Matthias Grossglauser

Mobility increases the capacity of ad hoc wireless networks

The capacity of ad hoc wireless networks is constrained by the mutual interference of concurrent transmissions between nodes. We study a model of an ad hoc network where n nodes communicate in random source-destination pairs. These nodes are assumed to be mobile. We examine the per-session throughput for applications with loose delay constraints, such that the topology changes over the time-scale of packet delivery. Under this assumption, the per-user throughput can increase dramatically when nodes are mobile rather than fixed. This improvement can be achieved by exploiting a form of multiuser diversity via packet relaying.

Mobility increases the capacity of ad-hoc wireless networks

The capacity of ad-hoc wireless networks is constrained by the mutual interference of concurrent transmissions between nodes. We study a model of an ad-hoc network where n nodes communicate in random source-destination pairs. These nodes are assumed to be mobile. We examine the per-session throughput for applications with loose delay constraints, such that the topology changes over the time-scale of packet delivery. Under this assumption, the per-user throughput can increase dramatically when the nodes are mobile rather than fixed. This improvement can be achieved by exploiting node mobility as a type of multiuser diversity.

RCBR: a simple and efficient service for multiple time-scale traffic

Variable bit-rate (VBR) compressed video traffic is expected to be a significant component of the traffic mix in integrated services networks. This traffic is hard to manage because it has strict delay and loss requirements while simultaneously exhibiting burstiness at multiple time scales. We show that burstiness over long time scales, in conjunction with resource reservation using one-shot traffic descriptors, can substantially degrade the loss rate, end-to-end delay, and statistical multiplexing gain of a connection. We use large-deviation theory to model the performance of multiple time-scale traffic and to motivate the design of renegotiated constant bit rate (RCBR) service. Sources using RCBR service are presented with an abstraction of a fixed-size buffer which is drained at a constant rate. They may renegotiate the drain rate to match their workload. Because all traffic entering the network is constant bit-rate (CBR), RCBR requires minimal buffering and scheduling support in switches. We show that the service is suitable for both stored and online video sources. An RCBR source must decide when to renegotiate its service rate and what the new service rate should be. We present: (1) an algorithm to compute the optimal renegotiation schedule for stored (offline) traffic and (2) a heuristic to approximate the optimal schedule for online traffic. We also discuss measurement-based admission control (MBAC) for RCBR traffic. Simulation experiments show that RCBR is able to extract almost all of the statistical multiplexing gain available by exploiting slow time-scale variations in traffic. Moreover, simple admission control schemes are sufficient to keep the renegotiation failure probability below a small threshold while still offering high link utilization. Thus, we believe that RCBR is a simple, practical, and effective service for carrying multiple time-scale traffic.

TraNS: realistic joint traffic and network simulator for VANETs

Realistic simulation is a necessary tool for the proper evaluation of newly developed protocols for Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). Several recent efforts focus on achieving this goal. Yet, to this date, none of the proposed solutions fulfil all the requirements of the VANET environment. This is so mainly because road traffic and communication network simulators evolve in disjoint research communities. We are developing TraNS, an open-source simulation environment, as a step towards bridging this gap. This short paper describes the TraNS architecture and our ongoing development efforts.

A parsimonious model of mobile partitioned networks with clustering

Mobile wireless networks frequently possess, at the same time, both dense and sparse regions of connectivity; for example, due to a heterogeneous node distribution or radio propagation environment. This paper is about modeling both the mobility and the formation of clusters in such networks, where nodes are concentrated in clusters of dense connectivity, interspersed with sparse connectivity. Uniformly dense and sparse networks have been extensively studied in the past, but not much attention has been devoted to clustered networks.

On the relevance of long-range dependence in network traffic

There is mounting experimental evidence that network traffic processes exhibit ubiquitous properties of self-similarity and long range dependence (LRD), i.e. of correlations over a wide range of time scales. However, there is still considerable debate about how to model such processes and about their impact on network and application performance. In this paper, we argue that much recent modeling work has failed to consider the impact of two important parameters, namely the finite range of time scales of interest in performance evaluation and prediction problems, and the first-order statistics such as the marginal distribution of the process.We introduce and evaluate a model in which these parameters can be easily controlled. Specifically, our model is a modulated fluid traffic model in which the correlation function of the fluid rate is asymptotically second-order self-similar with given Hurst parameter, then drops to zero at a cutoff time lag. We develop a very efficient numerical procedure to evaluate the performance of the single server queue fed with the above fluid input process. We use this procedure to examine the fluid loss rate for a wide range of marginal distributions, Hurst parameters, cutoff lags, and buffer sizes.Our main results are as follows. First, we find that the amount of correlation that needs to be taken into account for performance evaluation depends not only on the correlation structure of the source traffic, but also on time scales specific to the system under study. For example, the time scale associated to a queueing system is a function of the maximum buffer size. Thus for finite buffer queues, we find that the impact on loss of the correlation in the arrival process becomes nil beyond a time scale we refer to as the correlation horizon. Second, we find that loss depends in a crucial way on the marginal distribution of the fluid rate process. Third, our results suggest that reducing loss by buffering is hard. We advocate the use of source traffic control and statistical multiplexing instead.

Island Hopping: Efficient Mobility-Assisted Forwarding in Partitioned Networks

Mobile wireless ad hoc and sensor networks can be permanently partitioned in many interesting scenarios. This implies that instantaneous end-to-end routes do not exist. Nevertheless, when nodes are mobile, it is possible to forward messages to their destinations through mobility. We observe that in many practical settings, spatial node distributions are very heterogeneous and possess concentration points of high node density. The locations of these concentration points and the flow of nodes between them tend to be stable over time. This motivates a novel mobility model, where nodes move randomly between stable islands of connectivity, where they are likely to encounter other nodes, while connectivity is very limited outside these islands. Our goal is to exploit such a stable topology of concentration points by developing algorithms that allow nodes to collaborate to discover this topology and to use it for efficient mobility forwarding. We achieve this without any external signals to nodes, such as geographic positions or fixed beacons; instead, we rely only on the evolution of the set of neighbors of each node. We propose an algorithm for this collaborative graph discovery problem and show that the inferred topology can greatly improve the efficiency of mobility forwarding. Using both synthetic and data-driven mobility models we show through simulations that our approach achieves end-to-end delays comparable to those of epidemic approaches, while requiring a significantly lower transmission overhead

A time-scale decomposition approach to measurement-based admission control

We propose a time-scale decomposition approach to measurement-based admission control (MBAC). We identify a critical time scale <i>T<inf>h</inf></i> such that: 1) aggregate traffic fluctuation slower than <i>T<inf>h</inf></i> can be tracked by the admission controller and compensated for by flow admissions and departures; and 2) fluctuations faster than <i>T<inf>h</inf></i> have to be absorbed by reserving spare bandwidth on the link. The critical time scale is shown to scale as <i>T<inf>h</inf></i>/√<i>n</i>, where <i>T<inf>h</inf></i> is the average flow duration and <i>n</i> is the size of the link in terms of number of flows it can carry. An MBAC design is presented which filters aggregate measurements into low- and high-frequency components separated at the cutoff frequency 1/<i>T<inf>h</inf></i>, using the low-frequency component to track slow time-scale traffic fluctuations and the high-frequency component to estimate the spare bandwidth needed. Our analysis shows that the scheme achieves high utilization and is robust to traffic heterogeneity, multiple time-scale fluctuations and measurement errors. The scheme uses only measurements of aggregate bandwidth and does not need to keep track of per-flow information.

MobiRoute: routing towards a mobile sink for improving lifetime in sensor networks

Improving network lifetime is a fundamental challenge of wireless sensor networks. One possible solution consists in making use of mobile sinks. Whereas theoretical analysis shows that this approach does indeed benefit network lifetime, practical routing protocols that support sink mobility are still missing. In this paper, in line with our previous efforts, we investigate the approach that makes use of a mobile sink for balancing the traffic load and in turn improving network lifetime. We engineer a routing protocol, MobiRoute, that effectively supports sink mobility. Through intensive simulations in TOSSIM with a mobile sink and an implementation of MobiRoute, we prove the feasibility of the mobile sink approach by demonstrating the improved network lifetime in several deployment scenarios.

Valuable detours: least-cost anypath routing

In many networks, it is less costly to transmit a packet to any node in a set of neighbors than to one specific neighbor. This observation was previously exploited by opportunistic routing protocols by using single-path routing metrics to assign to each node a group of candidate relays for a particular destination. This paper addresses the least-cost anypath routing (LCAR) problem: how to assign a set of candidate relays at each node for a given destination such that the expected cost of forwarding a packet to the destination is minimized. The key is the following tradeoff: On one hand, increasing the number of candidate relays decreases the forwarding cost, but on the other, it increases the likelihood of “veering” away from the shortest-path route. Prior proposals based on single-path routing metrics or geographic coordinates do not explicitly consider this tradeoff and, as a result, do not always make optimal choices. The LCAR algorithm and its framework are general and can be applied to a variety of networks and cost models. We show how LCAR can incorporate different aspects of underlying coordination protocols, for example a link-layer protocol that randomly selects which receiving node will forward a packet, or the possibility that multiple nodes mistakenly forward a packet. In either case, the LCAR algorithm finds the optimal choice of candidate relays that takes into account these properties of the link layer. Finally, we apply LCAR to low-power, low-rate wireless communication and introduce a new wireless link-layer technique to decrease energy transmission costs in conjunction with anypath routing. Simulations show significant reductions in transmission cost to opportunistic routing using single-path metrics. Furthermore, LCAR routes are more robust and stable than those based on single-path distances due to the integrative nature of the LCARs route cost metric.