<p>The interest for various multimedia services accessed via the Internet has been growing immensely along with the bandwidth available. A similar development has emerged in the 3G mobile network. The focus of this master thesis is on the speech/audio part of a 3G multimedia application. The purpose has been to implement a traffic generating tool that can measure QoS (Quality of Service) in 3G networks. The application is compliant to the 3G standards, i.e. it uses AMR (Adaptive Multi Rate), SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) and RTP (Real Time Transport Protocol). AMR is a speech compression algorithm with the special feature that it can compress speech into several different bitrates. SIP signalling is used so that different applications can agree on how to communicate. RTP carries the speech frames over the network, in order to provide features that are necessary for media/multimedia applications. Issues like perception of audio and QoS related parameters is also discussed, from the perspective of users and developers.</p>

<p>Nowadays Wireless LAN is playing a more and more important role in network systems. After 1999, in which the IEEE organization published its Wireless Local Network standard 802.11[1], many people saw the advantages of the standard but also the lack of support for multimedia streaming. A lot of research work has been done on the proposed IEEE 802.11e standard draft during the past 4 years. It is supposed to be able to fully support Quality of Service. The final version will be published early in 2004. In my thesis, I propose two possible methods to improve the performance of service differentiation in the MAC layer. The first one is calledPCWA (Practical Contention Window Adjustment). It is a method with which the station finds a best size of its contention window when running the EDCF (Enhanced Distributed Coordination Function) access method. It helps to improve the total system throughput, the jitter and the delay of traffics with different priorities. The second method is called AIPM (Adaptive Initiative Polling Machine). It uses the polling mechanism for differential service, intelligently arranging the polling time to reduce the delay as much as possible, achieving large improvement in performance. This method significantly increases the total system throughput, while the delay and jitter of the traffics are very much small in comparison to EDCF.</p>

<p>The third generation, 3G, mobile telephone systems are designed for multimedia communication and will offer us similar services as in our stationary computers. This will involve large traffic loads, especially in the downlink direction, i.e. from base station to terminal. To improve the downlink capacity for packet data services a new concept is included in evolved 3G networks. The concept is called High Speed Data Packet Access, HSDPA, and provides peak bit rates of 14 Mbps. HSDPA uses a so-called best effort channel, i.e. it is developed for services that do not require guaranteed bit rates. The channel is divided in time between the users and a scheduling algorithm is used to allocate the channel among them. </p><p>Streaming is a common technology for video transmission over the Internet and with 3G it is supposed to become popular also in our mobiles. Streaming generates lots of data traffic in the downlink direction and it would thus be satisfying to make use of the high bit rates HSDPA provides. The problem is that streaming requires reasonable stable bit rates, which is not guaranteed using HSDPA. The aim of this study is to modify the scheduling algorithms to prioritise streaming over web users and provide streaming Quality of Service, QoS. QoS is the ability to guarantee certain transmission characteristics. </p><p>The results of the study show that it is hard to improve the streaming capacity by modifications of the scheduling. Of course, a consequence is that the web user throughput is decreased and to avoid this, new users have to be rejected by the admission control.The solution is to prioritise the streaming users both in the scheduling algorithm and in the admission control, i.e. when the system is nearly full new web users are rejected. By doing so the results are significantly improved.</p>

<p>The wide spread use of IEEE Wireless LAN 802.11 in battery operated mobile devices introduced the need of power consumption optimization while meeting Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements of applications connected through the wireless network. The IEEE 802.11 standard specifies a baseline power saving mechanism, hereafter referred to as standard Power Save Mode (PSM), and the IEEE 802.11e standard specifies the Automatic Power Save Delivery (APSD) enhancement which provides support for real-time applications with QoS requirements. The latest amendment to the WLAN 802.11 standard is the IEEE 802.11n standard which enables the use of much higher data rates by including enhancements in the Physical and MAC Layer. In this thesis, different 802.11n MAC power saving and QoS optimization possibilities are analyzed comparing against existing power saving mechanisms.</p><p>Initially, the performance of the existing power saving mechanisms PSM and Unscheduled-APSD (UAPSD) are evaluated using the 802.11n process model in the OPNET simulator and the impact of frame aggregation feature introduced in the MAC layer of 802.11n was analyzed on these power saving mechanisms. From the performance analysis it can be concluded that the frame aggregation will be efficient under congested network conditions. When the network congestion level increases, the signaling load in UAPSD saturates the channel capacity and hence results in poor performance compared to PSM. Since PSM cannot guarantee the minimum QoS requirements for delay sensitive applications, a better mechanism for performance enhancement of UAPSD under dynamic network conditions is proposed.</p><p>The functionality and performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated under different network conditions and using different contention settings. From the performance results it can be concluded that, by using the proposed algorithm the congestion level in the network is reduced dynamically thereby providing a better power saving and QoS by utilizing the frame aggregation feature efficiently.</p>

<p>From providing only voice communications, wireless networks aim to provide a wide range of services in which soft real-time, high priority critical data, and best effort connections seamlessly integrate. Some of these applications and services have firm resource requirements in order to function properly (e.g. videoconferences), others are flexible enough to adapt to whatever is available (e.g. FTP). Providing differentiation and resource assurance is often referred to as providing quality of service (QoS). In this thesis we study how novel resource allocation algorithms can improve the offered QoS of dynamic, unpredictable, and resource constrained distributed systems, such as a wireless network, during periods of overload.</p><p>We propose and evaluate several bandwidth allocation schemes in the context of cellular, hybrid and pure ad hoc networks. Acceptable quality levels for a connection are specified using resource-utility functions, and our allocation aims to maximise accumulated systemwide utility. To keep allocation optimal in this changing environment, we need to periodically reallocate resources. The novelty of our approach is that we have augmented the utility function model by identifying and classifying the way reallocations affect the utility of different application classes. We modify the initial utility functions at runtime, such that connections become comparable regardless of their flexibility to reallocations or age-related importance.</p><p>Another contribution is a combined utility/price-based bandwidth allocation and routing scheme for ad hoc networks. First we cast the problem of utility maximisation in a linear programming form. Then we propose a novel distributed allocation algorithm, where every flow bids for resources on the end-to-end path depending on the resource ``shadow price'', and the flow's ``utility efficiency''. Our periodic (re)allocation algorithms represent an iterative process that both adapts to changes in the network, and recalculates and improves the estimation of resource shadow prices.</p><p>Finally, problems connected to allocation optimisation, such as modelling non-critical resources as costs, or using feedback to adapt to uncertainties in resource usage and availability, are addressed.</p>

<p>The ongoing wireless communication evolution offers improvements for industrial applications where traditional wireline solutions causes prohibitive problems in terms of cost and feasibility. Many of these new wireless applications are packet oriented and time-critical. The deadline dependent coding (DDC) communication protocol presented here is explicitly intended for wireless real-time applications. The objective of the work described in this thesis is therefore to develop the foundation for an efficient and reliable real-time communication protocol for critical deadline dependent communication over unreliable wireless channels.</p><p>Since the communication is packet oriented, block codes are suitable for error control. Reed-Solomon codes are chosen and incorporated in a concatenated coding scheme using iterative detection with trellis based decoding algorithms. Performance bounds are given for parallel and serially concatenated Reed-Solomon codes using BPSK. The convergence behavior of the iterative decoding process for serially concatenated block codes is examined and two different stopping criteria are employed based on the log-likelihood ratio of the information bits.</p><p>The stopping criteria are also used as a retransmission criterion, incorporating the serially concatenated block codes in a type-I hybrid ARQ (HARQ) protocol. Different packet combining techniques specifically adapted to the concatenated HARQ (CHARQ) scheme are used. The extrinsic information used in the iterative decoding process is saved and used when decoding after a retransmission. This technique can be seen as turbo code combining or concatenated code combining and is shown to improve performance. Saving the extrinsic information may also be seen as a doping criterion yielding faster convergence. As such, the extrinsic information can be used in conjunction with traditional diversity combining schemes. The performance in terms of bit error rate and convergence speed is improved with only negligible additional complexity.</p><p>Consequently, CHARQ based on serially concatenated block codes using iterative detection creates a flexible and reliable scheme capable of meeting specified required realtime constraints.</p>

From providing only voice communications, wireless networks aim to provide a wide range of services in which soft real-time, high priority critical data, and best effort connections seamlessly integrate. Some of these applications and services have firm resource requirements in order to function properly (e.g. videoconferences), others are flexible enough to adapt to whatever is available (e.g. FTP). Providing differentiation and resource assurance is often referred to as providing quality of service (QoS). In this thesis we study how novel resource allocation algorithms can improve the offered QoS of dynamic, unpredictable, and resource constrained distributed systems, such as a wireless network, during periods of overload. We propose and evaluate several bandwidth allocation schemes in the context of cellular, hybrid and pure ad hoc networks. Acceptable quality levels for a connection are specified using resource-utility functions, and our allocation aims to maximise accumulated systemwide utility. To keep allocation optimal in this changing environment, we need to periodically reallocate resources. The novelty of our approach is that we have augmented the utility function model by identifying and classifying the way reallocations affect the utility of different application classes. We modify the initial utility functions at runtime, such that connections become comparable regardless of their flexibility to reallocations or age-related importance. Another contribution is a combined utility/price-based bandwidth allocation and routing scheme for ad hoc networks. First we cast the problem of utility maximisation in a linear programming form. Then we propose a novel distributed allocation algorithm, where every flow bids for resources on the end-to-end path depending on the resource ``shadow price'', and the flow's ``utility efficiency''. Our periodic (re)allocation algorithms represent an iterative process that both adapts to changes in the network, and recalculates and improves the estimation of resource shadow prices. Finally, problems connected to allocation optimisation, such as modelling non-critical resources as costs, or using feedback to adapt to uncertainties in resource usage and availability, are addressed.

No description available.

Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) are gaining momentum among researchers. ITS encompasses several technologies, including wireless communications, sensor networks, data and voice communication, real-time driving assistant systems, etc. These states of the art technologies are expected to pave the way for a plethora of vehicular network applications. In fact, recently we have witnessed a growing interest in Vehicular Networks from both the research community and industry. Several potential applications of Vehicular Networks are envisioned such as road safety and security, traffic monitoring and driving comfort, just to mention a few. It is critical that the existence of convenience or driving comfort services do not negatively affect the performance of safety services. In essence, the dissemination of safety services or the discovery of convenience applications requires the communication among service providers and service requesters through constrained bandwidth resources. Therefore, service discovery techniques for vehicular networks must efficiently use the available common resources. In this thesis, we focus on the design of bandwidth-efficient and scalable service discovery protocols for Vehicular Networks. Three types of service discovery architectures are introduced: infrastructure-less, infrastructure-based, and hybrid architectures. Our proposed algorithms are network layer based where service discovery messages are integrated into the routing messages for a lightweight discovery. Moreover, our protocols use the channel diversity for efficient service discovery. We describe our algorithms and discuss their implementation. Finally, we present the main results of the extensive set of simulation experiments that have been used in order to evaluate their performance.

In recent years, a number of power control concepts have been studied and implementedeither in simulation or in practice for different communication systems. It is still the case that a great deal of research is being conducted within the area of energyefficient power control mechanisms for future wireless communication networksystems. However, only a limited amount of practical work has been implemented onreal test beds environment. The main goal of this thesis is to propose and develop newprototype Transmit Power Control Mechanisms (TPCM) on WARP (Wireless Open-Access Research Platform) boards for point-to-point communications, which are to bedeveloped and tested in an indoor environment. This work mainly focuses on the automaticpower control nodes, transmission and reception over-the-air. In this thesis, wehave designed and developed TPCM to adjust the power levels on a transmitter nodeby following the feedback (ACK) approach. In this case, the destination (receiver)node always sends the feedback (ACK) to transmitter node during every successfultransmission of message signal and the main focus is on a reduction in the packetloss rate (PLR), an increase in the packet reception rate (PRR) and the capacity ofthe nodes. In this real work, we have developed and measured the results based ontwo functions namely, with and without packet window function power control mechanisms. According to the measurements section, both with and without function powercontrol mechanisms proved to have better performances for different tunable parameters.If both functions are compared, then the with window function power controlmechanism was shown to produce better performances than the without windowpower control mechanism and it also converged faster than the without window function.If consideration was given to controlling a reduction in packet loss rate, thenthe with widnow function offered higher performances than those without the windowfunction. In this regard, it was found that the with window function has acheived amaximum packet reception rate than that for the without window function for differenttunable parameters. In relation to the power consumption scenario, it was determinedthat the without window fuction proved to produce energy saving performances thanthe with window function. There are several interesting aspects of the transmit powercontrol mechanisms highlighted in the results and discussion chapter.