无线自组织网络中的IEEE802．11 MAC协议的研究

IEEES02．11 DCF作为无线局域网的MAC层规范被广泛应用于无线自组织网络的仿真和测试中。通过研究发现即使在拓扑不变的条件下，使用表驱动路由协议DSDV，TCP流仍然存在不稳定和不公平现象，本文分析了问题产生的原因，提出了基于网络负载的解决问题方法。     

无线自组网络中TCP流公平性的分析与改进

研究了TCP(transmission control protocol)流在多跳无线自组网络中的公平性问题,发现IEEE802.11DCF协议在此环境下会导致严重的不公平性,即部分节点垄断了网络带宽而其他节点被饿死.首先,通过仿真分析了产生TCP流不公平性的原因,指出其根源在于MAC(media access and control)协议的不公平性,同时,TCP的超时机制加剧了不公平性的产生;然后,利用概率模型定量分析了TCP不公平性与MAC协议参数之间的关系,发现TCP流的公平性与TCP报文长度直接相关,并且增加MAC协议初始竞争窗口的大小能够有效提高公平性.据此,提出了一种根据TCP报文长度动态调节初始回退窗口大小的自适应回退MAC协议改进算法.理论分析和仿真表明,该算法在很大程度上可以有效缓解不公平性问题的产生,并且不会引起网络吞吐量的严重降低.     

一种基于信噪比的自组网功率控制算法

能量是影响无线自组网性能的一个很大的瓶颈,作为事实上的无线自组网媒体接入协议,802.11并没有动态调整传输功率的能力,网络在实际应用中的节能效果不好.为了降低网络节点的能量消耗,在媒体接入层802.11协议基础上,,提出一种功率控制算法,以物理层信噪比为基础估计控制帧和数据帧的发送功率.通过OPNET网络仿真软件对算法进行了计算机仿真,仿真结果表明.相比802.11协议,算法有效降低了节点能量消耗,提高了能量利用率,延长了网络的生存时间,同时保持了网络的吞吐量性能,对自组网的理论研究和实际应用提供了一定的参考价值.     

Modelling and performance analysis of multi-hop ad hoc networks

Mobile ad hoc networks are becoming very attractive and useful in many kinds of communication and networking applications. Due to the advantage of numerical analysis, analytical modelling formalisms, such as stochastic Petri nets, queuing networks and stochastic process algebra have been widely used for performance analysis of communication systems. To the best of our knowledge, there is no previous analytical study that analyses the performance of multi-hop ad hoc networks, where mobile nodes move according to a random mobility model in terms of the end-to-end delay and throughput. This work presents a novel analytical framework developed using stochastic reward nets for modelling and analysis of multi-hop ad hoc networks, based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF MAC protocol, where mobile nodes move according to the random waypoint mobility model. The proposed framework is used to analyse the performance of multi-hop ad hoc networks as a function of network parameters such as the transmission range, carrier sensing range, interference range, number of nodes, network area size, packet size, and packet generation rate. The proposed framework is organized into several models to break up the complexity of modelling the complete network, and make it easier to analyse each model as required. The framework is based on the idea of decomposition and fixed point iteration of stochastic reward nets. The proposed models are validated using extensive simulations.     

无线自组织网络中TCP稳定性的分析及改进

在无线自组织网络中,基于IEEE 802.11的TCP流存在严重的不稳定性,其原因与MAC协议、路由协议和TCP本身均有一定的关系,但最根本之处在于MAC协议的不公平性以及假的链路失效消息导致了不必要的耗时的路由发现过程.结合IEEE802.11的MAC协议和DSR路由协议,对这些原因进行了深入的理论分析和仿真实验,并提出了针对MAC协议和路由协议的改进算法.仿真结果证明,提出的改进算法不仅能基本上避免TCP流的不稳定性,还能够极大地提高TCP流的平均吞吐量.     

An Accurate and Scalable Clock Synchronization Protocol for IEEE 802.11-Based Multihop Ad Hoc Networks

This paper studies the fundamental problem of clock synchronization in IEEE 802.11-based multihop ad hoc networks. Clock synchronization is important for power saving, network throughput, and efficiency of many protocols in an IEEE 802.11-based mobile ad hoc network. The scalability problem of 802.11 timing synchronization has been studied extensively in single hop ad hoc networks, and good solutions are available. These solutions, however, do not perform well in a multihop environment. A few multihop solutions for clock synchronization have been proposed recently, but the performances are still not very good. The maximum clock offset is still more than 200 mus for these protocols. This paper proposes an adaptive protocol through beacon transmission prioritization, frequency adjustment, and construction of dominating set. The frequency adjustment is proved to be bounded. Simulation studies show that the proposed protocol is able to limit the maximum clock offset to under 50 mus after protocol stabilization. The improvement is more than 400 percent over the current solutions. The proposed protocol also shows great long-term stability, and it handles mobility very well.     

Design and evaluation of a novel MAC layer handoff protocol for IEEE 802.11 wireless networks

In recent years, the IEEE 802.11 wireless network family has become one of the most important set of standards in the wireless communications industry. IEEE 802.11 compliant devices are inexpensive and easier to configure and deploy than other wireless technologies. In an IEEE 802.11 wireless network, wireless terminals can move freely. As a result, when the wireless terminal moves away from its current access point, it must switch to another access point to maintain the active connection. This is known as the MAC layer handoff process. MAC layer handoff latency should be minimized to support real-time applications and to provide mobile devices with seamless roaming in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks. This paper proposes a novel MAC layer handoff protocol over IEEE 802.11 wireless networks by introducing advertisement messages sent from other mobile nodes and from which wireless terminals are able to receive the information of access points in their neighborhood. A mobile node can try to associate with access points based on the prediction before starting the probe process. The experimental results demonstrate that our solution can reduce MAC layer handoff latency to meet the requirements of real-time applications.     

Development and Verification of Simulation Model Based on Real MANET Experiments for Transport Layer Protocols （UDP and TCP）

There is a lack of appropriate guidelines for realistic user traces, mobility models, routing protocols, considerations of real-life challenges, etc. for general-purpose mobile ad hoc networks (MANET). In this paper, four laptops are used in an open field environment in four scenarios to evaluate the performances of Internet control message protocol (ICMP) based ping and transmission control protocol (TCP) based streaming video applications using optimised link state routing (OLSR) implementation in an IEEE 802.11g wireless network. Corresponding simulations are developed in Network Simulator ns-2 by setting simulation parameters according to the real experiments. Difficulties faced to regenerate real-life scenarios have been discussed and the gaps between reality and simulation are identified. A setup guideline to produce realistic simulation results has been established.     

存在隐藏终端的IEEE 802.11e多跳无线网络模型分析*

首次将802.11e的接入机制放入多跳环境中进行仿真分析和定量研究。提出一种新的多跳环境下802.11e网络模型,结合M/G/1/K排队模型,定量分析在隐藏终端影响下802.11e网络的MAC层吞吐率、MAC时延和帧丢失率,研究802.11e在多跳环境下性能表现的内在原因。经过仿真实验结果与数值分析结果的对比,验证了分析模型的准确性;通过有（无）隐藏终端影响下MAC层性能的对比分析,指出了802.11e在多跳无线网络中支持QoS的局限性：受隐藏终端的影响,802.11e对不同接入等级的业务提供QoS区分的性能明显降级。因而有必要研究隐藏终端问题的解决方案,提高802.11e在多跳环境下的性能。     

存在隐藏终端的IEEE802.11e多跳无线网络模型分析

首次将802.11e的接入机制放入多跳环境中进行仿真分析和定量研究。提出一种新的多跳环境下802.11e网络模型,结合M/G/1/K排队模型,定量分析在隐藏终端影响下802.11e网络的MAC层吞吐率、MAC时延和帧丢失率,研究802.11e在多跳环境下性能表现的内在原因。经过仿真实验结果与数值分析结果的对比,验证了分析模型的准确性;通过有(无)隐藏终端影响下MAC层性能的对比分析,指出了802.11e在多跳无线网络中支持QoS的局限性:受隐藏终端的影响,802.11e对不同接入等级的业务提供QoS区分的性能明显降级。因而有必要研究隐藏终端问题的解决方案,提高802.11e在多跳环境下的性能。     

A Distributed Mechanism for Handling of Adaptive/Intelligent Selfish Misbehaviour at MAC Layer in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

Medium access control(MAC) protocols such as IEEE 802.11 are used in wireless networks for sharing of the wireless medium.The random nature of the protocol operation together with the inherent difficulty of monitoring in the open poses significant challenges.All nodes are expected to comply with the protocol rules.But,some nodes in order to gain greater benefits misbehave by not complying with the rules.One such selfish misbehavior is waiting for smaller back-off intervals when compared to the other node...     

A new adaptive MAC protocol with QoS support based on IEEE 802.11 in ad hoc networks

With the expanding of applications, the demand of quality of service (QoS) has become strongly increased in ad hoc networks. Since the efficient and reasonable MAC protocol is a key factor for providing QoS in ad hoc networks, in this paper we propose an adaptive QoS MAC protocol (AMP) based on IEEE 802.11. In AMP, we introduce the concept of transmission license, where only the node which holds transmission license can participate in the channel contention for changing the number of licenses according to the load of the network adaptively, controlling the number of the nodes that participate in the channel contention, and ensuring the nodes with licenses share the channels through contention. In addition, AMP assigns different priority classes for different traffic according to the special characteristics and performance types of the different networks, and it sets the different contention parameters for the different priorities services for guaranteeing these services performances to have advantages in the channel contention. Simulation shows that compared to IEEE 802.11 protocol, AMP not only can meet the QoS requirement with high priority in the networks but also can well solve the hidden terminal problems and the fairness issues between different network nodes; that is, it can satisfy the high efficiency, pertinence, spatial-reuse, etc. to the largest extent at the same time in limited channels.     

CTMAC协议性能分析比较

介质访问控制协议在很大程度上决定了无线自组网的性能。本文在介绍CTMAC协议的基础上对该协议的并发规则进行了证明，并从理论上讨论了CTMAC协议的开销。通过模拟并与IEEE802．11和MACA-P比较表明，CTMAC协议可以有效地提高网络吞吐量。     

On-Demand Medium Access in Multihop Wireless Networks with Multiple Beam Smart Antennas

The paper presents a detailed discussion of various issues involved in designing a medium access control (MAC) protocol for multihop wireless networks with nodes employing multiple beam smart antennas. Multiple beam smart antennas can form several beams simultaneously and can initiate concurrent transmissions or receptions .in them, thereby increasing the throughput of the bottleneck nodes. Traditional on-demand MAC protocols for omnidirectional and single beam directional antennas based on the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) mechanism cannot take advantage of this unique capability of multiple beam antennas as they do not facilitate concurrent transmissions or receptions by a node. This paper introduces a novel protocol, hybrid MAC (HMAC), which enables concurrent packet reception (CPR) and concurrent packet transmission (CPT) at a node equipped with multiple beam antennas and is backward compatible with IEEE 802.11 DCF. Simulation results show the superior performance of HMAC in most ad hoc scenarios. Moreover, in some sample topologies, the throughput of HMAC is close to the theoretical maximum. The paper also presents a wireless mesh network architecture with heterogeneous antenna technologies and illustrates the advantages of employing multiple beam smart antennas and HMAC in such networks.     

Toward secure and scalable time synchronization in ad hoc networks

Time synchronization is crucial in ad hoc networks. Due to the infrastructure-less and dynamic nature, time synchronization in such environments is vulnerable to various attacks. Moreover, time synchronization protocols such as IEEE 802.11 TSF (Timing Synchronization Function) often suffer from scalability problem.In this paper, we address the security and the scalability problems of time synchronization protocols in ad hoc networks. We propose a novel suite of time synchronization mechanisms for ad hoc networks based on symmetric cryptography. For single-hop ad hoc networks, we propose SSTSP, a scalable and secure time synchronization procedure based on one-way Hash chain, a lightweight mechanism to ensure the authenticity and the integrity of synchronization beacons. The “clock drift check” is proposed to counter replay/delay attacks. We then extend our efforts to the multi-hop case. We propose MSTSP, a secure and scalable time synchronization mechanism based on SSTSP for multi-hop ad hoc networks. In MSTSP, the multi-hop network is automatically divided into single-hop clusters. The secure intra-cluster synchronization is achieved by SSTSP and the secure inter-cluster synchronization is achieved by exchanging synchronization beacons among cluster reference nodes via bridge nodes.The proposed synchronization mechanisms are fully distributed without a global synchronization leader. We further perform analytical studies and simulations on the proposed approaches. The results show that SSTSP can synchronize single-hop networks with the maximum synchronization error under 20 μs and MSTSP 55–85 μs for multi-hop networks, which are, to the best of our knowledge, among the best results of currently proposed solutions for single-hop and multi-hop ad hoc networks. Meanwhile, our approaches can maintain the network synchronized even in hostile environments.     

Differentiation, QoS guarantee, and optimization for real-time traffic over one-hop ad hoc networks

Nodes having a self-centrically broadcasting nature of communication form a wireless ad hoc network. Many issues are involved to provide quality of service (QoS) for ad hoc networks, including routing, medium access, resource reservation, mobility management, etc. Previous work mostly focuses on QoS routing with an assumption that the medium access control (MAC) layer can support QoS very well. However, contention-based MAC protocols are adopted in most ad hoc networks since there is no centralized control. QoS support in contention-based MAC layer is a very challenging issue. Carefully designed distributed medium access techniques must be used as foundations for most ad hoc networks. In this paper, we study and enhance distributed medium access techniques for real-time transmissions in the IEEE 802.11 single-hop ad hoc wireless networks. In the IEEE 802.11 MAC, error control adopts positive acknowledgement and retransmission to improve transmission reliability in the wireless medium (WM). However, for real-time multimedia traffic with sensitive delay requirements, retransmitted frames may be too late to be useful due to the fact that the delay of competing the WM is unpredictable. In this paper, we address several MAC issues and QoS issues for delay-sensitive real-time traffic. First, a priority scheme is proposed to differentiate the delay sensitive real-time traffic from the best-effort traffic. In the proposed priority scheme, retransmission is not used for the real-time traffic, and a smaller backoff window size is adopted. Second, we propose several schemes to guarantee QoS requirements. The first scheme is to guarantee frame-dropping probability for the real-time traffic. The second scheme is to guarantee throughput and delay. The last scheme is to guarantee throughput, delay, and frame-dropping probability simultaneously. Finally, we propose adaptive window backoff schemes to optimize throughput with and without QoS constraints.     

Dynamic address autoconfiguration in hybrid ad hoc networks

The use of ad hoc networking technologies is emerging as a viable and cost-effective solution to extend the range of traditional wireless local area networks (WLANs). In these networks, mobile client traffic reaches the access points through multi-hop wireless paths that are established by using an ad hoc routing protocol. However, several technical challenges have to be faced in order to construct such an extended WLAN. For instance, traditional autoconfiguration protocols commonly used in infrastructure-based WLANs, such as DHCP or Zeroconf, are not directly applicable in multi-hop wireless networks. To address this problem, in this paper we propose extensions to DHCP to enable the dynamic allocation of globally routable IPv4 addresses to mobile stations in hybrid ad hoc networks, which transparently integrate conventional wired technologies with wireless ad hoc networking technologies. Some of the attractive features of our solution are its ability to cope with node mobility, the introduction of negligible protocol overheads, and the use of legacy DHCP servers. We have implemented a prototype of our scheme, and tested its functionalities considering various topology layouts, network loads and mobility conditions. The experimental results show that our solution ensures short address configuration delays and low protocol overheads.     

Providing MAC QoS for multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks

Ad hoc wireless networks with their widespread deployment, now need to support applications that generate multimedia and real-time traffic. Video, audio, real-time voice over IP, and other multimedia applications require the network to provide guarantees on the Quality of Service (QoS) of the connection. The 802.11e Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol was proposed with the aim of providing QoS support at the MAC layer. The 802.11e performs well in wireless LANs due to the presence of Access Points (APs), but in ad hoc networks, especially multi-hop ones, it is still incapable of supporting multimedia traffic.One of the most important QoS parameters for multimedia and real-time traffic is delay. Our primary goal is to reduce the end-to-end delay, thereby improving the Packet Delivery Ratio of multimedia traffic, that is, the proportion of packets that reach the destination within the deadline, in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.Our contribution is threefold: first we propose dynamic ReAllocative Priority (ReAP) scheme, wherein the priorities of packets in the MAC queues are not fixed, but keep changing dynamically. We use the laxity and the hop length information to decide the priority of the packet. ReAP improves the PDR by over 28% in comparison with 802.11e, especially under heavy loads. Second, we introduce Adaptive-TXOP (A-TXOP), where transmission opportunity (TXOP) is the time interval during which a node has the right to initiate transmissions. This scheme reduces the delay of video traffic by reducing the number of channel accesses required to transmit large video frames. It involves modifying the TXOP interval dynamically based on the packets in the queue, so that fragments of the same packet are sent in the same TXOP interval. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of video traffic. ReAP with A-TXOP helps in reducing the delay of video traffic by over 27% and further improves the quality of video in comparison with ReAP without A-TXOP. Finally, we have TXOP-sharing, which is aimed at reducing the delay of voice traffic. It involves using the TXOP to transmit to multiple receivers, in order to utilize the TXOP interval fully. It reduces the number of contentions to the channel and thereby reduces the delay of voice traffic by over 14%. A-TXOP is implemented over ReAP to further improve the performance of voice traffic. The three schemes (ReAP, A-TXOP, and TXOP-sharing) work together to improve the performance of multimedia traffic in 802.11e based multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks.     

TCP Issues in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks: Challenges and Solutions

Mobile ad hoc networks （MANETs） are a kind of very complex distributed communication systems with wireless mobile nodes that can be freely and dynamically self-organized into arbitrary and temporary network topologies. MANETs inherit several limitations of wireless networks, meanwhile make new challenges arising from the specificity of MANETs, such as route failures, hidden terminals and exposed terminals. When TCP is applied in a MANET environment, a number of tough problems have to be dealt with. In this paper, a comprehensive survey on this dynamic field is given. Specifically, for the first time all factors impairing TCP performance are identified based on network protocol hierarchy, i.e., lossy wireless channel at the physical layer; excessive contention and unfair access at the MAC layer; frail routing protocol at the network layer, the MAC layer and the network layer related mobile node; unfit congestion window size at the transport layer and the transport layer related asymmetric path. How these factors degrade TCP performance is clearly explained. Then, based on how to alleviate the impact of each of these factors listed above, the existing solutions are collected as comprehensively as possible and classified into a number of categories, and their advantages and limitations are discussed. Based on the limitations of these solutions, a set of open problems for designing more robust solutions is suggested.     

一种基于节点位置信息的无线传感器网络并行传输MAC协议

针对无线传感器网络多跳通信方式产生的暴露终端问题,提出了一种基于地理位置信息的高效并行传输LACT-MAC协议。该协议突破了传统基于CSMA协议对并行传输的限制,利用节点地理位置信息实现了暴露终端的并行传输,有效地提高了宝贵无线信道资源的复用效率。分析了根据节点的位置坐标并行传输暴露终端节点的可行性,并通过并行传输检测完成了传输过程。仿真结果证明,与标准的IEEE 802.11DCF协议比较,LACT-MAC协议能显著提高网络的平均吞吐量,降低数据传输延迟,有效提高无线传感器网络效率和性能。