Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) built with commodity 802.11 radios are a cost-effective means of providing last mile broadband Internet access. Their multihop architecture allows for rapid deployment and organic growth of these networks. 802.11 radios are an important building block in WMNs. These low cost radios are readily available, and can be used globally in license-exempt frequency bands. However, the 802.11 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) medium access mechanism does not scale well in large multihop networks. This produces suboptimal behavior in many transport protocols, including TCP, the dominant transport protocol in the Internet. In particular, cross-layer interaction between DCF and TCP results in flow level unfairness, including starvation, with backlogged traffic sources. Solutions found in the literature propose distributed source rate control algorithms to alleviate this problem. However, this requires MAC-layer or transport-layer changes on all mesh routers. This is often infeasible in practical deployments. In wireline networks, router-assisted rate control techniques have been proposed for use alongside end-to-end mechanisms. We evaluate the feasibility of establishing similar centralized control via gateway mesh routers in WMNs. We find that commonly used router-assisted flow control schemes designed for wired networks fail in WMNs. This is because they assume that: (1) links can be scheduled independently, and (2) router queue buildups are sufficient for detecting congestion. These abstractions do not hold in a wireless network, rendering wired scheduling algorithms such as Fair Queueing (and its variants) and Active Queue Management (AQM) techniques ineffective as a gateway-enforceable solution in a WMN. We show that only non-work-conserving rate-based scheduling can effectively enforce rate allocation via a single centralized traffic-aggregation point. In this context we propose, design, and evaluate a framework of centralized, measurement-based, feedback-driven mechanisms that can enforce a rate allocation policy objective for adaptive traffic streams in a WMN. In this dissertation we focus on fair rate allocation requirements. Our approach does not require any changes to individual mesh routers. Further, it uses existing data traffic as capacity probes, thus incurring a zero control traffic overhead. We propose two mechanisms based on this approach: aggregate rate control (ARC) and per-flow rate control (PFRC). ARC limits the aggregate capacity of a network to the sum of fair rates for a given set of flows. We show that the resulting rate allocation achieved by DCF is approximately max-min fair. PFRC allows us to exercise finer-grained control over the rate allocation process. We show how it can be used to achieve weighted flow rate fairness. We evaluate the performance of these mechanisms using simulations as well as implementation on a multihop wireless testbed. Our comparative analysis show that our mechanisms improve fairness indices by a factor of 2 to 3 when compared with networks without any rate limiting, and are approximately equivalent to results achieved with distributed source rate limiting mechanisms that require software modifications on all mesh routers.

Today Moblity Management is one of the most important tasks that need to be accomplished to secure availability and performance of communication between people. This paper explains how moblity management is currently structured and what algorithms and approaches from Peer-To-Peer technology could be used to increase availability and performance.

This thesis addresses the problem of `efficient' broadcast in a multi-radio multi-channel multi-rate wireless mesh network (MR$^2$-MC WMN). In such a MR$^2$-MC WMN, nodes are equipped with multiple radio network interface cards, each tuned to an orthogonal channel, that can dynamically adjust transmission rate by choosing a modulation scheme appropriate for the channel conditions. We choose `broadcast latency', defined as the maximum delay between a packet's network-wide broadcast at the source and its eventual reception at all network nodes, as the `efficiency' metric of broadcast performance. The problem of constructing a broadcast forwarding structure having minimal broadcast latency is referred to as the `minimum-latency-broadcasting' (MLB) problem. While previous research for broadcast in single-radio single-rate wireless networks has highlighted the wireless medium's `\emph{wireless broadcast advantage}' (WBA); little is known regarding how the new features of MR$^2$-MC WMN may be exploited. We study in this thesis how the availability of multiple radio interfaces (tuned to orthogonal channels) at WMN nodes, and WMN's multi-rate transmission capability and WBA, might be exploited to improve the `broadcast latency' performance. We show the MLB problem for MR$^2$-MC WMN to be NP-hard, and resort to heuristics for its solution. We divide the overall problem into two sub-problems, which we address in two separate parts of this thesis. \emph{In the first part of this thesis}, the MLB problem is defined for the case of single-radio single-channel multi-rate WMNs where WMN nodes are equipped with a single radio tuned to a common channel. \emph{In the second part of this thesis}, the MLB problem is defined for MR$^2$-MC WMNs where WMN nodes are equipped with multiple radios tuned to multiple orthogonal channels. We demonstrate that broadcasting in multi-rate WMNs is significantly different to broadcasting in single-rate WMNs, and that broadcast performance in multi-rate WMNs can be significantly improved by exploiting the availability of multi-rate feature and multiple interfaces. We also present two alternative MLB broadcast frameworks and specific algorithms, centralized and distributed, for each framework that can exploit multiple interfaces at a WMN node, and the multi-rate feature and WBA of MR$^2$-MC WMN to return improved `broadcast latency' performance.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 54-63).

Thesis--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 44-48).

Dissertation (Ph.D.)--Auburn University,2009. / Abstract. Includes bibliographic references (p.107-112).

Increasing capacity in wireless mesh networks can be achieved by using multiple channels and radios. By using different channels, two nodes can send packets at the same time without interfering with each other. To utilize diversity of available frequency, a channel assignment scheme is required. Hybrid channel assignment is an interesting approach where at least one radio is tuned to a fixed channel for receiving and the remaining interfaces switch their channels dynamically in order to match the receiving channel at the receiving node. This provides full connectivity, but at the expense of introduced switching costs. Due to hardware limitations it is too costly to switch channels on a per packet basis. Instead, this thesis proposes an anypath routing and forwarding mechanism in order to allow each node along the route to select the best next hop neighbor on a per packet basis. The routing algorithm finds for each destination a set of next hop candidates and the forwarding algorithm considers the state of the channel switch operation when selecting a next hop candidate. Also, in order to allow latency-sensitive packets to be transmitted before other packets, latency-awareness has been introduced to distinguish e.g. VoIP flows from FTP traffic. The ideas have been implemented and tested using real-world experiments, and the results show a significant reduction in latency.

Due to the high availability of cheap hardware, wireless multi-hop networks and in particular Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) are becoming popular in more and more contexts. For instance, IEEE 802.11 based WMNs have already started to be deployed as means to provide Internet access to rural areas in the developing world. To lower the cost and increase the coverage in such deployments, the wired network is extended with a wireless backbone of fixed mesh routers. With advances in technology and reduction in price comes also the possibility for more powerful wireless nodes, having multiple radios that allow transmitting on different channels in parallel. To be a successful platform for providing general Internet access, wireless multi-hop networks must provide support for common Internet applications. As most of the applications in the Internet today use the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP), TCP performance is crucial. Unfortunately, the design of TCP’s congestion control that made it successful in today’s Internet makes it perform less than optimal in wireless multi-hop networks. This is due to, among others, TCP’s inability to distinguish wireless losses from congestion losses. The current trend for operating system designers is also to focus TCP development on high-speed fixed networks, rather than on wireless multi-hop networks. To enable wireless multi hop networks as a successful platform there is therefore a need to provide good performance using TCP variants commonly deployed in the Internet. In this thesis, we develop novel proposals for the network layer in wireless multi-hop networks to support TCP traffic more efficiently. As an initial study, we experimentally evaluate different TCP variants, with and without mobile nodes, in a MANET context. Our results show that TCP Vegas, which does not provoke packet loss to determine available bandwidth, reduces the stress on the network while still providing the same or slightly increased performance, compared to TCP Newreno. We further propose and evaluate packet aggregation combined with aggregation aware multi-path forwarding to better utilize the available bandwidth. IP layer packet aggregation, where small packets are combined to larger ones before sent to the link layer, has been shown to improve the performance in wireless multi-hop networks for UDP and small packet transfers. Only few studies have been made on the impact of packet aggregation on TCP traffic, despite the fact that TCP traffic constitutes the majority of the Internet traffic. We propose a novel aggregation algorithm that is specifically addressing TCP relevant issues like packet reordering, fairness and TCP timeouts. In a typical WMN scenario, the aggregation algorithm increases TCP performance by up to 70 % and decreases round trip time (RTT) by up to 40 %. A detailed evaluation of packet aggregation in a multi radio setting has shown that a naive combination of multi path routing and packet aggregation can cause valuable aggregation opportunities to be lost. Therefore, we propose a novel combined packet aggregation and aggregation aware forwarding strategy that can reduce delay, packet loss and increase TCP performance by around 30 %.

Orientador: Edmundo Roberto Mauro Madeira / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Computação / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-11T08:18:18Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Paschoalino_RacheldeCarvalho_M.pdf: 2064052 bytes, checksum: e9b127c3cba93b04b66044600728e3a9 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2008 / Resumo: Devido à facilidade de implantação e gerência, as redes mesh sem fio constituem uma escolha natural para atender a crescente demanda por acesso sem fio com cobertura em larga escala. Formadas por roteadores mesh interligados através de enlaces sem fio, as WMNs (Wireless Mesh Networks) fornecem um backbone flexível para diversas aplicações e serviços. Entretanto, os protocolos de roteamento existentes aplicados às WMNs não provêem escalabilidade, reduzindo a vazão conforme o tamanho da rede aumenta. Esta dissertação apresenta um protocolo de roteamento escalável com QoS para WMNs multirádio. Incorporamos uma métrica local de qualidade do enlace e suporte a múltiplos rádios ao protocolo OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing). A métrica de qualidade é usada na seleção de nós especiais de relay, que irão compor as rotas. Variações na métrica de qualidade são tratadas na vizinhança de 1 salto, preservando estabilidade no roteamento. Por sua vez, o uso de múltiplos rádios por nó provê um melhor aproveitamento do espectro sem fio, minimizando a contenção. Essa abordagem simples e escalável permite distribuir o tráfego na rede por caminhos com enlaces de melhor qualidade. Através das simulações realizadas, demonstramos que o protocolo proposto, chamado LQ-OLSR (Link Quality OLSR), traz melhorias expressivas na vazão, atraso e perda de pacotes em relação ao OLSR original, com um aumento mínimo do overhead / Abstract: Due to their deployment and management simplicity, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs) have become a natural way to fulfill the increasing demand for large area wireless coverage. Formed by mesh routers connected by wireless links, WMNs provide a flexible backbone for various applications and services. Nevertheless, the available routing protocols applied to WMNs suffer from scalability, where throughput decreases as the number of nodes grows. In this thesis, a scalable QoS routing protocol for multi-radio WMNs is proposed. We incorporate a locallink quality metric and multi-radio support in the OLSR (Optimized Link State Routing) protocol. The quality metric is used in the selection of relay nodes which will form the routes. Significant changes to link quality metric are treated in l-hop neighborhood, preserving route stability. Using multiple radios in each node allows a better utilization of the wireless spectrum, minimizing contention. This simple and scalable approach permits traffic distribution among better quality links. Simulations were conducted and the results showed expressive performance improvements .concerning throughput, delay and packet loss of the proposed protocol LQ-OLSR (Link Quality OLSR) over the original OLSR, with a minimum overhead increase / Mestrado / Redes de Computadores / Mestre em Ciência da Computação

Wireless mesh networks are communication networks possessing radio nodes with mesh organization structure. They are expected to be widely employed by personal, local, campus and metropolitan area applications. Most of the needed components for the deployment of WMNs; such as ad-hoc network routing protocols, wireless security protocols, IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol are already available, while there are problems sourced from various protocol layers. These problems restrict WMNs from serving their potential. The purpose of this work is to evaluate the WMN routing mechanisms with respect to several performance indicators and to determine the routing protocols, which maintain scalable, robust and efficient operation. The performance of B.A.T.M.A.N (Better Approach to Mobile Ad-hoc Networking) protocol is compared to conventional AODV and OLSR protocols in addition to an experimental wireless MPLS routing mechanism (LWMPLS). The OMNeT++ simulation environment helps to determine the performance of routing mechanisms throughout our tests. The simulation results point out that B.A.T.M.A.N protocol performs stable routing in networks with varying link qualities or failing nodes. It has low packet loss rate even when it is employed in environments with extremely high thermal noise, therefore B.A.T.M.A.N is foreseen to become one of the most popular routing mechanisms of WMNs. / +46 (0)739554313