Wireless multicast: theory and approaches

We design transmission strategies for medium access control (MAC) layer multicast that maximize the utilization of available bandwidth. Bandwidth efficiency of wireless multicast can be improved substantially by exploiting the feature that a single transmission can be intercepted by several receivers at the MAC layer. The multicast nature of transmissions, however, changes the fundamental relations between the quality of service (QoS) parameters, throughput, stability, and loss, e.g., a strategy that maximizes the throughput does not necessarily maximize the stability region or minimize the packet loss. We explore the tradeoffs among the QoS parameters, and provide optimal transmission strategies that maximize the throughput subject to stability and loss constraints. The numerical performance evaluations demonstrate that the optimal strategies significantly outperform the existing approaches.     

Stable Scheduling Policies for Maximizing Throughput in Generalized Constrained Queueing Systems

We consider a class of queueing networks referred to as "generalized constrained queueing networks" which form the basis of several different communication networks and information systems. These networks consist of a collection of queues such that only certain sets of queues can be concurrently served. Whenever a queue is served, the system receives a certain reward. Different rewards are obtained for serving different queues, and furthermore, the reward obtained for serving a queue depends on the set of concurrently served queues. We demonstrate that the dependence of the rewards on the schedules alter fundamental relations between performance metrics like throughput and stability. Specifically, maximizing the throughput is no longer equivalent to maximizing the stability region; we therefore need to maximize one subject to certain constraints on the other. Since stability is critical for bounding packet delays and buffer overflow, we focus on maximizing the throughput subject to stabilizing the system. We design provably optimal scheduling strategies that attain this goal by scheduling the queues for service based on the queue lengths and the rewards provided by different selections. The proposed scheduling strategies are however computationally complex. We subsequently develop techniques to reduce the complexity and yet attain the same throughput and stability region. We demonstrate that our framework is general enough to accommodate random rewards and random scheduling constraints.     

Throughput and Fairness Guarantees Through Maximal Scheduling in Wireless Networks

The question of providing throughput guarantees through distributed scheduling, which has remained an open problem for some time, is addressed in this paper. It is shown that a simple distributed scheduling strategy, maximal scheduling, attains a guaranteed fraction of the maximum throughput region in arbitrary wireless networks. The guaranteed fraction depends on the ldquointerference degreerdquo of the network, which is the maximum number of transmitter-receiver pairs that interfere with any given transmitter-receiver pair in the network and do not interfere with each other. Depending on the nature of communication, the transmission powers and the propagation models, the guaranteed fraction can be lower-bounded by the maximum link degrees in the underlying topology, or even by constants that are independent of the topology. The guarantees are tight in that they cannot be improved any further with maximal scheduling. The results can be generalized to end-to-end multihop sessions. Finally, enhancements to maximal scheduling that can guarantee fairness of rate allocation among different sessions, are discussed.     

Stochastic approximation based on-line algorithm for fairness in multi-rate wireless LANs

It is well known that IEEE 802.11 based MAC provides max–min fairness to all nodes even in a multi-rate WLAN. However, the max–min fairness may not always be the preferred fairness criteria as it significantly reduces overall system throughput. In this paper, we explore the proportional fairness and the time fairness. First, we obtain a condition that must be satisfied by the attempt probabilities to achieve proportional fairness. Using this condition, we propose a stochastic approximation based on-line algorithm that tunes attempt probabilities to achieve proportional fairness. The proposed algorithm can be implemented in a distributed fashion, and can provide optimal performance even when node uses a rate adaptation scheme. Next, we show that the time fairness is a special case of weighted max–min fairness with the weight for a node is equal to its transmission rate. Thus, the existing algorithms to achieve weighted max–min fairness can be used to achieve time fairness as well. This exposition also demonstrates that the proportional fairness and the time fairness are not the same contrary to what was conjectured. Performance comparison of various fairness criteria is done through ns-3 simulations. Simulation results show that time fair schemes achieve the highest throughput, and the sum of logarithm of individual node’s throughputs under the time fairness is close to that under a proportionally fair scheme.     

Admission Control Framework to Provide Guaranteed Delay in Error-Prone Wireless Channel

This paper considers a wireless system in which different sessions may use different channels with different transmission characteristics. A general framework for admission control and scheduling that provides stochastic delay and packet drop guarantees in this error-prone wireless system is proposed. By "general," the authors mean that the scheduling policies from a large class can be plugged in this framework and that admission control conditions can be obtained for different arrival processes. This enables the use of many scheduling policies that have not been considered so far for error-prone wireless systems. Using large deviation bounds and renewal theory, the authors prove that once a session i is admitted, irrespective of the scheduling policy and the channel errors experienced by other sessions, i obtains its desired quality of service. The admission control algorithm uses only individual channel statistics of sessions and not joint statistics, and the scheduling does not require any knowledge of instantaneous channel states     

Dynamic quorum policy for maximizing throughput in limited information multiparty MAC

In multiparty MAC, a sender needs to transmit each packet to a set of receivers within its transmission range. Bandwidth efficiency of wireless multiparty MAC can be improved substantially by exploiting the fact that several receivers can be reached at the MAC layer by a single transmission. Multiparty communication, however, requires new design paradigms since systematic design techniques that have been used effectively in unicast and wireline multicast do not apply. For example, a transmission policy that maximizes the stability region of the network need not maximize the network throughput. Therefore, the objective is to design a policy that maximizes the system throughput subject to maintaining stability. We present a sufficient condition that can be used to establish the throughput optimality of a stable transmission policy. We subsequently design a distributed adaptive stable policy that allows a sender to decide when to transmit using simple computations. The computations are based only on limited information about current transmissions in the sender's neighborhood. Even though the proposed policy does not use any network statistics, it attains the same throughput as an optimal offline stable policy that uses in its decision process past, present, and even future network states. We prove the throughput optimality of this policy using the sufficient condition and the large deviation results. We present a MAC protocol for acquiring the local information necessary for executing this policy, and implement it in ns-2. The performance evaluations demonstrate that the optimal policy significantly outperforms the existing multiparty schemes in ad hoc networks.