<p>Data networks are an important part in an increasing number of applications with real-time and reliability requirements. To meet these demands a variety of approaches have been proposed. Forward error correction, which adds redundancy to the communicated data, is one of them. However, the redundancy occupies communication bandwidth, so it is desirable to control the amount of redundancy in order to achieve high reliability without adding excessive communication delay. The main contribution of the thesis is to formulate the problem of adjusting the redundancy in a control framework, which enables the dynamic properties of error correction control to be analyzed using control theory. The trade-off between application quality and resource usage is captured by introducing an optimal control problem. Its dependence on the knowledge of the network state at the transmission side is discussed. An error correction controller that optimizes the amount of redundancy without relying on network state information is presented. This is achieved by utilizing an extremum seeking control algorithm to optimize the cost function. Models with varying complexity of the resulting feedback system are presented and analyzed. Conditions for convergence are given. Multiple-input describing function analysis is used to examine periodic solutions. The results are illustrated through computer simulations and experiments on a wireless sensor network.</p>

Cette thèse propose une approche générique pour automatiser des expériences sur des réseaux quelle que soit la technologie utilisée ou le type de plate-forme d'évaluation. L'approche proposée est basée sur l'abstraction du cycle de vie de l'expérience en étapes génériques à partir desquelles un modèle d'expérience et des primitives d'expérimentation sont dérivés. Une architecture générique d'expérimentation est proposée, composée d'un modèle d'expérience générique, d'une interface pour programmer des expériences et d'un algorithme d'orchestration qui peux être adapté aux simulateurs, émulateurs et bancs d'essai de réseaux. La faisabilité de cette approche est démontrée par la mise en œuvre d'un framework capable d'automatiser des expériences sur toute combinaison de ces plateformes. Trois aspects principaux du framework sont évalués : son extensibilité pour s'adapter à tout type de plate-forme, son efficacité pour orchestrer des expériences et sa flexibilité pour permettre des cas d'utilisation divers, y compris l'enseignement, la gestion des plate-formes et l'expérimentation avec des plates-formes multiples. Les résultats montrent que l'approche proposée peut être utilisée pour automatiser efficacement l'expérimentation sur les plates-formes d'évaluation hétérogènes et pour un éventail de scénarios variés. / This thesis proposes a generic approach to automate network experiments for scenarios involving any networking technology on any type of network evaluation platform. The proposed approach is based on abstracting the experiment life cycle of the evaluation platforms into generic steps from which a generic experiment model and experimentation primitives are derived. A generic experimentation architecture is proposed, composed of an experiment model, a programmable experiment interface and an orchestration algorithm that can be adapted to network simulators, emulators and testbeds alike. The feasibility of the approach is demonstrated through the implementation of a framework capable of automating experiments using any combination of these platforms. Three main aspects of the framework are evaluated: its extensibility to support any type of platform, its efficiency to orchestrate experiments and its flexibility to support diverse use cases including education, platform management and experimentation with multiple platforms. The results show that the proposed approach can be used to efficiently automate experimentation on diverse platforms for a wide range of scenarios.

Data networks are an important part in an increasing number of applications with real-time and reliability requirements. To meet these demands a variety of approaches have been proposed. Forward error correction, which adds redundancy to the communicated data, is one of them. However, the redundancy occupies communication bandwidth, so it is desirable to control the amount of redundancy in order to achieve high reliability without adding excessive communication delay. The main contribution of the thesis is to formulate the problem of adjusting the redundancy in a control framework, which enables the dynamic properties of error correction control to be analyzed using control theory. The trade-off between application quality and resource usage is captured by introducing an optimal control problem. Its dependence on the knowledge of the network state at the transmission side is discussed. An error correction controller that optimizes the amount of redundancy without relying on network state information is presented. This is achieved by utilizing an extremum seeking control algorithm to optimize the cost function. Models with varying complexity of the resulting feedback system are presented and analyzed. Conditions for convergence are given. Multiple-input describing function analysis is used to examine periodic solutions. The results are illustrated through computer simulations and experiments on a wireless sensor network. / QC 20101105