Au cours de la dernière décennie, les communications optiques en espace libre (FSO) ont pris de l’ampleur dans les deux domaines académiques et industriels. L’importance de FSO s’appuie sur la possibilité de faire un système de transmission économique et écologique avec un débit élevé et sans licence à l’opposition des systèmes de transmission radiofréquences (RF). Dans la plupart des travaux antécédents sur les systèmes multi-émetteurs, seulement les canaux décorrélés ont été considérés. Un canal décorrélé nécessite un espace suffisant entre les émetteurs. Cette condition devient difficile et non-réalisable dans certaines applications. Pour cette raison, nos études se focalisent sur les performances des codes à répétition RC (Repitition Codes) et les codes OSTBC (Orthogonal Space-Time Block Codes) dans des canaux log-normaux corrélés en utilisant une modulation d’intensité et une détection directe (IM/DD). En addition, les effets des différentes conditions météorologiques sur le taux d’erreur moyen (ABER) sont étudiés. Les systèmes FSO à multi-entrées/ multi-sorties MIMO (Multiple-Input Multiple-Output) avec une modulation SSK (Space Shift Keying) ont été abordés. Les résultats obtenus montrent que la SSK est supérieure aux RC avec une modulation d’impulsion (Multiple Pulse Amplitude Modulation) pour toute efficacité spectrale égale ou supérieure à 4 bit/s/Hz. Nous avons aussi analysé les performances d’un système à sauts multiples (Multi-Hop) et des relais à transmission directe (forward relays). Nos simulations montrent que le système ainsi considéré est efficace pour atténuer les effets météorologiques et les pertes géométriques dans les systèmes de communication FSO. Nous avons montré qu’un tel système avec plusieurs entrées et une sortie (MISO, i.e. multiple-input single-output) à sauts multiples est supérieur à un système MISO avec un lien direct (direct link) avec une forte atténuation. Pour satisfaire la demande croissante des réseaux de communication à débits élevés, la communauté scientifique s'intéresse de plus en plus aux systèmes FSO avec des relais full-duplex (FD). Pour ces derniers systèmes, nous avons étudié la probabilité d'erreur moyenne (ABER) et nous avons analysé leurs performances. En considérant des différentes conditions de transmission, les performances de relais FD ont été comparées à celles d'un système avec un lien direct ou des relais half-duplex. Les résultats obtenus montrent que les relais FD ont le minimum ABER. En conséquence, les résultats obtenus dans cette thèse sont très prometteurs pour la prochaine génération de FSO. / Free-space optical (FSO) communication has been the subject of ongoing research activities and commercial attention in the past few years. Such attention is driven by the promise of high data rate, license-free operation, and cheap and ecological friendly means of communications alternative to congested radio frequency communications. In most previous work considering multiple transmitters, uncorrelated channel conditions have been considered. An uncorrelated channel requires sufficient spacing between transmitters. However, this can be difficult and may not be always feasible in some applications. Thereby, this thesis studies repetition codes (RCs) and orthogonal space-time block codes performance in correlated log-normal FSO channels using intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD). Furthermore, the effect of different weather conditions on the average bit error rate (ABER) performance of the FSO links is studied. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) FSO communication systems using space shift keying (SSK) modulation have been also analyzed. Obtained results show that SSK is a potential technique for spectral efficiencies equal or greater than 4 bits/s/Hz as compared to RCs with multiple pulse amplitude modulations. The performance analysis of a multi-hop decode and forward relays for FSO communication system using IM/DD is also considered in this thesis. It is shown that multi-hop is an efficient technique to mitigate atmospheric turbulence and different weather attenuation effects and geometric losses in FSO communication systems. Our simulation results show that multiple-input single-output (MISO) multi-hop FSO systems are superior to direct link and MISO systems over links exhibiting high attenuation. Meeting the growing demand for higher data rates communication networks, a system with full-duplex (FD) relays is considered. For such a system, the outage probability and the ABER performance are analyzed under different turbulence conditions, misalignment error and path loss effects. FD relays are compared with the direct link and half-duplex relays. Obtained results show that FD relays have the lowest ABER and the outage probability as compared to the two other systems. Finally, the obtained results in this thesis are very promising towards the next generation of FSO systems.

Les réseaux de capteurs sans fils (WSN) sont composés d'un très grand nombre de capteurs, capables de mesurer des paramètres physiques de l'environnement, de mettre en forme l'information obtenue et de la communiquer aux autres capteurs grâce à une interface radio. Les capteurs étant en général déployés sur de très grandes étendues géographiques, l'énergie nécessaire pour les faire fonctionner est fournie par une batterie embarquée sur le capteur. En général, il est difficile de recharger les batteries une fois les capteurs déployés. Economiser l'énergie est donc une préoccupation constante lors de la conception des capteurs et des protocoles de communication utilisés, de manière à prolonger la durée de vie du réseau. Dans ce but, les capteurs transmettent leurs données avec des puissances d'émission très faibles. Avec de telles puissances d'émission, un message ne peut être transmis que sur quelques dizaine de mètres. De ce fait, lorsqu'un capteur détecte un événement, le message est transmis en mode ad-hoc multisauts jusqu'au puits, un nœud spécifique du réseau, qui récolte toutes les informations et est capable de réagir de manière adéquate. Dans cette thèse, nous donnons d'abord un état de l'art avancé sur les WSN. Ensuite nous analysons l'impact du cycle d'endormissement et des liens non fiable sur la couche de routage. A partir des résultats analytiques, nous proposons trois méthodes originales, simples et efficaces pour construire des coordonnées virtuelles en prenant en compte la non fiabilité des liens dans les WSN. En prenant en compte le cycle d'endormissement et les contraintes temps-réel, nous proposons deux protocoles cross-layer qui ont de bons taux de livraison et qui permettent de respecter des contraintes temporelles. Pour pallier à la dynamicité des réseaux de capteurs sans fil, nous proposons un protocole de routage robuste qui adapte ses paramètres quand la topologie change. Enfin, nous concluons et donnons quelques perspectives. / Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are composed of a large number of battery-powered sensor nodes that have the ability to sense the physical environment, compute the obtained information and communicate using the radio interfaces. Because sensor nodes are generally deployed on a large and wild area, they are powered by embedded battery. And it is difficult to change or recharge the battery, thus to reduce the energy consumption when sensors and protocols are designed is very important and can extend the lifetime of WSNs. So sensor nodes transmit packets with a lower transmission power (e.g. OdBm). With this transmission power, a packet can only be transmitted dozens of meters away. Therefore, when a sensor detects an event, a packet is sent in a multi-hop, ad-hoc manner (without fixed infrastructure and each sensor is able to relay the packet) to the sink (specific node which gathers information and reacts to the network situation). In this thesis, we first give an elaborate state of the art of WSNs. Then the impacts of duty-cycle and unreliable links or the performances of routing layer are analyzed. Based on the analytical results, we then propose three new simple yet effective methods to construct virtual coordinates under unreliable links in WSNs. By further taking the duty-cycle and real-time constraints into consideration we propose two cross-layer forwarding protocols which can have a greater delivery ratio and satisfy the deadline requirements. In order to have protocols for the WSNs that have dynamic topology, we then propose a robust forwarding protocol which can adapt its parameters when the topology changes. At last, we conclude this thesis and give some perspectives.

Dans cette thèse, nous nous sommes intéressés aux réseaux urbains considérés par le projet ANR ARESA2 qui sont principalement des réseaux de capteurs et actionneurs hétérogènes : l’hétérogénéité est causée par la coexistence des noeuds capteurs à faibles ressources et des noeuds actionneurs riches en ressources. Ces derniers devraient être utilisés de manière différenciée par le réseau. C’est dans ce contexte que se déroule cette thèse dans laquelle nous avons étudié des algorithmes d’auto-organisations et de routage s’appuyant sur l’hétérogénéité. Au début, nous nous sommes intéressés à l’auto-organisation dans un contexte hétérogène. Se basant sur l’idée que les ressources au niveau des noeuds actionneurs doivent être exploitées afin de réduire la charge de communication au niveau des noeuds capteurs, nous avons proposé un protocole d’auto-organisation appelée Far-Legos. Far-Legos permet de profiter de la puissance d’émission des actionneurs pour apporter une information de gradient au niveau des capteurs. Les actionneurs initient et construisent une topologie logique. Cette dernière sera utilisée pour faciliter la phase de collecte de données à partir des noeuds capteurs vers les noeuds actionneurs. Ensuite, nous nous sommes intéressés aux liens asymétriques causés par la présence de différents types de noeuds avec différentes portées de transmission. Ces liens asymétriques, causés par l’hétérogénéité au niveau des noeuds constituant le réseau, peuvent détériorer les performances des protocoles de routage qui ne tiennent pas compte de ce type de liens. Pour éviter la dégradation de ces protocoles de routage, nous introduisons une nouvelle métrique de calcul de gradient ou de rang. Celle-ci sera utile pour détecter et éviter les liens asymétriques au niveau de la couche réseau pour le protocole de routage RPL. Nous présentons aussi une adaptation du protocole de collecte de données basé sur Legos pour détecter et éviter ces liens asymétriques. Enfin, nous nous sommes intéressés à l’exploitation de ces liens asymétriques. Nous proposons ainsi un protocole de collecte de données dédiés aux réseaux hétérogènes contenant des liens asymétriques appelé AsymRP. AsymRP est un protocole de routage dédié au trafic de collecte de données basé sur une connaissance de voisinage à 2-sauts combinée avec l’utilisation des messages d’acquittements (ACKs) implicites et une technique de routage de messages ACKs explicites. Cette proposition tire profit des liens asymétriques afin d’assurer une collecte de données fiable. / In this thesis, we focused on urban wireless networks considered by the ANR project ARESA2. The networks considered by this project are heterogeneous networks. This heterogeneity is caused by the coexistence of sensor nodes with limited resources and actuator nodes with higher resources. Actuators nodes should be used differentially by the network. Hence designed protocols for WSANs should exploit resource-rich devices to reduce the communication burden on low power nodes. It is in this context that this thesis takes place in which we studied self-organizing and routing algorithms based on the heterogeneity. First, we are interested in self-organization protocols in a heterogeneous network. Based on the idea that resource-rich nodes must be exploited to reduce the communication load level on low-power nodes, we proposed self-organizing protocol called Far-Legos. Far-Legos uses the large transmit power of actuators to provide gradient information to sensor nodes. Actuators initiate and construct a logical topology. The nature of this logical topology is different inside and outside the transmission range of these resourceful nodes. This logical topology will be used to facilitate the data collection from sensor to actuator nodes. Second, we investigated the asymmetric links caused by the presence of heterogeneous nodes with different transmission ranges. The apparition of asymmetric links can dramatically decrease the performance of routing protocols that are not designed to support them. To prevent performance degradation of these routing protocols, we introduce a new metric for rank calculation. This metric will be useful to detect and avoid asymmetric links for RPL routing protocol. We also present an adaptation of data collection protocol based on Legos to detect and avoid these asymmetric links. Finally, we are interested in exploiting the asymmetric links present in the network. We proposed a new routing protocol for data collection in heterogeneous networks, called AsymRP. AsymRP, a convergecast routing protocol, assumes 2-hop neighborhood knowledge and uses implicit and explicit acknowledgment. It takes advantage of asymmetric links to ensure reliable data collection.

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.

A wireless sensor network (WSN) is a collection of sensor nodes distributed over a geographical region to obtain the environmental data. It can have different types of applications ranging from low data rate event driven and monitoring applications to high data rate real time industry and military applications. Energy efficiency and reliability are the two major design issues which should be handled efficiently at all the layers of communication protocol stack, due to resource constraint sensor nodes and erroneous nature of wireless channel respectively. Media access control (MAC) is the protocol which deals with the problem of packet collision due to simultaneous transmissions by more than one neighboring sensor nodes. Time Division Multiple Access based (TDMA-based) and contention-based are the two major types of MAC protocols used in WSNs. In general, the TDMA-based channel access mechanisms perform better than the contention-based channel access mechanisms, in terms of channel utilization, reliability and power consumption, specially for high data rate applications in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). TDMA-based channel access employs a predefined schedule so that the nodes can transmit at their allotted time slots. Based on the frequency of scheduling requirement, the existing distributed TDMA-scheduling techniques can be classified as either static or dynamic. The primary purpose of static TDMA-scheduling algorithms is to improve the channel utilization by generating a schedule of smaller length. But, they usually take longer time to generate such a schedule, and hence, are not suitable for WSNs, in which the network topology changes dynamically. On the other hand, dynamic TDMA-scheduling algorithms generate a schedule quickly, but they are not efficient in terms of generated schedule length. We suggest a new approach to TDMA-scheduling for WSNs, that can bridge the gap between these two extreme types of TDMA-scheduling techniques, by providing the flexibility to trade-off between the schedule length and the time required to generate the schedule, as per the requirements of the underlying applications and channel conditions. The suggested TDMA-scheduling works in two phases. In the first phase, we generate a valid TDMA schedule quickly, which need not have to be very efficient in terms of schedule length. In the second phase, we iteratively reduce the schedule length in a manner, such that the process of schedule length reduction can be terminated after the execution of an arbitrary number of iterations, and still be left with a valid schedule. This step provides the flexibility to trade-off the schedule length with the time required to generate the schedule. In the first phase of above TDMA-scheduling approach, we propose two randomized, distributed and parallel TDMA-scheduling algorithms viz., Distributed TDMA Slot Scheduling (DTSS) and Randomized and Distributed TDMA (RD-TDMA) scheduling algorithm. Both the algorithms are based on graph coloring approach, which generate a TDMA schedule quickly with a fixed schedule length ( Colouring), where is the maximum degree of any node in the graph to be colored. The two algorithms differ in the channel access mechanism used by them to transmit control messages, and in the generated schedule for different modes of communication, i.e., unicast, multicast and broadcast. The novelty of the proposed algorithms lies in the methods, by which an uncolored node detects that the slot picked by it is different from the slots picked by all the neighboring nodes, and the selection of probabilities with which the available slots can be picked up. Furthermore, to achieve faster convergence we introduce the idea of dynamic slot-probability update as per which the nodes update their slot-probability by considering the current slot-probability of their neighboring nodes. Under the second phase of the proposed TDMA-scheduling approach, we provide two randomized and distributed schedule compaction algorithms, viz., Distributed Schedule Compaction (DSC) and Distributed Schedule Length Reduction (DSLR) algorithm, as the mechanism to trade-off the scheduling time with the generated schedule length. These algorithms start with a valid TDMA schedule and progressively compress it in each round of execution. Additionally, Furthermore, the execution of these algorithms can be stopped after an arbitrary number of rounds as per the requirements of underlying applications. Even though TDMA-based MAC protocols avoid packet loss due to collision, due to erroneous nature of wireless medium, they alone are not sufficient to ensure the reliable transmission in WSNs. Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) is the technique commonly used to provide error control for unicast data transmission. Unfortunately, ARQ mechanisms cannot be used for reliable multicast/broadcast transmission in WSNs. To solve this issue, we propose a virtual token-based channel access and feedback protocol (VTCAF) for link level reliable multicasting in single-hop wireless networks. The VTCAF protocol introduces a virtual (implicit) token passing mechanism based on carrier sensing to avoid the collision between feedback messages. The delay performance is improved in VTCAF protocol by reducing the number of feedback messages. Besides, the VTCAF protocol is parametric in nature and can easily trade-off reliability with the delay as per the requirements of the underlying applications. Finally, by integrating all the works, viz., TDMA-scheduling algorithms (DTSS/RD-TDMA), schedule compaction algorithms and link layer feedback mechanism for reliable multicast/ broadcast, we propose a TDMA-based energy aware and reliable MAC protocol, named TEA-MAC for multi-hop WSNs. Similar to VTCAF, TEA-MAC protocol uses the combination of ACK-based and NACK-based approaches to ensure reliable communication. But, instead of using virtual token-based channel access, it uses contention-based channel access for NACK transmission. All the algorithms and protocols proposed in this thesis are distributed, parallel and fault tolerant against packet losses to support scalability, faster execution and robustness respectively. The simulations have been performed using Castalia network simulator to evaluate the performance of proposed algorithms/protocols and also to compare their performance with the existing algorithms/protocols. We have also performed theoretical analysis of these algorithms/protocols to evaluate their performance. Additionally, we have shown the correctness of proposed algorithms/protocols by providing the necessary proofs, whenever it was required. The simulation results together with theoretical analysis show that, in addition to the advantage of trading the runtime with schedule length, the proposed TDMA scheduling approach achieves better runtime and schedule length performance than existing algorithms. Additionally, the TEA-MAC protocol is able to considerably improve the reliability and delay performance of multicast communication in WSNs.