Jang-Ping Sheu

The broadcast storm problem in a mobile ad hoc network

Broadcasting is a common operation in a network to resolve many issues. In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) in particular, due to host mobility, such operations are expected to be executed more frequently (such as finding a route to a particular host, paging a particular host, and sending an alarm signal). Because radio signals are likely to overlap with others in a geographical area, a straightforward broadcasting by flooding is usually very costly and will result in serious redundancy, contention, and collision, to which we call the broadcast storm problem. In this paper, we identify this problem by showing how serious it is through analyses and simulations. We propose several schemes to reduce redundant rebroadcasts and differentiate timing of rebroadcasts to alleviate this problem. Simulation results are presented, which show different levels of improvement over the basic flooding approach.

A Multi-channel MAC Protocol with Power Control for Multi-hop Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

1Department of Electrical Engineering, Chang Gung University, Tao-Yuan, 333, Taiwan 2Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Chiao-Tung University, Hsin-Chu, 300, Taiwan 3Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering, National Central University, Chung-Li, 32054, Taiwan Email: slwu@mail.cgu.edu.tw, yctseng@csie.nctu.edu.tw, neel@csie.ncu.edu.tw, sheujp@csie.ncu.edu.tw

Intelligent medium access for mobile ad hoc networks with busy tones and power control

In mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), one essential issue is how to increase channel utilization while avoiding the hidden-terminal and the exposed-terminal problems. Several MAC protocols, such as RTS/CTS-based and busy-tone-based schemes, have been proposed to alleviate these problems. In this paper, we explore the possibility of combining the concept of power control with the RTS/CTS-based and busy-tone-based protocols to further increase channel utilization. A sender will use an appropriate power level to transmit its packets so as to increase the possibility of channel reuse. The possibility of using discrete, instead of continuous, power levels is also discussed. Through analyses and simulations, we demonstrate the advantage of our new MAC protocol. This, together with the extra benefits such as saving battery energy and reducing cochannel interference, does show a promising direction to enhance the performance of MANETs.

A mobile scaffolding-aid-based bird-watching learning system

In this paper, we develop a mobile scaffolding-aid-based bird-watching learning system, which aims to construct an outdoor mobility-learning activity under the up-to-date wireless technology. The proposed bird-watching learning (BWL) system is designed on the wireless mobile ad-hoc network. In the BWL system, each learner device has PDA (personal digital assistances) with a Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11b) card, within a WLAN environment. Specially, the BWL system contains a mobile learn sheet sub-system, which integrates the scaffolding-aid learn model into the BWL system. Finally, we conduct a formative evaluation to provide statistical results, which is evaluated for the following two purposes; (1) to explore the possible roles and scaffolding aids that the mobile PDA of the BWL system can play and offer in the bird-watching activities, (2) to investigate if the affective and cognitive learning could be possibly benefited from the mobility, portability, and individualization of the mobile PDA of the BWL system.

A clock synchronization algorithm for multi-hop wireless ad hoc networks

In multihop wireless ad hoc networks, it is important that all mobile hosts are synchronized. Synchronization is necessary for power management and for frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) operations. IEEE 802.11 standards specify a clock synchronization protocol but this protocol suffers from the scalability problem due to its inefficiency contention mechanism. In this paper, we propose an automatic self-time-correcting procedure (ASP) to achieve clock synchronization in a multihop environment. Our ASP has two features. First, a faster host has higher priority to send its timing information out than a slower one. Second, after collecting enough timing information, a slower host can synchronize to the faster one by self-correcting its timer periodically (which makes it becoming a faster host). Simulation results show that our ASP decreases 60% the average maximum clock drift as compared to the IEEE 802.11 and reduces 99% the number of asynchronism in a large-scale multihop wireless ad hoc networks.

Fault-tolerant ring embedding in a star graph with both link and node failures

The star graph interconnection network has been recognized as an attractive alternative to the hypercube network. Previously, the star graph has been shown to contain a Hamiltonian cycle. In this paper, we consider an injured star graph with some faulty links and nodes. We show that even with f/sub e//spl les/n-3 faulty links, a Hamiltonian cycle still can be found in an n-star, and that with f/sub v//spl les/n-3 faulty nodes, a ring containing at most 4f/sub v/ nodes less than that in a Hamiltonian cycle can be found (i.e. the ring contains at least n!-4f/sub v/ nodes). In general, in an n-star with f/sub e/ faulty links and f/sub v/ faulty nodes, where f/sub e/+f/sub v//spl les/n-3, our embedding is able to establish a ring containing at least n!-4f/sub v/ nodes.

A Distributed Localization Scheme for Wireless Sensor Networks with Improved Grid-Scan and Vector-Based Refinement

Localization is a fundamental and essential issue for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Existing localization algorithms can be categorized as either range-based or range-free schemes. Range-based schemes are not suitable for WSNs because of their irregularity of radio propagation and their cost of additional devices. In contrast, range-free schemes do not need to use received signal strength to estimate distances and only need simple and cheap hardware, and are thus more suitable for WSNs. However, existing range-free schemes are too costly and not accurate enough or are not scalable. To improve previous work, we present a fully distributed range-free localization scheme for WSNs. We assume that only a few sensor nodes, called anchors, know their locations, and the remaining (normal) nodes need to estimate their own locations by gathering nearby neighboring information. We propose an improved grid-scan algorithm to find the estimated locations of the normal nodes. Furthermore, we derive a vector-based refinement scheme to improve the accuracy of the estimated locations. Analysis, simulation, and experiment results show that our scheme outperforms the other range-free schemes even when the communication radius is irregular.

A Multi-path QoS Routing Protocol in a Wireless Mobile ad Hoc Network

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is one consisting of a set of mobile hosts capable of communicating with each other without the assistance of base stations. This paper considers the QoS (qualityof-service) routing problem in a MANET. We propose an on-demand protocol for searching for a multi-path QoS route from a source host to a destination host in a MANET, where a multi-path is a network with a source and a sink satisfying certain bandwidth requirement. Existing works all try to find a uni-path to the destination. The basic idea is to distribute a number of tickets from the source, which can be further partitioned into sub-tickets to search for a satisfactory multi-path. Through simulations, we justify that the value of our multi-path protocol is on its flexibility: (i) when the network bandwidth is very limited, it can offer a higher success rate to find a satisfactory QoS route than those protocols which try to find a uni-path, and (ii) when the network bandwidth is sufficient, it can perform almost the same as those protocols which try to find a uni-path (in both routing overhead and success rate).

A priority MAC protocol to support real-time traffic in ad hoc networks

Carrier sense multiple access and its variants have been widely used in mobile ad hoc networks. However, most existing access mechanisms cannot guarantee quality for real-time traffic. This paper presents a distributed medium access control protocol that provides multiple priority levels for stations to compete for the wireless channel. One common channel is assumed to be shared by all stations. Stations are assumed to be able to hear each other (i.e., the network is fully connected). The channel is accessed by stations according to their priorities, and for stations with the same priority, they send frames in a round robin manner. The channel access procedure is divided into three stages: priorities classification period, ID initialization period, and transmission period. Simulation results indicate that our protocol provides high channel utilization and bounded delays for real-time frames.

Distributed Localization Scheme for Mobile Sensor Networks

Localization is an essential and important research issue in wireless sensor networks (WSNs). Most localization schemes focus on static sensor networks. However, mobile sensors are required in some applications such that the sensed area can be enlarged. As such, a localization scheme designed for mobile sensor networks is necessary. In this paper, we propose a localization scheme to improve the localization accuracy of previous work. In this proposed scheme, the normal nodes without location information can estimate their own locations by gathering the positions of location-aware nodes (anchor nodes) and the one-hop normal nodes whose locations are estimated from the anchor nodes. In addition, we propose a scheme that predicts the moving direction of sensor nodes to increase localization accuracy. Simulation results show that the localization error in our proposed scheme is lower than the previous schemes in various mobility models and moving speeds.