In this letter, we propose a Throughput-aimed MAC Protocol with Quality of Service (QoS) provision (T-MAC) for cognitive Ad Hoc networks. This protocol operates based on the Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) slot assignments and the power control mechanism, which can improve the QoS provision and network throughput. Our simulation results show that the T-MAC protocol can efficiently increase the network throughput and reduce the access delay.

In Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs), general purpose ad hoc routing protocols such as AODV cannot work efficiently due to the frequent changes in network topology caused by vehicle movement. This paper proposes a VANET routing protocol QLAODV (Q-Learning AODV) which suits unicast applications in high mobility scenarios. QLAODV is a distributed reinforcement learning routing protocol, which uses a Q-Learning algorithm to infer network state information and uses unicast control packets to check the path availability in a real time manner in order to allow Q-Learning to work efficiently in a highly dynamic network environment. QLAODV is favored by its dynamic route change mechanism, which makes it capable of reacting quickly to network topology changes. We present an analysis of the performance of QLAODV by simulation using different mobility models. The simulation results show that QLAODV can efficiently handle unicast applications in VANETs.

The mobility control of mobile nodes can be an alternative to the transmitting power adjustment in case that fixed transmitting power is just used in the topology control. Assuming the controllable mobility of nodes, we propose four distributed mobility control algorithms assuring the network connectivity and the capacity improvement. We compare the throughput of each algorithm with the widely accepted capacity scale law considering the energy consumption. The proposed mobility-based topology control algorithms are named according to its operational characteristics; RP (Rendezvous Point), NNT (Nearest Neighbor Tracking), DM (Diffusion Model), and GP (Grid Packing). Through extensive simulations, we show that all the proposed algorithms successfully change a partitioned random network topology into a connected network topology without the power control. Furthermore, the topology reconfigured by the mobility control has the improved network capacity beyond that of the initial network. In the newly defined performance metric, effective capacity, the simulation results show that GP provides more improved and stable performance over various node densities with the short completion time.

A novel routing protocol, named candidate-based routing, for mobile ad hoc networks is presented. Instead of flooding over the whole network, it improves and rebuilds routing paths among a limited number of candidate nodes, which are dynamically elected without incurring or exchanging any additional information. Experimental results show that the proposed protocol performs well in terms of overhead and improvement in route efficiency, especially in the high mobility speed environments.

In multi-hop ad hoc wireless networks, it is well known that TCP suffers severe performance degradation. This is due to its window-based approach to transmission control, which injects traffic bursts into the network. These bursts increase the frequency of contention in the MAC layer which forces the dropping of some packets. This paper proposes an efficient TCP with pacing, Paced TCP, to alleviate MAC contention and thus achieve better performance than the traditional TCP variants. Our design approach is a TCP that probe the available bandwidth of the network without affecting the stability of the network. Simulations show that Paced TCP not only achieves better performance but is also friendly to UDP traffic.

Due to the distributed nature, mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs) are vulnerable to various attacks, resulting in distrusted communications. To achieve trusted communications, it is important to build trusted routes in routing algorithms in a self-organizing and decentralized fashion. This paper proposes a trusted routing to locate and to preserve trusted routes in MANETs. Instead of using a hard security mechanism, we employ a new dynamic trust mechanism based on multiple constraints and collaborative filtering. The dynamic trust mechanism can effectively evaluate the trust and obtain the precise trust value among nodes, and can also be integrated into existing routing protocols for MANETs, such as ad hoc on-demand distance vector routing (AODV) and dynamic source routing (DSR). As an example, we present a trusted routing protocol, based on dynamic trust mechanism, by extending DSR, in which a node makes a routing decision based on the trust values on its neighboring nodes, and finally, establish a trusted route through the trust values of the nodes along the route in MANETs. The effectiveness of our approach is validated through extensive simulations.

Routing in wireless ad hoc networks is a challenging issue because it dynamically controls the network topology and determines the network performance. Most of the available protocols are based on single-rate radio networks and they use hop-count as the routing metric. There have been some efforts for multirate radios as well that use transmission-time of a packet as the routing metric. However, neither the hop-count nor the transmission-time may be a sufficient criterion for discovering a high-throughput path in a multirate wireless ad hoc network. Hop-count based routing metrics usually select a low-rate bound path whereas the transmission-time based metrics may select a path with a comparatively large number of hops. The trade-off between transmission time and effective transmission range of a data rate can be another key criterion for finding a high-throughput path in such environments. In this paper, we introduce a novel routing metric based on the efficiency of a data rate that balances the required time and covering distance by a transmission and results in increased throughput. Using the new metric, we propose an on-demand routing protocol for multirate wireless environment, dubbed MR-AODV, to discover high-throughput paths in the network. A key feature of MR-AODV is that it controls the data rate in transmitting both the data and control packets. Rate control during the route discovery phase minimizes the route request (RREQ) avalanche. We use simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed MR-AODV protocol and results reveal significant improvements in end-to-end throughput and minimization of routing overhead.

Recently, bluetooth technology has become widely prevalent so that many laptops and mobile phones are equipped with bluetooth capability. In order to meet the increasing demand to interconnect these devices a new scatternet formation protocol named GBSFP (General Bluetooth Scatternet Formation Protocol) is proposed in this paper. GBSFP is the result of efforts to overcome the two major limitations of the legacy scatternet formation protocols as regards their real implementation, that all of the nodes should be within the Bluetooth communication range or that they should be time synchronized. In GBSFP, a node goes through three phases; 1) the Init phase to establish a bluetooth link to as many of its neighbors as possible, 2) the Ready phase to determine the role of each node, i.e., master or slave, and remove any unnecessary bluetooth links, and 3) the Complete phase to finalize the formation of the scatternet and begin data transmission. The simulation results show that GBSFP provides higher connectivity in many scenarios compared with BTCP and BlueStars.

Supporting quality-of-service (QoS) of multimedia communications over IEEE 802.11 based ad hoc networks is a challenging task. This paper develops a simple 3-D Markov chain model for queuing analysis of IEEE 802.11 MAC layer. The model is applied for performance analysis of voice communications over IEEE 802.11 single-hop ad hoc networks. By using the model, we finish the performance optimization of IEEE MAC layer and obtain the maximum number of voice calls in IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks as well as the statistical performance bounds. Furthermore, we design a fully distributed call admission control (CAC) algorithm which can provide strict statistical QoS guarantee for voice communications over IEEE 802.11 ad hoc networks. Extensive simulations indicate the accuracy of the analytical model and the CAC scheme.

The hidden terminal problem leads to frequent collisions and decreases the throughput of ad hoc networks dramatically. Low network spatial reuse also results in fewer parallel transmissions, which further leads to reduced network throughput. Eliminating the hidden terminals and improving the spatial reuse are two important approaches to improving network throughput. In this paper, spatial distribution of the hidden terminals is analyzed in consideration of accumulated interference and environmental noise. As the distribution of hidden terminals is affected by many factors such as transmitter-receiver distance, SINR requirement and nodes density, it is inefficient to use fixed busy tone transmission power. To eliminate the hidden terminals and improve network spatial reuse, an enhancement to DBTMA named EDBTMA is proposed. This is achieved by using an adaptive busy tone power control scheme. Receivers adjust the transmission power of busy tone according to received signal power and accumulated interference adaptively so that all hidden terminals (and only hidden terminals) are covered by the busy tone. Simulation results show that EDBTMA protocol can solve the hidden terminal problem and improve network spatial reuse better than DBTMA and achieves 65% additional network throughput compared to DBTMA.

In this paper, a novel decentralised dynamic sub-carrier assignment (DSA) algorithm for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based adhoc and cellular networks operating in time division duplexing (TDD) mode is proposed to solve the hidden and exposed node problem in media access control (MAC). This method reduces the co-channel interference (CCI), and thus increases the overall throughput of the network. Reduced CCI and increased throughput can be achieved, if time and frequency selectivity of the multi-path fading channel and the channel reciprocity offered by the TDD are fully exploited. The time and frequency selectivity of the channel are usually the main problem in mobile communication. However, in the context of channel assignment for OFDMA-based networks in TDD mode, the time and frequency selectivity of the channel are the key to reduce the interference. In the proposed channel assignment mechanism, several clusters of sub-carriers are assigned for data transmission between a transmitter and a receiver only if the corresponding channels of those sub-carriers linking this transmitter to potential victim receivers are deeply faded. In addition, the proposed algorithm works in a fully decentralised fashion and, therefore, it is able to effectively support ad hoc and multihop communication as well as network self-organisation. Numerical results show that the throughput obtained by the proposed approach for a given quality of service is higher than those of the conventional methods in any precondition of adhoc geographic scenario.

In this work, we propose a delayed data forwarding scheme using delay function. According to the link status and network topology, each node gives arrived packets some delay before forwarding them so that the packet flows through the most stable route. We first propose conservative delay function from strict end-to-end delay bound and then relax it more and more and finally introduce a SNR based delay function using cross-layer concept between link layer and network layer. We show its performance by some analysis and simulation in mesh networks. This scheme is useful for stable data routing in highly dynamic networks.

We present a decentralized VPN service that can be built over generalized mobile ad-hoc networks (Generalized MANETs), in which topologies can be represented as a time-varying directed multigraph. We address wireless ad-hoc networks and overlay ad-hoc networks as instances of Generalized MANETs. We first propose an architecture to operate on various kinds of networks through a single set of operations. Then, we design and implement a decentralized VPN service on the proposed architecture. Through the development and operation of a prototype system we implemented, we found that the proposed architecture makes the VPN service applicable to each instance of Generalized MANETs, and that the VPN service makes it possible for unmodified applications to operate on the networks.

Access to information is taken for granted in urban areas covered by a robust communication infrastructure. Nevertheless most of the areas in the world, are not covered by such infrastructures. We propose a DTN publish and subscribe system called Hikari, which uses nodes' mobility in order to distribute messages without using a robust infrastructure. The area of Disruption/Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN) focuses on providing connectivity to locations separated by networks with disruptions and delays. The Hikari system does not use node identifiers for message forwarding thus eliminating the complexity of routing associated with many forwarding schemes in DTN. Hikari uses nodes paths' information, advertised by special nodes in the system or predicted by the system itself, for optimizing the message dissemination process. We have used the Paris subway system, due to it's complexity, to validate Hikari and to analyze it's performance. We have shown that Hikari achieves a superior deliver rate while keeping redundant messages in the system low, which is ideal when using devices with limited resources for message dissemination.

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.

Mobile Ad Hoc Networks (MANETs) have inherently dynamic topologies. Due to the distributed, multi-hop nature of these networks, random mobility of nodes not only affects the availability of radio links between particular node pairs, but also threatens the reliability of communication paths, service discovery, even quality of service of MANETs. In this paper, a novel Markov chain model is presented to predict link availability for MANETs. Based on a rough estimation of the initial distance between two nodes, the proposed approach is able to accurately estimate link availability in a random mobility environment. Furthermore, the proposed link availability estimation approach is integrated into Max-Min d-clustering heuristic. The enhanced clustering heuristic, called M4C, takes node mobility into account when it groups mobile nodes into clusters. Simulation results are given to verify the approach and the performance improvement of clustering algorithm. It also demonstrates the adaptability of M4C, and shows that M4C is able to achieve a tradeoff between the effectiveness of topology aggregation and cluster stabilities. The proposed algorithm can also be used to improve the availability and quality of services for MANETs.

Recently several weighted clustering algorithms have been proposed, however, to the best of our knowledge; there is none that propagates weights to other nodes without weight message for leader election, normalizes node parameters and considers neighboring node parameters to calculate node weights. In this paper, we propose an Energy Efficient and Stable Weight Based Clustering (EE-SWBC) algorithm that elects cluster heads without sending any additional weight message. It propagates node parameters to its neighbors through neighbor discovery message (HELLO Message) and stores these parameters in neighborhood list. Each node normalizes parameters and efficiently calculates its own weight and the weights of neighboring nodes from that neighborhood table using Grey Decision Method (GDM). GDM finds the ideal solution (best node parameters in neighborhood list) and calculates node weights in comparison to the ideal solution. The node(s) with maximum weight (parameters closer to the ideal solution) are elected as cluster heads. In result, EE-SWBC fairly selects potential nodes with parameters closer to ideal solution with less overhead. Different performance metrics of EE-SWBC and Distributed Weighted Clustering Algorithm (DWCA) are compared through simulations. The simulation results show that EE-SWBC maintains fewer average numbers of stable clusters with minimum overhead, less energy consumption and fewer changes in cluster structure within network compared to DWCA.

We propose a Multiple Zones-based (M-Zone) routing protocol to discover node-disjoint multiplath routing efficiently and effectively in large-scale MANETs. Compared with single path routing, multipath routing can improve robustness, load balancing and throughput of a network. However, it is very difficult to achieve node-disjoint multipath routing in large-scale MANETs. To ensure finding node-disjoint multiple paths, the M-Zone protocol divides the region between a source and a destination into multiple zones based on geographical location and each path is mapped to a distinct zone. Performance analysis shows that M-Zone has good stability, and the control complexity and storage complexity of M-Zone are lower than those of the well-known AODVM protocol. Simulation studies show that the average end-to-end delay of M-Zone is lower than that of AODVM and the routing overhead of M-Zone is less than that of AODVM.

In this paper, we study an opportunistic scheduling and adaptive modulation scheme for a wireless network with an XOR network coding scheme, which results in a cross-layer problem for MAC and physical layers. A similar problem was studied in [2] which considered an idealized system with the Shannon capacity. They showed that it may not be optimal for a relay node to encode all possible native packets and there exists the optimal subset of native packets that depends on the channel condition at the receiver node of each native packet. In this paper, we consider a more realistic model than that of [2] with a practical modulation scheme such as M-PSK. We show that the optimal policy is to encode native as many native packets as possible in the network coding group into a coded packet regardless of the channel condition at the receiver node for each native packet, which is a different conclusion from that of [2]. However, we show that adaptive modulation, in which the constellation size of a coded packet is adjusted based on the channel condition of each receiver node, provides a higher throughput than fixed modulation, in which its constellation size is always fixed regardless of the channel condition at each receiver node.

This letter proposes a busy-tone based scheme for reliable and efficient broadcasting in mobile ad hoc networks. Control packets such as RTS, CTS and ACK are ignored in the broadcast scheme, and two busy tones are used, one for channel reservation and the other for negative acknowledgement. Unlike traditional schemes for reliable broadcasting, the proposed scheme is highly efficient as it achieves both collision avoidance and fast packet loss recovery. Simulation results are presented which show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.