Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANET) exhibit highly dynamic behavior with high mobility and random network topologies. The performance of Transmission Control Protocols in such wireless ad hoc networks is plagued by a number of problems: frequent link failures, scalability, multi-hop data transmission and data loss. To address these VANET routing issues, I have used the ideas from swarm intelligence. The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), which is a branch of swarm intelligence, is the main source of my inspiration. I have designed an ant-based routing algorithm which addresses routing issues prevalent in VANETs: adaptivity, robustness and scalability. One attractive feature of ACO is that they provide multiple routes from source to destination, resulting in more robust network. In this work, together with ACO, I have used the ideas from zone routing protocols to develop my algorithm: Mobility Aware Zone based Ant Colony Optimization Routing for VANET that exhibits locality and scalability.

An unprecedented era of “connected vehicles” is becoming an imminent reality. This is driven by advances in vehicular communications, and the development of in-vehicle telematics systems supporting a plethora of applications. The diversity and multitude of such developments will, however, introduce excessive congestion across wireless infrastructure, compelling operators to expand their networks. An alternative to network expansions is to develop more efficient content delivery paradigms. In particular, alleviating Radio Access Network (RAN) congestion is important to operators as it postpones costly investments in radio equipment installations and new spectrum. Efficient RAN frameworks are therefore paramount to expediting this realm of vehicular connectivity. Fortunately, the predictability of human mobility patterns, particularly that of vehicles traversing road networks, offers unique opportunities to pursue proactive RAN transmission schemes. Knowing the routes vehicles are going to traverse enables the network to forecast spatio-temporal demands and predict service outages that specific users may face. This can be accomplished by coupling the mobility trajectories with network coverage maps to provide estimates of the future rates users will encounter along a trip. In this thesis, we investigate how this valuable contextual information can enable RANs to improve both service quality and operational efficiency. We develop a collection of methods that leverage mobility predictions to jointly optimize 1) long-term wireless resource allocation, 2) adaptive video streaming delivery, and 3) energy efficiency in RANs. Extensive simulation results indicate that our approaches provide significant user experience gains in addition to large energy savings. We emphasize the applicability of such predictive RAN mechanisms to video streaming delivery, as it is the predominant source of traffic in mobile networks, with projections of further growth. Although we focus on exploiting mobility information at the radio access level, our framework is a direction towards pursuing a predictive end-to-end content delivery architecture. / Thesis (Ph.D, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2014-04-30 06:15:34.31

Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANET) exhibit highly dynamic behavior with high mobility and random network topologies. The performance of Transmission Control Protocols in such wireless ad hoc networks is plagued by a number of problems: frequent link failures, scalability, multi-hop data transmission and data loss. To address these VANET routing issues, I have used the ideas from swarm intelligence. The Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), which is a branch of swarm intelligence, is the main source of my inspiration. I have designed an ant-based routing algorithm which addresses routing issues prevalent in VANETs: adaptivity, robustness and scalability. One attractive feature of ACO is that they provide multiple routes from source to destination, resulting in more robust network. In this work, together with ACO, I have used the ideas from zone routing protocols to develop my algorithm: Mobility Aware Zone based Ant Colony Optimization Routing for VANET that exhibits locality and scalability.

This work first implements a prototype of the proof-of-location scheme Vouch in order for an evaluation to be conducted in a real-world environment. With simulations of the scheme showing promising results, the next step would be an evaluation of the schemes performance in the real-world. This report introduces the scheme and similar works in relation to implementation and evaluation. Method of implementation is presented followed by an evaluation. The evaluation focuses on detection accuracy of the scheme by investigating impacts of the inevitably arising staleness. Contributors of staleness are identified and their impacts on overall detection accuracy of Vouch are measured. With the prototype successfully implemented, measurements showed a trend in improving detection accuracy with higher proof update frequencies, reaching as high as 9̃5% in a high velocity environment. The results shows that the Vouch scheme not only gives promising results in simulation, but also in the real-world.

Com a heterogeneidade de tecnologias de comunicação sem fio presentes na borda de redes de acesso, serviços providos na Internet podem ser acessados de forma quasi ubíqua através de dispositivos móveis ou portáteis. O acesso a esses serviços, contudo, está associado a atrasos e rupturas frequentes na comunicação devido a razões inerentes à mobilidade do dispositivo, como: i) perda de sinal em locais onde há pouca ou nenhuma cobertura de acesso móvel; ii) erros no quadro de dados durante a transmissão e, consequentemente, perdas de pacotes, que podem ser ocasionados por interferência no sinal ou enfraquecimento deste pelo distanciamento do dispositivo em relação à Estação Base; iii) mudanças de endereços IP durante transmissões em andamento causadas pela migração do dispositivo entre diferentes redes. Como consequência, aplicações falham com a ruptura de comunicações orientadas a conexão. Tratar a mobilidade de forma transparente à aplicação é um dos desafios da Computação Móvel e Ubíqua que vem sendo pesquisado ao longo da última década. Soluções foram propostas para operarem desde a Camada de Enlace à Aplicação. Muitas delas, entretanto, exigem modificações na pilha de protocolos TCP/IP e adição de infraestrutura específica de rede no suporte à comunicação fim-a-fim. Além de elevar o custo das etapas de implantação e manutenção, estratégias intrusivas e dependentes de infraestrutura adicional podem não apresentar desempenho satisfatório. Nesse contexto, propomos tratar a mobilidade no nível da própria aplicação através de Sessões de Comunicação que não falham com atrasos e desconexões. Operando somente nos nós-fim e de modo transparente às Camadas adjacentes de Aplicação e Transporte, as sessões não requerem infraestrutura adicional para intermediar ou controlar a comunicação entre pares, tampouco modificações em protocolos legados da pilha TCP/IP. O conceito de Sessões Tolerantes a Rupturas é implementado através de uma API de propósito geral em sistemas Linux que estende a interface de Sockets. A API é, na prática, uma camada transparente sobre o Socket que provê Ciência de Mobilidade à aplicação através de mecanismos para: acompanhar a localização de nós ao longo da duração de uma sessão; detectar rupturas nas transmissões causadas pela mobilidade do nó ou de seu par remoto; suspender e retomar sessões de forma eficiente, segura e confiável. Experimentos conduzidos em ambientes emulados e reais com equipamentos de uso comercial mostram a eficiência das sessões. Além de introduzir baixa degradação na vazão fim-a-fim, rupturas na transmissão podem ser detectadas em microssegundos e sessões suspensas são reabertas em milissegundos. Com um desempenho superior a solução de mobilidade geral da Camada IP, as sessões não necessitam de adaptações de software em equipamentos de rede / Nowadays services available on the Internet can be accessed from mobile devices while they roam across heterogeneous wireless networks. Due to the inherent reasons of device mobility, however, the access to such services is frequently involved with delay and disruptions. The most common reasons are: i) losing radio signal at places where mobile access coverage area is not available; ii) frame error, losses, and fading on the radio signal when the mobile device moves away from the Base Station; iii) changes on the devices IP address over ongoing transmission, while the mobile node migrates among different wireless networks. As result, networked application fails with disruptions on TCP connections established in the mobile users path. Handling seamlessly mobility on the Internet is a technical challenge of the Mobile Computing Paradigm. It has been widely researched over the last decade. Several solutions have been proposed to work from the Link Layer to the Application Layer. Most of them, however, work intrusively and require modifications in the classical TCP/IP protocol stack, as well as rely on additional network infrastructure to support mobile end-to-end communication. Besides increasing the cost of deployment and maintenance, intrusive and infrastructure dependent strategies may not present suitable performance. In this sense, we devised an architecture to handle mobility at the Application level by means of communication sessions that do not fail with delay, disruption or disconnection. Such sessions work only at the end-systems in a such way that: are fully transparent to the adjacent layers of Transport and Application; do not require additional network infrastructure to forward and manage the communication between two mobile peers; and do not impose any modification on the legacy protocols from the TCP/IP stack. The concept of Disruption-Tolerant Sessions is implemented in Linux by means of a general purpose API extended from the Socket interface. Such API is a transparent layer placed on top of the Socket to provide mobility awareness to the Application Layer. To do so, session services are provided for: tracking mobile peers along the session duration; detecting disruptions over TCP connection caused by mobility of the local or remote peer; suspending and resuming sessions with efficiency, security and reliability. Experiments conducted in emulated and real systems (off-the-shelf hardware and open source software) showed the desired efficiency. Besides introducing little overhead on the goodput, disruptions are detected in a range of microseconds and suspended sessions are resumed in milliseconds. With performance greater than the general IP layer mobility solution, the proposed sessions do not require software adaptation in the core of the network infrastructure

Com a heterogeneidade de tecnologias de comunicação sem fio presentes na borda de redes de acesso, serviços providos na Internet podem ser acessados de forma quasi ubíqua através de dispositivos móveis ou portáteis. O acesso a esses serviços, contudo, está associado a atrasos e rupturas frequentes na comunicação devido a razões inerentes à mobilidade do dispositivo, como: i) perda de sinal em locais onde há pouca ou nenhuma cobertura de acesso móvel; ii) erros no quadro de dados durante a transmissão e, consequentemente, perdas de pacotes, que podem ser ocasionados por interferência no sinal ou enfraquecimento deste pelo distanciamento do dispositivo em relação à Estação Base; iii) mudanças de endereços IP durante transmissões em andamento causadas pela migração do dispositivo entre diferentes redes. Como consequência, aplicações falham com a ruptura de comunicações orientadas a conexão. Tratar a mobilidade de forma transparente à aplicação é um dos desafios da Computação Móvel e Ubíqua que vem sendo pesquisado ao longo da última década. Soluções foram propostas para operarem desde a Camada de Enlace à Aplicação. Muitas delas, entretanto, exigem modificações na pilha de protocolos TCP/IP e adição de infraestrutura específica de rede no suporte à comunicação fim-a-fim. Além de elevar o custo das etapas de implantação e manutenção, estratégias intrusivas e dependentes de infraestrutura adicional podem não apresentar desempenho satisfatório. Nesse contexto, propomos tratar a mobilidade no nível da própria aplicação através de Sessões de Comunicação que não falham com atrasos e desconexões. Operando somente nos nós-fim e de modo transparente às Camadas adjacentes de Aplicação e Transporte, as sessões não requerem infraestrutura adicional para intermediar ou controlar a comunicação entre pares, tampouco modificações em protocolos legados da pilha TCP/IP. O conceito de Sessões Tolerantes a Rupturas é implementado através de uma API de propósito geral em sistemas Linux que estende a interface de Sockets. A API é, na prática, uma camada transparente sobre o Socket que provê Ciência de Mobilidade à aplicação através de mecanismos para: acompanhar a localização de nós ao longo da duração de uma sessão; detectar rupturas nas transmissões causadas pela mobilidade do nó ou de seu par remoto; suspender e retomar sessões de forma eficiente, segura e confiável. Experimentos conduzidos em ambientes emulados e reais com equipamentos de uso comercial mostram a eficiência das sessões. Além de introduzir baixa degradação na vazão fim-a-fim, rupturas na transmissão podem ser detectadas em microssegundos e sessões suspensas são reabertas em milissegundos. Com um desempenho superior a solução de mobilidade geral da Camada IP, as sessões não necessitam de adaptações de software em equipamentos de rede / Nowadays services available on the Internet can be accessed from mobile devices while they roam across heterogeneous wireless networks. Due to the inherent reasons of device mobility, however, the access to such services is frequently involved with delay and disruptions. The most common reasons are: i) losing radio signal at places where mobile access coverage area is not available; ii) frame error, losses, and fading on the radio signal when the mobile device moves away from the Base Station; iii) changes on the devices IP address over ongoing transmission, while the mobile node migrates among different wireless networks. As result, networked application fails with disruptions on TCP connections established in the mobile users path. Handling seamlessly mobility on the Internet is a technical challenge of the Mobile Computing Paradigm. It has been widely researched over the last decade. Several solutions have been proposed to work from the Link Layer to the Application Layer. Most of them, however, work intrusively and require modifications in the classical TCP/IP protocol stack, as well as rely on additional network infrastructure to support mobile end-to-end communication. Besides increasing the cost of deployment and maintenance, intrusive and infrastructure dependent strategies may not present suitable performance. In this sense, we devised an architecture to handle mobility at the Application level by means of communication sessions that do not fail with delay, disruption or disconnection. Such sessions work only at the end-systems in a such way that: are fully transparent to the adjacent layers of Transport and Application; do not require additional network infrastructure to forward and manage the communication between two mobile peers; and do not impose any modification on the legacy protocols from the TCP/IP stack. The concept of Disruption-Tolerant Sessions is implemented in Linux by means of a general purpose API extended from the Socket interface. Such API is a transparent layer placed on top of the Socket to provide mobility awareness to the Application Layer. To do so, session services are provided for: tracking mobile peers along the session duration; detecting disruptions over TCP connection caused by mobility of the local or remote peer; suspending and resuming sessions with efficiency, security and reliability. Experiments conducted in emulated and real systems (off-the-shelf hardware and open source software) showed the desired efficiency. Besides introducing little overhead on the goodput, disruptions are detected in a range of microseconds and suspended sessions are resumed in milliseconds. With performance greater than the general IP layer mobility solution, the proposed sessions do not require software adaptation in the core of the network infrastructure