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On Programmable Control and Optimization for Multi-Hop Wireless Networks

Traditionally, achieving good performance for a multi-hop wireless network is known to be difficult. The main approach to control the operation of such a network relies on a distributed paradigm, assuming that a centralized approach is not feasible. Relying on a distributed paradigm could be justified at the time when the basic technical building blocks (e.g., node computational power, communication technology, positioning technology) were the bottlenecks. Recent advances and breakthroughs in these technical areas along with the emergence of programmable networks with softwarized control plane intelligence allow us to consider employing a centralized optimization paradigm to control and manage the operation of a multi-hop wireless network. The programmable control provides a platform on which the centralized global network optimization paradigm can be supported. The benefits of a centralized network optimization lie specially in that a network may be configured in such a way that offers optimal performance, which is hardly possible for a network relying on distributed operation.

The objectives of this dissertation are to fully understand the potential benefits of a centralized control plane for a multi-hop wireless network, to identify any new challenges under this new paradigm, and to devise innovative solutions for optimal performance via a centralized control plane. Given that the performance of a wireless network heavily depends on its physical layer capabilities, we will consider a number of advanced wireless technologies, including MIMO, full duplex, and interference cancellation at the physical layer. The focus is on building tractable computational models for these wireless technologies that can be used for modeling, analysis and optimization in the centralized control plane. Problem formulation and efficient solution procedures are developed for various centralized optimization problems across multiple layers. End-to-end throughput maximization is a key objective among these optimization problems on the centralized control plane and is used to demonstrate the superior advantage of this paradigm. We study several problems:

• Integration of SIC and MIMO DoF IC.
We propose to integrate MIMO Degree-of-Freedom (DoF) interface cancellation (IC) and Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) in MIMO multi-hop network under DoF protocol model. We show that DoF-based IC and SIC can be jointly integrated to combat the interference more effectively and improve the end-to-end throughput significantly. We develop the necessary mathematical models to realize the idea in a multi-hop wireless network.

• Full-Duplex MIMO Wireless Networks Throughput.
We investigate the performance of MIMO full-duplex (FD) in a multi-hop network.

We show that if IC is exploited, MIMO FD can achieve significant throughput gain over MIMO HD in a multi-hop network, which is contrary to the recent literature suggesting an unexpected marginal gain. Our proposed model handles the additional network interference by joint efficient link scheduling and interference cancellation.

• PCP in Tactical Wireless Networking.
We propose the idea of the Programmable Control Plane (PCP) for the tactical wireless network under the protocol model. PCP decouples the control and data plane and allows the network control layer functionalities to be dynamically configured to adapt to specific wireless channel conditions, customized applications and/or certain tactical situations. The proposed PCP functionalities are cast into a centralized optimization problem, which can be updated as needed and provide a centralized intelligence to manage the operation of a wireless MIMO multi-hop network under the protocol model.

• UPCP in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks.
We propose the idea of the Unified Programmable Control Plane (UPCP) for tactical heterogeneous wireless networks with interference management capabilities under the SINR model. The UPCP abstracts the complexity of the underlying network comprised of heterogeneous wireless technologies and provides a centralized intelligence over the network resources. We develop necessary mathematical model to realize the UPCP. / Ph. D. / In the past decades, wireless ad hoc communication networks have found a number of applications in both civilian and military environments. Such networks are comprised of a set of smart nodes, which are able to organize themselves into a multi-hop network (able to communicate from the source nodes to the destination nodes across multiple intermediary relay nodes) to provide various services such as unattended and real-time surveillance. Their capabilities of selfform and self-heal make them attractable for network deployment and maintenance, especially in the scenarios where infrastructure is hard to establish. Because of their ease of deployment and independence of infrastructure, wireless ad hoc network have motivated more and more research efforts to sustain their continued growth and well-being. Nevertheless, with rapidly increasing demand for data rate from various applications, we find ourselves still very much in the infancy of the development of such networks, which have the potential to offer orders-of-magnitude higher network-level throughput.

Traditionally, the main approach to control the operation of wireless ad hoc network relies on a distributed paradigm, assuming that a centralized approach is not feasible. Relying on a distributed paradigm could be justified at the time when were the bottlenecks. Recent advances and breakthroughs in basic technical areas the basic technical building blocks (e.g., node computational power, communication technology, positioning technology) along with the emergence of programmable networks with softwarized control plane intelligence allow us to consider employing a centralized optimization paradigm to control and manage the operation of a multi-hop wireless network. The objectives of this dissertation are to fully understand the potential benefits of a centralized optimization paradigm in multi-hop wireless network, to identify any new challenges under this new paradigm, and to devise innovative solutions for optimal performance.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/82841
Date24 October 2016
CreatorsJalaian, Brian Alexander
ContributorsElectrical and ComputerEngineering, Hou, Yiwei Thomas, Reed, Jeffrey H., Sherali, Hanif D., Lou, Wenjing, Dasari, Venkat, Buehrer, R. Michael, Shi, Yi
PublisherVirginia Tech
Source SetsVirginia Tech Theses and Dissertation
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDissertation
FormatETD, application/pdf
RightsIn Copyright, http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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