A routing protocol for mobile ad‐hoc networks using the profit optimization model

Recently, wireless networks have become one of the major development trends in computer network technology. Because there is no more need of the wired transmission medium, applications have thus diversified. One such growing field of wireless networks is the mobile ad‐hoc network (MANET). A MANET consists of mobile hosts (such as portable laptops, vehicles, etc.), and no fixed infrastructure is required. MANETs provide ease of self‐configuration and can extend coverage at a low cost. Numerous applications have therefore been proposed under this network environment for daily life use. Because MANETs nodes are capable of moving, MANET network topology changes frequently. Thus, the traditional routing protocols fail to fit such an environment. In this paper, we propose an efficient routing protocol for MANETs, which integrates the mathematical model of profit optimization (the Kelly formula) from the field of economics to cope with the routing problem caused by node mobility. Some numerical simulations have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method using the network simulator NS‐2. The results show that our proposed method outperforms conventional routing protocols in packet delivery ratio comparisons; and the average end‐to‐end delays are within a tolerable range. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Stability‐aware multi‐metric clustering in mobile ad hoc networks with group mobility

Clustering can help aggregate the topology information and reduce the size of routing tables in a mobile ad hoc network (MANET). The maintenance of the cluster structure should be as stable as possible to reduce overhead and make the network topology less dynamic. Hence, stability measures the goodness of clustering. However, for a complex system like MANET, one clustering metric is far from reflecting the network dynamics. Some prior works have considered multiple metrics by combining them into one weighted sum, which suffers from intrinsic drawbacks as a scalar objective function to provide solution for multi‐objective optimization. In this paper, we propose a stability‐aware multi‐metric clustering algorithm, which can (1) achieve stable cluster structure by exploiting group mobility and (2) optimize multiple metrics with the help of a multi‐objective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA). Performance evaluation shows that our algorithm can generate a stable clustered topology and also achieve optimal solutions in small‐scale networks. For large‐scale networks, it outperforms the well‐known weighted clustering algorithm (WCA) that uses a weighted sum of multiple metrics. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance of MIMO cross‐layer MAC protocol based on antenna selection in ad hoc networks

In this paper, we investigate the performance of a cross‐layer (physical and MAC) design for multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) system that aims at maximizing the throughput of ad hoc networks by selecting the optimum antenna combination. Employing this cross‐layer design is shown to improve the overall network performance relative to the case where no antenna selection (AS) is used. To solve the node blocking problem associated with the IEEE 802.11 medium‐access control (MAC) protocol, the proposed protocol leverage the available degrees of freedom offered by the MIMO system to allow neighboring nodes to simultaneously communicate using the zero‐forcing (ZF) Bell‐labs layered space‐time (BLAST) architecture. Using the cross‐layer design, neighboring nodes share their optimum antenna selection (AS) information through control messages. Given this shared information, nodes set their decisions on the number of selected antennas based on the available spatial channels that guarantees collision‐free transmissions. At the destination node, the ZF receiver is employed to extract the desired user data while treating the data from neighboring users as interference. The performance of the proposed cross‐layer design is examined through simulations, where we show that the network throughput is significantly improved compared to conventional MAC protocols. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Supporting multicasting in mobile ad‐hoc wireless networks: issues,challenges, and current protocols

The basic philosophy of personal communication services is to provide user‐to‐user, location independent communication services. The emerging group communication wireless applications, such as multipoint data dissemination and multiparty conferencing tools have made the design and development of efficient multicast techniques in mobile ad‐hoc networking environments a necessity and not just a desire. Multicast protocols in mobile ad‐hoc networks have been an area of active research for the past couple of years. This paper summarizes the activities and recent advances in this work‐in‐progress area by identifying the main issues and challenges that multicast protocols are facing in mobile ad‐hoc networking environments, and by surveying several existing multicasting protocols. This article presents a classification of the current multicast protocols, discusses the functionality of the individual existing protocols, and provides a qualitative comparison of their characteristics according to several distinct features and performance parameters. Furthermore, since many of the additional issues and constraints associated with the mobile ad‐hoc networks are due, to a large extent, to the attribute of user mobility, we also present an overview of research and development efforts in the area of group mobility modeling in mobile ad‐hoc networks. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Performance modeling and analysis of emergency message propagation in vehicular ad hoc networks

Reliability and timeliness are two critical requirements of vehicle safety‐related communication services in VANETs. In this paper, we develop an analytical model to analyze the packet reception rate and end‐to‐end delay of emergency message delivery operation in a VANET environment when multihop broadcast communications are used. The model is applied to derive closed‐form expressions of the end‐to‐end delay of two popular multihop message propagation methods, that is, the farthest‐distance method and the counter‐based method. Extensive simulations are conducted to validate the correctness of the theoretic results and compare the performance of the two message propagation methods. Observations are provided for the design of efficient and robust emergency message propagation methods for vehicular wireless communication networks. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Energy‐aware virtual multi‐input‐multi‐output‐based routing for wireless ad hoc networks

Virtual multi‐input‐multi‐output (vMIMO) technology is becoming a promising way to improve the energy efficiency of wireless networks. Previous research always builds up the vMIMO‐based routing on the fixed structure such as clusters, and the MIMO mode is omitted in most cases. So, they cannot fully explore the advantage of vMIMO in routing. In this paper, we study a general routing scheme in which no fixed structure is required, and any communication mode of vMIMO is allowed for sake of the energy efficiency. We define two vMIMO‐based routing problems aiming to energy‐minimization and lifetime‐optimization. The first problem can be solved by our distributed energy‐minimum vMIMO‐based algorithm. The algorithm constructs the virtual cooperative graph, and applies the shortest path method on the virtual cooperative graph to solve this problem. The second problem is non‐deterministic polynomial‐time hard, and we design the distributed lifetime‐oriented vMIMO‐based algorithm, which is based on the modified Bellman‐Ford method. It can reach approximation ratio of four. The simulations show that our algorithms can work well in many situations. For example, distributed lifetime‐oriented vMIMO‐based algorithm can prolong the lifetime about 20.2% in dense topologies compared with the cooperative routing algorithm on average. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bandwidth‐satisfied routing in multi‐rate MANETs by cross‐layer approach

Previous quality‐of‐service (QoS) routing protocols in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) determined bandwidth‐satisfied routes for QoS applications. Since the multi‐rate enhancements have been implemented in MANETs, QoS routing protocols should be adapted to exploit them fully. However, existing works suffer from one bandwidth‐violation problem, named the hidden route problem (HRP), which may arise when a new flow is permitted and only the bandwidth consumption of the hosts in the neighborhood of the route is computed. Without considering the bandwidth consumption to ongoing flows is the reason the problem is introduced. This work proposes a routing protocol that can avoid HRP for data rate selection and bandwidth‐satisfied route determination with an efficient cross‐layer design based on the integration of PHY and MAC layers into the network layer. To use bandwidth efficiently, we aim to select the combination of data rates and a route with minimal bandwidth consumption to the network, instead of the strategy adopted in the most previous works by selecting the combination with the shortest total transmission time. Using bandwidth efficiently can increase the number of flows supported by a network. Copyright 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A delay‐centric parallel multi‐path routing protocol for cognitive radio ad hoc networks

In this paper, we develop a delay‐centric parallel multi‐path routing protocol for multi‐hop cognitive radio ad hoc networks. First, we analyze the end‐to‐end delay of multi‐path routing based on queueing theory and present a new dynamic traffic assignment scheme for multi‐path routing with the objective of minimizing end‐to‐end delay, considering both spectrum availability and link data rate. The problem is formulated as a convex problem and solved by a gradient‐based search method to obtain optimal traffic assignments. Furthermore, a heuristic decentralized traffic assignment scheme for multi‐path routing is presented. Then, based on the delay analysis and the 3D conflict graph that captures spectrum opportunity and interference among paths, we present a route discovery and selection scheme. Via extensive NS2‐based simulation, we show that the proposed protocol outperforms the benchmark protocols significantly and achieves the shortest end‐to‐end delay. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Improving energy efficiency in information‐centric mobile ad‐hoc networks using places of interest while respecting privacy

The fact that network users mostly look for content regardless of its location has led to the creation of information‐centric networks with NDN (named data networking project) as the most famous instance. NDN can be implemented in any type of network including MANET (mobile ad‐hoc network) which can be easily created among a collection of smartphones. The first step for content retrieval in NDN is propagating interest packets which has a dramatic effect on energy consumption because of wireless communications. Methods have been devised for limiting the amount of packet propagation. But they are not appropriate for smartphones either because they require multiple WiFi interfaces which is not available in usual smartphones or because they require the exact position of nodes which conflicts privacy. In our proposed approach, a single WiFi interface is used, and mobile nodes will share only an imprecise version of their current and their predicted next location, which complies much better with privacy. Using this information, the amount of interest and data packets will decrease of more than 15%. When location information is spread through the network, this reduction will be almost doubled.     

Performance evaluation of TCP algorithms in multi‐hop wireless packet networks

Wireless packet ad hoc networks are characterized by multi‐hop wireless connectivity and limited bandwidth competed among neighboring nodes. In this paper, we investigate and evaluate the performance of several prevalent TCP algorithms in this kind of network over the wireless LAN standard IEEE 802.11 MAC layer. After extensively comparing the existing TCP versions (including Tahoe, Reno, New Reno, Sack and Vegas) in simulations, we show that, in most cases, the Vegas version works best. We reveal the reason why other TCP versions perform worse than Vegas and show a method to avoid this by tuning a TCP parameter— maximum window size. Furthermore, we investigate the performance of these TCP algorithms when they run with the delayed acknowledgment (DA) option defined in IETF RFC 1122, which allows the TCP receiver to transmit an ACK for every two incoming packets. We show that the TCP connection can gain 15 to 32 per cent good‐put improvement by using the DA option. For all the TCP versions investigated in this work, the simulation results show that with the maximum window size set at approximately 4, TCP connections perform best and then all these TCP variants differ little in performance. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Bio‐inspired packet dropping for ad‐hoc social networks

Ad‐hoc social networks (ASNETs) explore social properties of nodes in communications. The usage of various social applications in a resource‐scarce environment and the dynamic nature of the network create unnecessary congestion that might degrade the quality of service dramatically. Traditional approaches use drop‐tail or random‐early discard techniques to drop data packets from the intermediate node queue. Nonetheless, because of the unavailability of the social properties, these techniques are not suitable for ASNETs. In this paper, we propose a Bio‐inspired packet dropping (BPD) algorithm for ASNETS. BPD imitates the matching procedure of receptors and epitopes in immune systems to detect congestions. The drop probability settings depend on the selection of data packets, which is based on node popularity level. BPD selects the most prioritized node through social properties, which is inspired by the B‐cell stimulation in immune systems. To fairly prioritize data packets, two social properties are used: (1) similarity and (2) closeness centrality between nodes. Extensive simulations are carried out to evaluate and compare BPD to other existing schemes in terms of mean goodput, mean loss rate, throughput, delay, attained bandwidth, and overhead ratio. The results show that the proposed scheme outperforms these existing schemes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Secure multicast routing protocols in mobile ad‐hoc networks

A mobile ad‐hoc network (MANET) is a collection of autonomous nodes that communicate with each other by forming a multi‐hop radio network. Routing protocols in MANETs define how routes between source and destination nodes are established and maintained. Multicast routing provides a bandwidth‐efficient means for supporting group‐oriented applications. The increasing demand for such applications coupled with the inherent characteristics of MANETs (e.g., lack of infrastructure and node mobility) have made secure multicast routing a crucial yet challenging issue. Recently, several multicast routing protocols (MRP) have been proposed in MANETs. Depending on whether security is built‐in or added, MRP can be classified into two types: secure and security‐enhanced routing protocols, respectively. This paper presents a survey on secure and security‐enhanced MRP along with their security techniques and the types of attacks they can confront. A detailed comparison for the capability of the various routing protocols against some known attacks is also presented and analyzed. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Lifetime optimization for reliable broadcast and multicast in wireless ad hoc networks

In this paper, we consider the reliable broadcast and multicast lifetime maximization problems in energy‐constrained wireless ad hoc networks, such as wireless sensor networks for environment monitoring and wireless ad hoc networks consisting of laptops or PDAs with limited battery capacities. In packet loss‐free networks, the optimal solution of lifetime maximization problem can be easily obtained by tree‐based algorithms. In unreliable networks, we formulate them as min–max tree problems and prove them NP‐complete by a reduction from a well‐known minimum degree spanning tree problem. A link quality‐aware heuristic algorithm called Maximum Lifetime Reliable Broadcast Tree (MLRBT) is proposed to build a broadcast tree that maximizes the network lifetime. The reliable multicast lifetime maximization problem can be solved as well by pruning the broadcast tree produced by the MLRBT algorithm. The time complexity analysis of both algorithms is also provided. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms can significantly increase the network lifetime compared with the traditional algorithms under various distributions of error probability on lossy wireless links. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

基于粒子群优化的ad hoc网络最小能耗多播路由算法

在无线ad hoc网络中,设备使用电池提供能量,随着多播应用日益广泛,如何构造最小能耗多播树是一个重要问题。针对选择不同的中继节点集对构造最小能耗多播树的影响,提出了一种优化最小能耗多播树构造的离散粒子群算法。为了避免离散粒子群算法早熟收敛,引入惯性权重策略,以平衡算法的全局搜索能力和局部搜索能力。模拟实验结果表明改进后的离散粒子群算法具有较强的优化能力,有效地优化了最小能耗多播树的构造。     

An optimal energy‐efficient clustering method in wireless sensor networks using multi‐objective genetic algorithm

In this study, an optimal method of clustering homogeneous wireless sensor networks using a multi‐objective two‐nested genetic algorithm is presented. The top level algorithm is a multi‐objective genetic algorithm (GA) whose goal is to obtain clustering schemes in which the network lifetime is optimized for different delay values. The low level GA is used in each cluster in order to get the most efficient topology for data transmission from sensor nodes to the cluster head. The presented clustering method is not restrictive, whereas existing intelligent clustering methods impose certain conditions such as performing two‐tiered clustering. A random deployed model is used to demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm. In addition, a comparison is made between the presented algorithm other GA‐based clustering methods and the Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy protocol. The results obtained indicate that using the proposed method, the network's lifetime would be extended much more than it would be when using the other methods. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Joint load balanced stable routing and communication segment assignment in mobile cognitive radio ad‐hoc networks

The fundamental issues in mobile cognitive radio ad‐hoc networks are the selection of the optimal stable paths between nodes and proper assignment of the frequency channels/time slots (communication segments) to the links. In this paper, a joint load balanced stable routing and communication segment assignment algorithm is proposed that considers jointly the mobility prediction, mitigating the co‐channel interference and energy consumption. The novelty of the proposed algorithm lies in the increasing of the path stability, which benefits from the maximum link lifetime parameter and introduced weighting function to keep routes away from the PU's region. This avoids the negative impacts on the PUs' operations and decreases the conflict of the cognitive nodes. In the proposed algorithm, the concept of load balancing is considered that yields in the balancing energy consumption in the network, improving the network performance and distributing traffic loads on all available channels. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified by evaluating the aggregate interference energy, average end‐to‐end delay, goodput, and the energy usage per packet under 6 scenarios. The results show that the performance of the proposed algorithm is significantly better than the recently proposed joint stable routing and channel assignment protocol.     

Design of reliable fiber‐based distribution networks modeled by multi‐objective combinatorial optimization

In this work, we investigate the planning of hybrid fiber/very high bit rate digital subscriber line (HFV) access networks. This HFV variant is considered as an alternative to passive optical access network. It consists of implementing optical fibers in the access network part from the central office to the street cabinets, whereas the very high bit rate digital subscriber line technology is used in the last meter part, from street cabinets to subscribers. Firstly, we discuss the different tasks of this planning problem. We model this planning problem as a multi‐objective optimization problem, where different conflicting objectives have to be optimized at the same time. We consider network costs and network reliability. This problem is solved by two different approaches: the classical single‐objective optimization (SOO) and the multi‐objective optimization (MOO), which is a recent optimization approach that is gaining an increasing interest in practical optimization problems. MOO solves the problem by searching for different optimal trade‐offs between the optimization objectives. The performances of SOO and MOO are analyzed and compared with each other using three network instances. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Partially observed cross‐layer optimization for vehicular communications

Vehicular Ad‐hoc Networks (VANETs) that are characterized by frequently changed topology, worse signal noise ratio, and non‐negligible Doppler effect introduce new non‐trivial challenges to Quality‐of‐Service (QoS) provisioning. The methodology of cross‐layer optimization aims to jointly optimize the working behaviors over different layers to achieve a better network performance, eg, throughput and transmission latency. This paper presents a novel cross‐layer optimization method based on Partially Observed Markov Games (POMG) to improve optimization decision against the inaccurate observed context caused by high‐speed movement, sensor errors, and other unavoidable reasons. POMG extends Markov Decision Process (MDP) and Partially Observed Markov Decision Process (POMDP) to dynamically adjust the concerned actions (eg, transmission range, contention window, and bit rate) according to the observed traffic density and thus can improve optimization performance at several aspects, eg,, throughput, channel utilization, delay, and total number of neighbor nodes. The extensive simulations show that POMG could harvest a high entire gain compared with the traditional fixed policy and the other cross‐layer optimization schemes.     

On‐demand flow regulated routing for ad hoc wireless networks

In this paper, we present an on‐demand flow regulated routing algorithm (OFRA) for ad hoc wireless networks. The OFRA consists of two parts: an intermediate node load evaluation process and a routing path selection process. The intermediate node load evaluation process evaluates the load efficiency of the intermediate nodes according to bandwidth, data packets and computing capability. The routing path selection process selects the routing path with lower flow and fewer intermediate nodes. The OFRA can prevent intermediate nodes to be overcrowded and distribute traffic load over routing paths more evenly. The simulation result shows that the percentage of blocked routing paths is reduced and the total flow is more balanced and distributed. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A delay‐bounded routing protocol for vehicular ad hoc networks with traffic lights

In vehicular ad hoc networks, vehicles may use a routing protocol to inform emergent events, for example, car accidents or traffic jams. Hence, many of the researchers are focused on minimizing the end‐to‐end delay of the routing protocol. However, some applications, for example, email or ftp, are not time critical, and radio spectrum is a limited resource. Hence, delay‐bounded routing protocol, whose goal is to deliver messages to the destination within user‐defined delay and minimize the usage of radio, has become an important issue. The delay‐bounded routing protocols deliver message to the destination by the hybrid of data muling (carried by the vehicle) and forwarding (transmitted through radio). When the available time is enough, the message will be delivered by muling; otherwise, it will be delivered by forwarding. However, in an urban area, there are many traffic lights, which may greatly affect the performance of the delay‐bounded routing protocols. Existing works do not consider the effect of traffic lights, and hence, it may adopt an improper delivery strategy and thus wastes much available time. To improve previous works, we propose a novel delay‐bounded routing protocol, which has considered the effect of traffic lights. Whenever a vehicle passes an intersection, it will gather the information of the traffic light and traffic load of the next road section, and thus, it can make a more accurate prediction and adopt a more proper strategy to deliver message. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol can make a better usage of the available time and uses less radio resource to deliver the message in time. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.