is extended to asymmetric multi-hop VCN. The proposed IP mobility and routing mechanisms react to the asymmetric links, and also employ geographic location and road traffic information to enable predictive handovers. Moreover, since multi-hop communications suffer from security threats, it ensures that all mobility signalling is authenticated among the participant vehicles. Last, we extend our study to a heterogeneous multi-hop VCN, and propose a hybrid scheme that allows for the on-going IP sessions to be transferred along the heterogeneous communications system. The proposed global IP mobility scheme focuses on urban vehicular scenarios, and enables seamless communications for in-vehicle networks, commuters, and pedestrians. The overall performance of IP applications over multi-hop VCN are improved substantially by the proposed schemes. This is demonstrated by means of analytical evaluations, as well as extensive simulations that are carried out in realistic highway and urban vehicular scenarios. More importantly, we believe that our dissertation provides useful analytical tools, for evaluating the throughput and delay performance of IP applications in multi-hop vehicular environments. In addition, we provide a set of practical and efficient solutions for the seamless support of IP tra c along the heterogeneous and multi-hop vehicular network, which will help on achieving ubiquitous drive-thru Internet, and infotainment traffic access in both urban and highway scenarios.

Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) has become the application that drives the Internet to a new height. However, challenges still remain in IPTV in-home distribution. The high-quality video streaming in IPTV services demands home networks to deliver video streaming packets with stringent Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements. Currently, most service providers recommend Ethernet-based broadband home networks for IPTV. However, many existing houses are not wired with Ethernet cables and the rewiring cost is prohibitively expensive. Therefore, wireless solutions are preferred if their performance can meet the requirements. IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) are pervasively adopted in home networks for their flexibility and affordability. However, through our experiments in the real environment, we found that the conventional single-hop infrastructure mode WLANs have very limited capacity and coverage in a typical in-door environment due to high attenuation and interference. The single-hop wireless networks cannot provide support for high-quality video streaming to the entire house. Multi-hop wireless networks are therefore used to extend the coverage. Contrary to the common believes that adding relay routers in the same wireless channel should reduce the throughput, our experiment, analysis and simulation results show that the multi-hop IEEE 802.11 WLANs can improve both the capacity and coverage in certain scenarios, and sufficiently support high-quality video streaming in a typical house. In this research, we analyzed and evaluated the performance of H.264-based video streaming over multi-hop wireless networks. Our analysis and simulation results reveal a wide spectrum of coverage-capacity tradeoff of multi-hop wireless networks in generic scenarios. More- over, we discuss the methods of how to further improve video streaming performance. This research provides the guidance on how to achieve the optimal balance for a given scenario, which is of great importance when deploying end-to-end IPTV services with QoS guarantee.

Les réseaux sans-fil tels que IEEE 802.11 (Wifi) connaissent aujourd'hui une popularité sans précédent, offrant des connexions réseau à domicile, en entreprise ou dans des lieux publics sous forme de "Hot spot". Nos études ont montré que les centres urbains sont fortement couvert par ce type de réseau (avec une couverture similaire aux réseaux 3G). Cependant, la technologie est limitée par la portée du signal qui provoque des pertes sur le canal. Nous proposons une nouvelle méthode de relayage opportuniste pour les réseaux basés sur le CSMA/CA permettant de faire coopérer des stations. En évitant l'inondation, et en réduisant au maximum la signalisation, nous proposons de légères modifications au standard IEEE 802.11 afin d'autoriser des stations intermédiaires à relayer les trames des autres stations. Les modifications apportées portent simplement sur le traitement des trames à destination d'autrui, et une gestion différente des acquittements : lorsqu'une destination ne reçoit pas un acquittement, toutes les stations ayant reçu la trame considèrent qu'une retransmission est nécessaire. Ces dernières entreront en compétition pour retransmettre la trame si leur probabilité d'effectuer une transmission réussie est plus forte que la source. Nous avons implémenté et testé notre proposition dans le simulateur réseau NS-2, et les résultats démontrent que la connectivité des stations lointaines est fortement améliorée.

Le protocole IEEE 802.11, basé sur les principes CMSA/CA, est largement déployé dans les communications sans fil actuelles, principalement en raison de sa simplicité et sa mise en œuvre à faible coût. Une utilisation intéressante de ce protocole peut être trouvée dans les réseaux sans fil multi-sauts, où les communications entre les nœuds peuvent impliquer l'emploi de nœuds relais. Une topologie simple de ces réseaux impliquant une source et une destination est communément connue en tant que chaîne. Dans cette thèse, un modèle hiérarchique, composé de deux niveaux, est présenté dans le but d'analyser la performance associée à ces chaînes. Le niveau supérieur modélise la topologie de la chaîne et le niveau inférieur modélise chacun de ses nœuds. On estime les performances de la chaîne, en termes de débit obtenu et de pertes de datagrammes, en fonction de différents modes de qualité du canal. En termes de précision, le modèle offre, en général, des résultats justes. Par ailleurs, le temps nécessaire à sa résolution reste très faible. Le modèle proposé est ensuite appliqué aux chaînes avec deux, trois et quatre nœuds, en présence de stations cachées potentielles, de tampons finis et d'une couche physique non idéale. Par ailleurs, l'utilisation du modèle proposé permet de mettre en évidence certaines propriétés inhérentes à ces réseaux. Par exemple, on peut montrer que la chaîne présente un maximum de performance (en ce qui concerne le débit atteint) en fonction du niveau de charge de du système, et que cette performance s'effondre par l'augmentation de cette charge. Cela représente un comportement non trivial des réseaux sans fil et il ne peut pas être facilement identifié. Cependant, le modèle capture cet effet non évident. Finalement, certains impacts sur les performances des chaînes occasionnés par les mécanismes IEEE 802.11 sont analysés et détaillés. La forte synchronisation entre les nœuds d'une chaîne et comment cette synchronisation représente un défi pour la modélisation de ces réseaux sont décrites. Le modèle proposé permet de surmonter cet obstacle et d'assurer une évaluation facile des performances de la chaîne / The IEEE 802.11 protocol, based on the CMSA/CA principles, is widely deployed in current communications, mostly due to its simplicity and low cost implementation. One common usage can be found in multi-hop wireless networks, where communications between nodes may involve relay nodes. A simple topology of these networks including one source and one destination is commonly known as a chain. In this thesis, a hierarchical modeling framework, composed of two levels, is presented in order to analyze the associated performance of such chains. The upper level models the chain topology and the lower level models each of its nodes. It estimates the performance of the chain in terms of the attained throughput and datagram losses, according to different patterns of channel degradation. In terms of precision, the model delivers, in general, accurate results. Furthermore, the time needed for solving it remains very small. The proposed model is then applied to chains with 2, 3 and 4 nodes, in the presence of occasional hidden nodes, finite buffers and non-perfect physical layer. Moreover, the use of the proposed model allows us to highlight some inherent properties to such networks. For instance, it is shown that a chain presents a performance maximum (with regards to the attained throughput) according to the system workload level, and this performance collapses with the increase of the workload. This represents a non-trivial behavior of wireless networks and cannot be easily identified. However, the model captures this non-trivial effect. Finally, some of the impacts in chains performance due to the IEEE 802.11 mechanisms are analyzed and detailed. The strong synchronization among nodes of a chain is depicted and how it represents a challenge for the modeling of such networks. The proposed model overcomes this obstacle and allows an easy evaluation of the chain performance

Fréquemment exploités pour venir en complément aux réseaux mobiles traditionnels, les réseaux sans-fil multi-sauts, aussi appelés réseaux ad-hoc, sont particulièrement mis à profit dans le domaine des communications d'urgence du fait de leur capacité à s'affranchir de toute infrastructure. Néanmoins, la capacité de ces réseaux étant limitée dès lors que le nombre d'utilisateurs augmente, la communauté scientifique s'efforce à en redéfinir les contours afin d'étendre leur utilisation aux communications civiles. La gestion des interférences, considérée comme l'un des principaux défis à relever pour augmenter les débits atteignables dans les réseaux sans-fil multi-sauts, a notamment connu un changement de paradigme au cours des dernières années. Alors qu'historiquement cette gestion est régie par les protocoles de la couche d'accès dont l'objectif consiste à éviter les interférences entre utilisateurs, il est désormais possible, grâce à différentes techniques avancées de communication numérique, de traiter ces interférences, et même de les exploiter. Ces techniques de transmission, dites techniques de gestion des interférences, viennent alors concurrencer les mécanismes d'ordonnancement traditionnels en autorisant plusieurs transmissions simultanées et dans la même bande de fréquence vers un même récepteur. Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à l'une de ces techniques, le Physical-Layer Network Coding (PLNC), en vue de son intégration dans des réseaux ad-hoc composés de plusieurs dizaines de nœuds. Les premiers travaux se concentrant principalement sur des petites topologies, nous avons tout d'abord développé un framework permettant d'évaluer les gains en débit à large échelle du PLNC par rapport à des transmissions traditionnelles sans interférence. Motivés par les résultats obtenus, nous avons ensuite défini un nouveau cadre d'utilisation à cette technique visant à élargir sa sphère d'application. Le schéma de PLNC proposé, testé à la fois sur de vrais équipements radio et par simulation, s'est alors révélé offrir des gains significatifs en débit et en fiabilité en comparaison aux solutions existantes. / Frequently used to complement the traditional mobile networks, multi-hop wireless networks, also referred to as ad-hoc networks, are particularly useful in emergency situations due to the fact that they do not rely on any infrastructure. Nevertheless, as the capacity of such networks does not scale with the number of users, the scientific community has strived to rethink their use in order to extend their application to civil communications. For instance, long considered as one of the most formidable challenges in multi-hop wireless networks, interference management has recently undergone a paradigm shift. While interference management is traditionally carried out by the access layer protocols whose objective is to avoid interference between users, it is now possible to exploit the interference thanks to new advanced communication techniques. These transmission techniques, so-called interference management techniques, go against the communication paradigm underlying existing scheduling mechanisms by allowing multiple simultaneous transmissions to a common receiver in the same frequency band. In this thesis, we focus on one of these techniques, namely the Physical-Layer Network (PLNC), with the objective of integrating it in ad-hoc networks. Mostly studied from both the theoretical and practical perspective in small topologies, we first design a framework for quantifying the large-scale PLNC gains over the traditional interference-free transmissions. Driven by the obtained results, we introduce a solution to increase the PLNC sphere of operation in large multi-hop wireless networks. Our comprehensive evaluation methodology, including experimental testbed validations for credibility, as well as realistic simulations, show that the proposed PLNC scheme brings important gains in terms of throughput and reliability when compared to state-of-the-art approaches.

We study the problem of joint congestion control, routing and MAC layer scheduling in multi-hop wireless mesh networks, where the nodes in the network are subjected to energy expenditure rate constraints. As wireless scenario does not allow all the links to be active all the time, only a subset of given links can be active simultaneously. We model the inter-link interference using the link contention graph. All the nodes in the network are power-constrained and we model this constraint using energy expenditure rate matrix. Then we formulate the problem as a network utility maximization (NUM) problem. We notice that this is a convex optimization problem with affine constraints. We apply duality theory and decompose the problem into two sub-problems namely, network layer congestion control and routing problem, and MAC layer scheduling problem. The source adjusts its rate based on the cost of the least cost path to the destination where the cost of the path includes not only the prices of the links in it but also the prices associated with the nodes on the path. The MAC layer scheduling of the links is carried out based on the prices of the links. The optimal scheduler selects that set of non-interfering links, for which the sum of link prices is maximum. We study the effects of energy expenditure rate constraints of the nodes on the maximum possible network utility. It turns out that the dominant of the two constraints namely, the link capacity constraint and the node energy expenditure rate constraint affects the network utility most. Also we notice the fact that the energy expenditure rate constraints do not affect the nature of optimal link scheduling problem. Following this fact, we study the problem of distributed link scheduling. Optimal scheduling requires selecting independent set of maximum aggregate price, but this problem is known to be NP-hard. We first show that as long as scheduling policy selects the set of non-interfering links, it can not go unboundedly away from the optimal solution of network utility maximization problem. Then we proceed and evaluate a simple greedy scheduling algorithm. Analytical bounds on performance are provided and simulations indicate that the greedy heuristic performs well in practice.

Les incitations économiques et environnementales poussent dorénavant à intégrer des considérations énergétiques dès les premiers stades de développement des réseaux. Dans les réseaux sans fil multi-sauts, l'approche la plus courante consiste à répartir le trafic sur l'ensemble des nœuds afin de réduire équitablement la consommation énergétique de chacun, avec pour objectif la maximisation de la durée de vie du réseau. Or cette approche n'est pas optimale vis-à-vis de la consommation globale du réseau, le niveau d'activité d'un nœud n'ayant souvent que peu d'influence sur sa propre consommation. Nous montrons que la meilleure approche consiste à éteindre un maximum de nœuds. Parmi les travaux réalisés, nous avons développé une solution s'appuyant sur de la programmation linéaire en nombres entiers et des simulations de graphes et de réseaux. La solution proposée permet ainsi une agrégation de flux optimale, réduisant significativement le nombre de nœuds utilisés dans le réseau. Afin de la rendre applicable en pratique, une heuristique est détaillée permettant une mise en œuvre distribuée grâce à l'utilisation d'une métrique de routage. Ainsi, tout algorithme de plus court chemin peut nativement réaliser de l'agrégation de flux efficace. Il est important de souligner que la qualité de service en termes de débit est respectée. En effet, les interférences sont prises en compte et il est possible de profiter de la synergie offerte par l'utilisation conjointe de l'agrégation de flux et du codage réseau. Nos résultats améliorent significativement les méthodes d'économie d'énergie basées sur l'extinction des nœuds en leur permettant d'en éteindre davantage. / Economic and ecologic incentives are now leading people to design networks with energetic considerations at early stages of development. Most of the works for multi-hop wireless networks tend to spread the traffic uniformly over the network to reduce the energy consumption of each node individually. However, considering that the traffic of a node doesn't impact significantly its energy consumption, this approach is not optimal regarding the global energy consumption of the network. Finding a way to turnoff as much node as possible seems then to be a better way. This PhD thesis focus on routing a set of flows over a multi-hop wireless network while minimizing the number of used nodes. This is done by using a distributed metric that allows the shortest path routing algorithms to perform flow aggregation. Using integer linear programming and simulations, we proposed an efficient solution to aggregate flows to significantly reduce the number of nodes used in the network. It allows, then, to improve algorithms that reduce the energy consumption of networks by increasing the number of nodes that can be turned off.

Advances in wireless communication and microelectronics have led to the development of low-power compact sensor nodes (popularly called motes) that are capable of sensing, computing, and communication. A large number of these nodes can be deployed over some area of interest to form a multi-hop network, commonly referred to as a wireless sensor network (WSN). Typical applications of WSNs include, environment and process monitoring in industrial installations, forest fire detection, structural health monitoring, etc. In such applications where the variables to be measured are slowly varying, or the events to be monitored are rare, continuous sensing is unnecessary. Instead, the nodes, in order to conserve their battery power, can sleep-wake cycle whereby each node is allowed to independently alternate between an ON state and a low power OFF state. Sleep-wake cycling, while increasing the network lifetime, renders the network disconnected a large fraction of the time; however, connectivity can be established over time by transporting packets in a store-and-forward manner, whereby packets are held by a forwarding node until a suitable node wakes up in its neighborhood that can serve to forward the packet towards the destination. We are concerned with sleep-wake cycling multi-hop wireless networks whose main task is to carry sporadic alarms packets from sensing nodes to a sink node. Our objective is to design simple local-information based routing solutions for such networks. With this in mind, we propose a relay selection problem that arises at a forwarding node (which is currently holding the alarm packet) while choosing a next-hop relay node. The forwarder, as and when the relays wake-up, evaluating the goodness of a relay based on a “reward” metric (e.g., a function of the relay’s progress towards sink, and the power required to get the packet across), has to decide whether to forward to this relay or to wait for future ones (i.e., to stop or continue). The forwarder’s objective is to choose a relay so as to minimize a combination of the average delay incurred and the average reward achieved. A basic version of our relay selection problem is equivalent to the basic asset selling problem studied in the operations research literature. After reviewing the solution to the basic problem we will proceed to study a model with full information, referred to as the completely observable (CO) model, where the number of relays is exactly known to the forwarder. Formulating the problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) we will characterize the solution to the CO model in terms of recursively-computable threshold functions. Next, we consider the partially observable (PO) model where only a belief (probability mass function) on the number of relays is known. Hence, the PO model falls within the realm of partially observable MDPs. After incorporating our model into this framework we will characterize the solution in terms of stopping sets, which is the set of all belief states where it is optimal to stop. Our main contribution here is to obtain inner and outer bounds for the stopping sets. We next propose a variant where the relays, upon waking up, do not reveal their rewards immediately, but instead the forwarder can choose to probe the relay to know its reward, incurring a probing cost. Thus, to the existing set of stop and continue actions, we have added a new probe action. This model is motivated by the efforts required to learn the channel gains (by probing) in a wireless system. A key result we prove here is that the solution is characterized in terms of stage independent thresholds. Finally, we study a model comprising two forwarders which are competing against each other to choose a next-hop relay (one for each). Here, a relay is allowed to offer possibly different reward to each forwarder. We will first consider a complete information case where the reward pair of a relay is known to both the forwarders. Using stochastic game theory we will characterize the solution to this model in terms of Nash equilibrium policy pairs (NEPPs). We obtain results illustrating the structure of NEPPs. Next, we study a partial information model where each forwarder gets to observe only its reward value. Towards obtaining the solution for this model, we will first formulate a Bayesian game which is effectively played by both the forwarders at each stage. Next, for this Bayesian game we prove the existence of Nash equilibrium strategies within the class of threshold strategies. This result will enable us to construct NEPPs for the partial information model. Although our primary contribution from the thesis is the theoretical study of the above mentioned variants of the basic relay selection model, we have also conducted extensive simulations to study the end-to-end performance obtained by applying the solution to these models at each hop en-route to the sink in a sleep-wake cycling WSN.