To meet the bandwidth requirements of multimedia services, multipath transmission is a promising solution. In this paper, we consider multi-access networks, where WiMAX and WiFi links are set up at the same time. Multipath transmission suffers from the intrinsic problem of out-of-order packet delivery. This has an adverse impact on TCP and even UDP-based delay sensitive applications. However, multimedia streaming services allow some tolerance to transmission delay. Motivated by this observation, we investigate how to split multimedia flows over heterogeneous links. Wireless link capacity varies widely over time due to dynamic radio conditions. The capacity variations should be promptly reflected in traffic splitting in order to accomplish an equal load-balance. A practical prototype system has been implemented. We have performed extensive measurements from a prototype system. Through practical experimental results, we could verify two major research goals. One is that multimedia splitting can improve the overall network performance (e.g., the permitted multimedia sessions or the aggregated bandwidth) while still keeping an acceptable media quality. The other is an adaptation capability to varying link quality. It has been widely investigated under various radio conditions and different monitoring intervals. It is shown that the adaptive technique is effective under dynamic radio environments.

In OSI management, we utilize a scope parameter in Common Management Information Service (CMIS) that enables us to operate multiple Managed Objects (MOs) at one CMIS operation, so that we may reduce the number of communications between a manager and an agent. The more the number of MOs increases, the harder it is to find optimal combinations of scopes. In an existing approximation algorithm for finding optimal combinations of scopes, there are restrictions on the structure of a naming tree for the algorithm to work efficiently and the lower bound of its approximation ratio, n/4, grows in proportion to the number of MOs, n. This paper proposes a new approximation algorithm that removes the restriction on the structure of a naming tree and significantly improves the approximation ratio to (1 + ln n) in the upper bound, by keeping the same time complexity as the existing algorithm.

As one of the dynamic spectrum access technologies, "cognitive radio technology," which aims to improve the spectrum efficiency, has been studied. In cognitive radio networks, each node recognizes radio conditions, and according to them, optimizes its wireless communication routes. Cognitive radio systems integrate the heterogeneous wireless systems not only by switching over them but also aggregating and utilizing them simultaneously. The adaptive control of switchover use and concurrent use of various wireless systems will offer a stable and flexible wireless communication. In this paper, we propose the adaptive traffic route control scheme that provides high quality of service (QoS) for cognitive radio technology, and examine the performance of the proposed scheme through the field trials and computer simulations. The results of field trials show that the adaptive route control according to the radio conditions improves the user IP throughput by more than 20% and reduce the one-way delay to less than 1/6 with the concurrent use of IEEE802.16 and IEEE802.11 wireless media. Moreover, the simulation results assuming hundreds of mobile terminals reveal that the number of users receiving the required QoS of voice over IP (VoIP) service and the total network throughput of FTP users increase by more than twice at the same time with the proposed algorithm. The proposed adaptive traffic route control scheme can enhance the performances of the cognitive radio technologies by providing the appropriate communication routes for various applications to satisfy their required QoS.

The Intelligent Network (IN) provides advanced telecommunication services by use of network components distributed over the telecommunication networks. Therefore, the distributed processing technologies are the key to IN and the distribution transparencies which are the purpose of the distributed processing technologies are useful to reduce the difficulties of the IN development. This paper proposes two approaches to apply distributed processing technologies to IN considering on which plane to use the distribution transparencies in the IN conceptual model. The first approach applies distributed processing technologies to the implementation of the functional entities defined in the IN distributed functional plane. The second approach uses distributed processing technologies as the service independent building blocks defined in the IN global functional plane: This paper also presents the results of some typical case studies of the proposed two approaches, the implementation of the functional entities using the remote procedure call and the use of the global naming service as the number translation service independent building block, which show that the distributed processing technologies are highly applicable to IN.

Network monitoring is one of the most significant functions in network management to understand the state of a network in real-time. In SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol), polling is used for this purpose. If the time interval for two consecutive polling requests is too long, then we cannot understand the state of the network in real-time. Conversely, if it is too short, then the polling message traffic increases and imposes a heavy load on the network. Many dynamic polling algorithms have been proposed for controlling the increase in the polling message traffic. However, they cannot keep track of the time variations of management information values, since their main objectives are to check whether or not a network node is active and the next polling interval is determined being independent of the time variations of the values. The existing polling algorithms are thereby not applicable to the case where monitoring the time variation of management information values is critical. This paper proposes a new dynamic polling algorithm which, by making use of Discrete Fourier Transformation, enables not only to control the increase in the polling message traffic but also to keep track of the time variations of network management information values. We show the availability of the proposed algorithm by evaluating it through both simulations and experiments in actual network environment.

This paper proposes multipoint-to-multipoint (MPtoMP) real-time broadcast transmission using network coding for ad-hoc networks like video game networks. We aim to achieve highly reliable MPtoMP broadcasting using IEEE 802.11 media access control (MAC) that does not include a retransmission mechanism. When each node detects packets from the other nodes in a sequence, the correctly detected packets are network-encoded, and the encoded packet is broadcasted in the next sequence as a piggy-back for its native packet. To prevent increase of overhead in each packet due to piggy-back packet transmission, network coding vector for each node is exchanged between all nodes in the negotiation phase. Each user keeps using the same coding vector generated in the negotiation phase, and only coding information that represents which user signal is included in the network coding process is transmitted along with the piggy-back packet. Our simulation results show that the proposed method can provide higher reliability than other schemes using multi point relay (MPR) or redundant transmissions such as forward error correction (FEC). We also implement the proposed method in a wireless testbed, and show that the proposed method achieves high reliability in a real-world environment with a practical degree of complexity when installed on current wireless devices.

This paper discusses a design and an implementation of a MIB tester, a conformance test tool of Management Information Base (MIB) for TMN. A remote test method is used as a practical test configuration. We classify test purposes into three; basic interconnection test, capability test and behaviour test. Test items for the capability test are defined according to Managed Object Conformance Statement (MOCS) and Managed Relationship Conformance Statement (MRCS). Test items for the behaviour test is defined according to GDMO BEHAVIOUR clause. The MIB tester automatically generates test scenarios for capability tests, which are also used as those for the basic interconnection test, and supports the scenario creation of the behaviour test in an user-friendly manner. We evaluate the implemented MIB tester through its application to the actual TMN agents.

For backup of failed VPs (Virtual Paths) in ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) networks, many self-healing algorithms have already been proposed. However, since the existing algorithms recover each failed VP with a single backup VP, a problem arises in that those algorithms cannot necessarily provide a failed VP having a higher recovery priority with a larger recovery ratio, which is the ratio of the bandwidth of a backup VP to that of a failed VP. For a solution to the problem, this paper proposes a new self-healing algorithm which recovers each failed VP with one or more backup VPs. We also evaluate its availability by comparing with an existing algorithm through simulations.

This paper proposes bidirectional packet aggregation and coding (BiPAC), a packet mixing technique which jointly applies packet aggregation and network coding in order to increase the number of supportable VoIP sessions in wireless multi-hop mesh networks. BiPAC applies network coding for aggregated VoIP packets by exploiting bidirectional nature of VoIP sessions, and largely reduces the required protocol overhead for transmitting short VoIP packets. We design BiPAC and related protocols so that the operations of aggregation and coding are well-integrated while satisfying the required quality of service by VoIP transmission, such as delay and packet loss rate. Our computer simulation results show that BiPAC can increase the number of supportable VoIP sessions maximum by around 87% as compared with the case when the packet aggregation alone is used, and 600% in comparison to the transmission without aggregation/coding. We also implement BiPAC in a wireless testbed, and run experiments in an actual indoor environment. Our experimental results show that BiPAC is a practical and efficient forwarding method, which can be implemented into the current mesh hardware and network stack.

The expansion and diversification of wireless systems are proceeding rapidly, and the wireless communication environment will become a hybrid environment composed of multiple wireless systems. On the other hand, the resources of wireless systems are finite. Therefore, there is increasing concern that the growing use ofwireless systems will exhaust the finite wireless resources. Cognitive radio has been proposed as a solution to this problem. Cognitive radio aims to optimize the utilization of wireless resources by combining multiple wireless interfaces. Therefore, the future wireless access networks will be composed of multiple wireless systems. In this paper, we propose a packet distribution for communications using multiple IEEE802.11 wireless interfaces. The proposed method optimizes the utilization efficiency of multiple IEEE802.11 wireless interfaces based on a link cost which shows the load of the wireless link, and it improves delay and throughput in the access network. Furthermore, we show its impact on TCP.

The aggregation of Wi-Fi links has been identified as one way of taking advantage of available channels to achieve higher speed data transmission in future cognitive radio networks. However variations in link quality make it difficult to achieve stable performance from aggregated Wi-Fi links. In this paper we present a method for controlling aggregation of Wi-Fi links based on monitoring of link status. We first discuss the requirements for detecting bad-links which degrade the performance of aggregated Wi-Fi links. We then describe the implementation of an enhanced link-status detection algorithm based on monitoring of signal strength and number of retransmissions. In particular, we address the problems of monitoring and recovering links after they have been dropped from use, and adjusting decision thresholds to adapt to changing wireless conditions. Finally, we report the results of tests which demonstrate the effectiveness for attaining efficient aggregation of Wi-Fi links for high throughput under varying wireless conditions.

In this paper we analyze the characteristics of vehicle mobility and propose a novel Mobility Prediction Progressive Routing (MP2R) protocol for Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) that is based on cross-layer design. MP2R utilizes the additional gain provided by the directional antennas to improve link quality and connectivity; interference is reduced by the directional transmission. Each node learns its own position and speed and that of other nodes, and performs position prediction. (i) With the predicted progress and link quality, the forwarding decision of a packet is locally made, just before the packet is actually transmitted. In addition the load at the forwarder is considered in order to avoid congestion. (ii) The predicted geographic direction is used to control the beam of the directional antenna. The proposed MP2R protocol is especially suitable for forwarding burst traffic in highly mobile environments. Simulation results show that MP2R effectively reduces Packet Error Ratio (PER) compared with both topology-based routing (AODV [1], FSR [2]) and normal progressive routing (NADV [18]) in the IVC scenarios.

In inter-vehicle networks, it is required that collision warning messages be distributed over multiple hops with significantly short delay. Cut-through packet forwarding is known to be an effective method to reduce forwarding latency. However, it suffers from the reliability issue, which is especially severe in highly mobile scenario, due to multi-path fading. This paper tries to establish a reliable cut-through forwarding scheme by applying diversity combining method to collision warning messages. By exploiting the nature of the multi-hop forwarding of a broadcast packet in CDMA wireless networks, the diversity combining scheme does not incur any additional communication overhead or delay. The simulation results show that diversity combining schemes, especially Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC), can effectively reduce BER by orders of magnitude.

The development of ad hoc networking is now being watched with keen interest, because it is a key technology for realizing ubiquitous networks and ubiquitous society. In Japan, on ad hoc network, much R&D and related works have been done and on going in academia, industries and governments. Test-bed based research is an important aspect of research on ad hoc networks. The performance of ad hoc networks in real-world situations typically depends on many complex phenomena. This paper introduces a few topics of test-bed based ad hoc network research activities in Japan.

In this paper, we address adaptive link switching over heterogeneous wireless access networks including IEEE 802.11. When an IEEE 802.11 link is congested, the transmission link of a terminal with multi-RATs (radio access technologies) is switched to another radio access systems. To this end, we propose link-level metrics of LC (link cost) and AC (access cost) for quantifying TCP congestion over IEEE 802.11 networks. The proposed metric can be easily measured at a local wireless terminal, and that enables each multi-RAT terminal to work in a distributed way. Through various indoor and outdoor experiments using a test-bed system, we verify that the proposed link level metrics are good indicators of TCP traffic congestion. Experimental results show that the proposed metrics can detect congestion occurrence quickly, and avoid the TCP throughput degradation of other neighboring terminals, when they are used for transmission link switching.

In this paper network coding based relay for multi-access channel is studied. In the system, two nodes send messages to a common access point (AP). A relay assists the two nodes by forwarding a network coded version of the messages. The AP performs joint channel and network decoding to recover the two original messages from three received signals. Two schemes, soft network coding (SoftNC) and turbo network coding (TurboNC), both focusing on bitwise exclusive or (XOR) based network coding, are proposed to salvage messages from erroneous signals. SoftNC is simple and backward compatible with existing protocol stack of wireless networks, and reduces packet errors by maximal ratio combining (MRC). TurboNC improves channel efficiency by letting the relay node transmit only parity check bits of the interleaved XORed message, where reliability is retained by iterative decoding. Simulation results show that compared with the network-layer path diversity scheme, both SoftNC and TurboNC greatly improve the reliability, and TurboNC also achieves a much higher throughput. The proposed schemes are suitable for improving the performance of wireless local area networks (WLAN).

The location information of ubiquitous objects is one of the key issues for context-aware systems. Therefore, several positioning systems to obtain precise location information have been researched. However, they have scalability and flexibility problems because they need completely configured space with a large number of sensors. To avoid the problems, we proposed a self-organizing location estimation method that uses ad hoc networks and Self-Organizing Maps and needs no prepared space with a large number of sensors. But, as in other similar precise localization methods, the proposed method needs advanced distance measurements unavailable to conventional wireless communication systems. In this paper, the self-organizing location estimation method's modification for distance measurement that uses received signal strength available to conventional wireless communication systems but which fluctuates uncertainly, is described and location estimation accuracy with the modified method is shown.

In Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANET) geographic routing is characterized by local forwarding decision. Links with a long progress are preferred under the greedy forwarding rule. However in a real system long links tend to have a high packet loss rate due to multipath fading. A sub-optimal solution may separately exploit path diversity or rate adaptation. In this paper we study channel efficiency of multi-hop forwarding and try to jointly optimize rate adaptation and forwarder selection in geographic routing by the tradeoff between progress and instantaneous rate. We define a new metric -- Bit Transfer Speed (BTS) -- as the ratio of the progress made towards the destination to the equivalent time taken to transfer a payload bit. This metric takes overhead, rate and progress into account. Then we propose a packet forwarding scheme that Opportunistically exploits both long Progress and Adaptive Rate (OPAR) by a cross-layer design of routing and MAC. In OPAR each node selects for a packet the forwarder with the highest BTS. The forwarder changes as local topology (progress), packet size (overhead ratio) or channel state (data rate) varies. Simulation results show that compared with the normalized advance (NADV) [7] scheme and contention-based forwarding (CBF) [17] scheme, OPAR has lower packet loss and can effectively reduce channel occupation time by over 30% in the scenario with moderate mobility speeds.