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Improving Network Reliability: Analysis, Methodology, and Algorithms

The reliability of networking and communication systems is vital for the nation's
economy and security. Optical and cellular networks have become a critical infrastructure
and are indispensable in emergency situations. This dissertation outlines
methods for analyzing such infrastructures in the presence of catastrophic failures,
such as a hurricane, as well as accidental failures of one or more components. Additionally,
it presents a method for protecting against the loss of a single link in a
multicast network along with a technique that enables wireless clients to efficiently
recover lost data sent by their source through collaborative information exchange.
Analysis of a network's reliability during a natural disaster can be assessed by
simulating the conditions in which it is expected to perform. This dissertation conducts
the analysis of a cellular infrastructure in the aftermath of a hurricane through
Monte-Carlo sampling and presents alternative topologies which reduce resulting loss
of calls. While previous research on restoration mechanisms for large-scale networks
has mostly focused on handling the failures of single network elements, this dissertation
examines the sampling methods used for simulating multiple failures. We present
a quick method of nding a lower bound on a network's data loss through enumeration
of possible cuts as well as an efficient method of nding a tighter lower bound
through genetic algorithms leveraging the niching technique.
Mitigation of data losses in a multicast network can be achieved by adding redundancy
and employing advanced coding techniques. By using Maximum Rank Distance (MRD) codes at the source, a provider can create a parity packet which is
e ectively linearly independent from the source packets such that all packets may be
transmitted through the network using the network coding technique. This allows
all sinks to recover all of the original data even with the failure of an edge within
the network. Furthermore, this dissertation presents a method that allows a group of
wireless clients to cooperatively recover from erasures (e.g., due to failures) by using
the index coding techniques.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2010-05-7892
Date2010 May 1900
CreatorsBooker, Graham B.
ContributorsSprintson, Alexander
Source SetsTexas A and M University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeBook, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text
Formatapplication/pdf

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