Because of the popularity of wireless communication technologies, people can access servers without the restriction of place and time. With the rapid development of mobile devices, such as smart phones and iPads, the frequency of wireless networks have increased. Roaming services ensure service provision without location constraints. A secure roaming authentication protocol is critical for the security and privacy of users when accessing services by roaming. It ensures the authenticity of mobile users, and foreign and home servers. After authentication, the session key for the mobile user and the foreign server is established for secure communication. In addition, a secure roaming protocol may provide anonymity for mobile users. When the mobile user requests a service, the server is unable to identify two requests from the same user. For the current anonymous authentication protocols, the foreign server must fulfill the revocation check by the computation linear to the number of revoked users. It makes the protocol infeasible in practical environments. This thesis proposes a strong anonymous authentication protocol, using two-stage authentication, in which the home server is involved in the initial authentication to eliminate the revocation list and issues a timely anonymous credential for subsequent authentication after successful authentication. It reduces the computation costs for the revocation check and minimizes the size of the revocation list. Finally, this thesis also provides security proofs and comparisons of the proposed authentication mechanism.

With the progress of wireless radio technology and telecommunication, various wireless specifications and protocols form the unhandy heterogeneous network. The routing problems in heterogeneous network become popular researches nowadays. In this thesis, we integrate cellular (3G) network and Mobile Ad-Hoc Network (MANET) into a hybrid network. This hybrid network is called heterogeneous wireless network(HWN) with multi-cells architecture to overcome the weakness of cellular network and Ad-Hoc network. Based on HWN, we propose a routing algorithm with quality of service (QoS) supported for requirements in the original homogeneous cellular network and Ad-Hoc network. Simulation results show that HWN with the proposed algorithm has lower request block rate and shorter transmission time.

Energy is a critical resource in the design of wireless networks since wireless devices are usually powered by batteries. Battery capacity is finite and the progress of battery technology is very slow, with capacity expected to make little improvement in the near future. Under these conditions, many techniques for conserving power have been proposed to increase battery life. In this dissertation we consider two approaches to conserving the energy consumed by a wireless network interface. One technique is to use power saving mode, which allows a node to power off its wireless network interface (or enter a doze state) to reduce energy consumption. The other is to use a technique that suitably varies transmission power to reduce energy consumption. These two techniques are closely related to theMAC (Medium Access Control) layer. With respect to power saving mode, we study IEEE 802.11 PSM (Power Saving Mechanism) and propose a scheme that improves its energy efficiency. We also investigate the interaction between power saving mode and TCP (Transport Control Protocol). As a second approach to conserving energy, we investigate a simple power control protocol, called BASIC, which uses the maximum transmission power for RTS-CTS and the minimum necessary power for DATA-ACK. We identify the deficiency of BASIC, which increases collisions and degrades network throughput, and propose a power control protocol that addresses these problems and achieves energy savings. Since energy conservation is not an issue limited to one layer of the protocol stack, we study a cross layer design that combines power control at the MAC layer and power aware routing at the network layer. One poweraware routing metric is minimizing the aggregate transmission power on a path from source to destination. This metric has been used along with BASIC-like power control under the assumption that it can save energy, which we show to be false. Also, we show that the power aware routing metric leads to a lower throughput. We show that using the shortest number of hops in conjunction with BASIC-like power control conserves more energy than power aware routing with BASIC-like power control.

Camouflaging is about making something invisible or less visible. Network camouflaging is about hiding certain traffic information (e.g. traffic pattern, traffic flow identity, etc.) from internal and external eavesdroppers such that important information cannot be deduced from it for malicious use. It is one of the most challenging security requirements to meet in computer networks. Existing camouflaging techniques such as traffic padding, MIX-net, etc., incur significant performance degradation when protected networks are wireless networks, such as sensor networks and mobile ad hoc networks. The reason is that wireless networks are typically subject to resource constraints (e.g. bandwidth, power supply) and possess some unique characteristics (e.g. broadcast, node mobility) that traditional wired networks do not possess. This necessitates developing new techniques that take account of properties of wireless networks and are able to achieve a good balance between performance and security. In this three-part dissertation we investigate techniques for providing network camouflaging services in wireless networks. In the first part, we address a specific problem in a hierarchical multi-task sensor network, i.e. hiding the links between observable traffic patterns and user interests. To solve the problem, a temporally constant traffic pattern, called cover traffic pattern, is needed. We describe two traf- fic padding schemes that implement the cover traffic pattern and provide algorithms for achieving the optimal energy efficiencies with each scheme. In the second part, we explore the design of a MIX-net based anonymity system in mobile ad hoc networks. The objective is to hide the source-destination relationship with respect to each connection. We survey existing MIX route determination algorithms that do not account for dynamic network topology changes, which may result in high packet loss rate and large packet latency. We then introduce adaptive algorithms to overcome this problem. In the third part, we explore the notion of providing anonymity support at MAC layer in wireless networks, which employs the broadcast property of wireless transmission. We design an IEEE 802.11-compliant MAC protocol that provides receiver anonymity for unicast frames and offers better reliability than pure broadcast protocol.

With increased popularity and pervasiveness, mobile networking had become a definite trend for future networks. Users strongly demand the retaining of the connectivity and the QoS (Quality of Service) of ongoing services while roaming across different points of attachment. Efficient handover schemes and service paradigms are essential to the above vision. We will contribute to the QoS provisioning in mobile wireless networks from two complementary perspectives: one is the improved handover schemes at the client end for shorter latency and less packet loss, and the other is the service migration at server end for improved QoS. There are time-consuming procedures involved in the handover process. Various research works had devoted to the acceleration of movement detection and registration. However, a time-consuming operation, duplicate address detection, was overlooked by most studies. A novel scheme featuring anycast / multicast technique is developed and presented in this dissertation. The proposed approach switches to anycast / multicast addressing during handover and switches back to normal unicast addressing after all required operations are completed. By switching to anycast / multicast addressing, a mobile node can continue the reception of packets from its corresponding node before its new care-of address is actually validated. As a result, transmission disruption can be effectively minimized. In addition, simple but effective buffer control schemes are designed to reduce possible packet loss and to prevent the out-of-order problem. Analytical study reveals that improved performance can be guaranteed, as reflected in the simulation results. The establishment of mobility-supported Internet protocols, such as IPv4 and IPv6, had made it possible that an ongoing service can be retained while a mobile node is roaming across different access domains. However, limited efforts had been paid to server sides if we consider the topological change due to node mobility. In the global network environment, the weighted network distance between a client and its server could change dramatically for reasons of topology change or node mobility. A new network service framework highlighting the concept of service migration is presented in this dissertation. The proposed framework take into account essential service quality factors, such as server loading, bandwidth, delay, and so on, and then dynamically migrates an ongoing service from a distant server to a new server with shorter ¡§weighted network distance¡¨ to the client. As a result, the individual service connection, as well as the global network environment, will benefit from the service migration, in terms of improved service quality and bandwidth utilization. This dissertation explains the general architecture of the proposed framework and focuses on the technical details of the core component - service migration module. Our experiences on the functional prototypes for service migration are also reported. The success of the prototyping system is an indication of the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Unlike the traditional store-and-forward mechanism in packet-switching networks,network coding schemes could combine and modify the contents of a number of packets from different source before the packets are forwarded.It has been recently shown that network coding techniques can significantly increase the overall throughput of wireless networks by taking advantage of their broadcast nature. In wireless networks,each transmitted packet is broadcasted within a certain area and can be overheard by the neighboring nodes.When a node needs to transmit packets,it employs the coding approach that uses the knowledge of what the node's neighbors have heard in order to reduce the number of transmissions. In this thesis,I propose jointly designing the network coding scheme and the media access control scheme to improve the performance of wireless networks.

Simulation is a powerful and efficient tool for studying wireless networks. Despite the widespread use of simulation, particularly in the study of IEEE 802.11-style networks (e.g., WLAN, mesh, and ad hoc networks), doubts about the credibility of simulation results still persist in the research community. These concerns stem, in part, from a lack of trust in some of the models used in simulation as they do not always accurately reflect reality. Models of the physical layer (PHY), in particular, are a key source of concern. The behavior of the physical layer varies greatly depending on the specifics of the wireless environment, making it difficult to characterize. Validation is the primary means of establishing trust in such models. We present an approach to validating physical layer models using the direct execution of a real PHY implementation inside the wireless simulation environment. This approach leverages the credibility inherent to testbeds, while maintaining the scalability and repeatability associated with simulation. Specifically, we use the PHY implementation from Hydra, a software-defined radio testbed, to validate the sophisticated physical layer model of a new wireless network simulator, called WiNS. This PHY model is also employed in other state-of-the-art network simulators, including ns-3. As such, this validation study also provides insight into the fidelity of other wireless network simulators using this model. This physical layer model is especially important because it is used to represent the physical layer for systems in 802.11-style networks. Network simulation is a particularly popular method for studying these kinds of wireless networks. We use direct-execution to evaluate the accuracy of our PHY model from the perspectives of different protocol layers. First, we characterize the link-level behavior of the physical layer under different wireless channels and impairments. We identify operating regimes where the model is accurate and show accountable difference where it is not. We then use direct-execution to evaluate the accuracy of the PHY model in the presence of interference. We develop "error-maps" that provide guidance to model users in evaluating the potential impact of model inaccuracy in terms of the interference in their own simulation scenarios. This part of our study helps to develop a better understanding of the fidelity of our model from a physical layer perspective. We also demonstrate the efficacy of direct-execution in evaluating the accuracy of our PHY model from the perspectives of the MAC and network layers. Specifically, we use direct-execution to investigate a rate-adaptive MAC protocol and an ad hoc routing protocol. This part of our study demonstrates how the semantics and policies of such protocols can influence the impact that a PHY model has on network simulations. We also show that direct-execution helps us to identify when a model that is inaccurate from the perspective of the PHY can still be used to generate trustworthy simulation results. The results of this study show that the leading physical layer model employed by WiNS and other state-of-the-art network simulators, including ns-3, is accurate under a limited set of wireless conditions. Moreover, our validation study demonstrates that direct-execution is an effective means of evaluating the accuracy of a PHY model and allows us to identify the operating conditions and protocol configurations where the model can be used to generate trustworthy simulation results. / text

The research work presents an enhanced cross-layer routing solution for Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) based on Received Signal Strength. WMN is an emerging technology with varied applications due to inherent advantages ranging from self-organisation to auto-con guration. Routing in WMN is fundamen- tally achieved by hop counts which have been proven to be de cient in terms of network performance. The realistic need to enhance the link quality metric to improve network performance has been a growing concern in recent times. The cross-Layer routing approach is one of the identi ed methods of improving routing process in Wireless technology. This work presents an RSSI-aware routing metric implemented on Optimized Link-State Routing (OLSR) for WMN. The embedded Received Signal Strength Information (RSSI) from the mesh nodes on the network is extracted, processed, transformed and incorporated into the routing process. This is to estimate efficiently the link quality for network path selections to improved network performance. The measured RSSI data is filtered by an Exponentially Weighted Moving Average (EWMA) filter. This novel routing metric method is called RSSI-aware ETT (rETT). The performance of rETT is then optimised and the results compared with the fundamental hop count metric and the link quality metric by Expected Transmission Counts (ETX). The results reveal some characteristics of RSSI samples and link conditions through the analysis of the statistical data. The divergence or variability of the samples is a function of interference and multi-path e effect on the link. The implementation results show that the routing metric with rETT is more intelligent at choosing better network paths for the packets than hop count and ETX estimations. rETT improvement on network throughput is more than double (120%) compared to hop counts and 21% improvement compared to ETX. Also, an improvement of 33% was achieved in network delay compared to hop counts and 28% better than ETX. This work brings another perspective into link-quality metric solutions for WMN by using RSSI to drive the metric of the wireless routing protocol. It was carried out on test-beds and the results obtained are more realistic and practical. The proposed metric has shown improvement in performance over the classical hop counts metric and ETX link quality metric.

A new promising approach for wireless network optimization is from a cross-layer perspective. This thesis focuses on exploiting channel state information (CSI) from the physical layer for optimal transmission scheduling at the medium access control (MAC) layer. The first part of the thesis considers exploiting CSI via a distributed channel-aware MAC protocol. The MAC protocol is analysed using a centralized design approach and a non-cooperative game theoretic approach. Structural results are obtained and provably convergent stochastic approximation algorithms that can estimate the optimal transmission policies are proposed. Especially, in the game theoretic MAC formulation, it is proved that the best response transmission policies are threshold in the channel state and there exists a Nash equilibrium at which every user deploys a threshold transmission policy. This threshold result leads to a particularly efficient stochastic-approximation-based adaptive learning algorithm and a simple distributed implementation of the MAC protocol. Simulations show that the channel-aware MAC protocols result in system throughputs that increase with the number of users. The thesis also considers opportunistic transmission scheduling from the perspective of a single user using Markov Decision Process (MDP) approaches. Both channel state information and channel memory are exploited for opportunistic transmission. First, a finite horizon MDP transmission scheduling problem is considered. The finite horizon formulation is suitable for short-term delay constraints. It is proved for the finite horizon opportunistic transmission scheduling problem that the optimal transmission policy is threshold in the buffer occupancy state and the transmission time. This two-dimensional threshold structure substantially reduces the computational complexity required to compute and implement the optimal policy. Second, the opportunistic transmission scheduling problem is formulated as an infinite horizon average cost MDP with a constraint on the average waiting cost. An advantage of the infinite horizon formulation is that the optimal policy is stationary. Using the Lagrange dynamic programming theory and the supermodularity method, it is proved that the stationary optimal transmission scheduling policy is a randomized mixture of two policies that are threshold in the buffer occupancy state. A stochastic approximation algorithm and a Q-learning based algorithm that can adaptively estimate the optimal transmission scheduling policies are then proposed.

It is hard to imagine the modern world without wireless communication. Wireless networks are, however, challenging inasmuch as they are useful. Because of their complexity, wireless networks have introduced a myriad of new problems into the field of algorithms. To tackle the new computational challenges, specific models have been devised to suit wireless networks. Most remarkably, wireless networks can be modelled as geometric graphs. This allows us to address problems in wireless networks using tools from the fields of graph theory, graph algorithms, and computational geometry. Our results have applications to routing, coverage detection, data collection, and fault recovery, among other issues in this area. To be more specific, we investigate three major problems: a geometric approach to fault recovery; the distributed computation of Voronoi diagrams; and finding Hamiltonian cycles in hexagonal networks. Our geometric approach to fault recovery has been experimentally proved superior to an existing combinatorial approach. The distributed algorithm we propose for computing Voronoi diagrams of networks is the first non-trivial algorithm that has been proved to perform this task correctly; its efficiency has been demonstrated through simulations. Regarding the Hamiltonian cycle problem of hexagonal networks, we have advanced this topic by providing conditions for the existence of such a cycle, in addition to new insight on its complexity for the "solid" hexagonal grid case. Although we present satisfying solutions to several of the addressed problems, plenty is left to be done. In this regard, we identify a set of open problems that will be subject of research for years to come. / Thesis (Ph.D, Computing) -- Queen's University, 2009-11-25 21:04:37.0