Safdar Hussain Bouk

CODIE: Controlled Data and Interest Evaluation in Vehicular Named Data Networks

Recently, named data networking (NDN) has been proposed as a promising architecture for future Internet technologies. NDN is an extension to the content-centric network (CCN) and is expected to support various applications in vehicular communications [vehicular NDN (VNDN)]. VNDN basically relies on naming the content rather than using end-to-end device names. In VNDN, a vehicle broadcasts an “Interest” packet for the required “content,” regardless of end-to-end connectivity with servers or other vehicles and known as a “consumer.” In response, a vehicle with the content replies to the Interest packet with a “Data” packet and named as a “provider.” However, the simple VNDN architecture faces several challenges such as consumer/provider mobility and Interest/Data packet(s) forwarding. In VNDN, for the most part, the Data packet is sent along the reverse path of the related Interest packet. However, there is no extensive simulated reference available in the literature to support this argument. In this paper, therefore, we first analyze the propagation behavior of Interest and Data packets in the vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) environment through extensive simulations. Second, we propose the “CODIE” scheme to control the Data flooding/broadcast storm in the naïve VNDN. The main idea is to allow the consumer vehicle to start hop counter in Interest packet. Upon receiving this Interest by any potential provider, a data dissemination limit (DDL) value stores the number of hops and a data packet needs to travel back. Simulation results show that CODIE forwards fewer copies of data packets processed (CDPP) while achieving similar interest satisfaction rate (ISR), as compared with the naïve VNDN. In addition, we also found that CODIE also minimizes the overall interest satisfaction delay (ISD), respectively.

RUFS: RobUst Forwarder Selection in Vehicular Content-Centric Networks

Vehicular Content-Centric Network (VCCN) has emerged as a future network technology for vehicular networks, where the focus of communication is shifted from the host to information centric. However, VCCN faces several challenges, including interest/data packet(s) flooding, provider/consumer mobility, and so on. In this letter, we propose a scheme named RobUst Forwarder Selection (RUFS) to mitigate the interest broadcast storm. In RUFS, each vehicle shares its satisfied interest(s) statistics with neighbors. All neighbors store this information in their Neighbors Satisfied List (NSL), which helps to select the potential interest forwarder. Simulation results show that RUFS outperforms the recently proposed NAIF, DR based and basic interest forwarding in VCCN.

Gateway discovery algorithm based on multiple QoS path parameters between mobile node and gateway node

Several gateway selection schemes have been proposed that select gateway nodes based on a single Quality of Service (QoS) path parameter, for instance path availability period, link capacity or end-to-end delay, etc. or on multiple non-QoS parameters, for instance the combination of gateway node speed, residual energy, and number of hops, for Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs). Each scheme just focuses on the ment of improve only a single network performance, i.e., network throughput, packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, or packet drop ratio. However, none of these schemes improves the overall network performance because they focus on a single QoS path parameter or on set of non-QoS parameters. To improve the overall network performance, it is necessary to select a gateway with stable path, a path with the maximum residual load capacity and the minimum latency. In this paper, we propose a gateway selection scheme that considers multiple QoS path parameters such as path availability period, available capacity and latency, to select a potential gateway node. We improve the path availability computation accuracy, we introduce a feedback system to updated path dynamics to the traffic source node and we propose an efficient method to propagate QoS parameters in our scheme. Computer simulations show that our gateway selection scheme improves throughput and packet delivery ratio with less per node energy consumption. It also improves the end-to-end delay compared to single QoS path parameter gateway selection schemes. In addition, we simulate the proposed scheme by considering weighting factors to gateway selection parameters and results show that the weighting factors improve the throughput and end-to-end delay compared to the conventional schemes.

BEST-MAC: Bitmap-Assisted Efficient and Scalable TDMA-Based WSN MAC Protocol for Smart Cities

Smart cities have been envisioned during the last decade. Moreover, various projects have been initiated to bring this concept into reality. Smart city is basically an emergence of the existing and new Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) to make our living standard more safe and digitized. Wireless communications, such as sensors, actuators, intelligent transportation systems, and smart grids, have played a vital role in the dissemination of information under the given circumstances. Similarly, it is hard to declare any city as a smart city without taking benefits from wireless sensor networks (WSNs). However, with new requirements and delay sensitive applications, the existing WSN requires significant alterations at several layers. In this paper, a new time division multiple access (TDMA)-based medium access control (MAC) protocol, called bitmap-assisted efficient and scalable TDMA-based MAC (BEST-MAC), is proposed for adaptive traffic in hierarchical WSNs that can be deployed in the smart cities. BEST-MAC is specifically designed to improve the quality control of such smart cities applications, where diverse traffic is required and loss or delay in data traffic is unacceptable. The main contributions of BEST-MAC include: 1) it uses small size time slots; 2) the number of those time slots is more than the number of member nodes; 3) knapsack algorithm is used to schedule time slots; and 4) short node address (1 B) is proposed to identify the member nodes. First two contributions of BEST-MAC handle adaptive traffic loads of all members in an efficient manner. The knapsack algorithm not only reduces the job completion time of a node but also minimizes the average packet delay with better link utilization. The short node address reduces the control overhead that improves the energy efficiency. The simulation results verify that the proposed BEST-MAC transmits more data with less delay and energy consumption compared with the existing MAC protocols.

Evaluation of Slotted CSMA/CA of IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.15.4 standard is specifically designed for low Rate Wireless Personal Area Network (LR-WPAN) with low data rate and low power capabilities. Due to very low power consumption with duty cycle even less than 0.1, the standard is being widely applied in Wireless Sensor Networks applications. It operates in Beacon and Non Beacon enabled modes. During Beacon enabled mode, it has Contention Access Period (CAP) and optional Contention Free Period. We have analyzed its performance during CAP where slotted CSMA/CA algorithm is used. The performance analysis includes channel access busy, transmission failure chances along with reliability and throughput against all three frequency bands with load variation.

Named-Data-Networking-Based ITS for Smart Cities

A smart city enhances the quality of its citizens’ lives by providing ease of access to ubiquitous services through integration using communication systems at the foundation. Additionally, ITS plays a major role in making a metropolitan area into a smart city. The current IP-based solutions for ITS have slanted the performance due to high demand for data on the move, especially when the consumers become the producers. Meanwhile, NDN has evolved as a promising future Internet architecture and is being investigated extensively. In this article, we discuss the core functionality of NDN followed by our new architecture proposed for ITS in smart cities. Also, we highlight the current and future research challenges for NDN-enabled ITS in the context of smart cities.

Energy Efficient MAC Protocols

This paper presents a survey of energy efficiency of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols for Wireless Body Area Sensor Networks (WBASNs). We highlight the features of MAC protocols along with their advantages and limitations in context of WBASNs. Comparison of Low Power Listening (LPL), Scheduled Contention and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) is also elaborated. MAC protocols with respect to different approaches and techniques which are used for energy minimization, traffic control mechanisms for collision avoidance are discussed. We also present a survey of path loss models for In-body, On-body and Off-body communications in WBASNs and analytically discuss that path loss is maximum in In-body communication because of low energy levels to take care of tissues and organs located inside the body. Survey of Power model for WBANs of CSMA/CA and beacon mode is also presented.

Hierarchical and hash based naming with Compact Trie name management scheme for Vehicular Content Centric Networks

Content-Centric Network (CCN) is a promising future Internet architecture, attracting research community and being widely adopted in the vehicular networks. The main concept of CCN is to smoothly distribute digital contents between the content provider and consumer. In these types of networks, contents are identified by unique names, however, naming those contents is still a challenging task. Therefore, we propose a hierarchical and hash based naming with efficient Compact Trie (CT) management scheme for Vehicular Content-Centric Network (VCCN). The proposed naming scheme makes the best use of the features offered by hierarchical as well as hash-based or flat naming schemes. The hierarchical part of the digital content name contains information about the content provider, type, its sub-types and attributes of the content itself that is shared between vehicles. The hash part uniquely identifies the digital content required for VCCN applications. The proposed naming scheme satisfies two main purposes: first, it helps in minimizing the routing table by aggregating the name prefixes and simplifying the routing decisions. Second, it contains attributes, spatial, temporal and their range information to easily find and resolve the content. The proposed scheme manages prefixes (e.g. Add, Search and Delete) in the tables e.g. Forwarding Information Base (FIB), Pending Interest Table (PIT), etc. The CT is relatively faster and space-efficient than Simple Trie and has better performance compared to the existing solutions of naming the required content(s). The evaluation results show that the proposed CT based prefix management scheme performs 45.5% and 23.3% faster prefix search and 55% and 34% faster prefix delete operation compared to Simple Trie and Bloom-Filter based name management schemes, respectively. The memory profile results show that average memory consumption of the proposed CT implementation is 24 and 186 times smaller than the Simple Trie and the NLAPB, respectively.

DPEL: Dynamic PIT Entry Lifetime in Vehicular Named Data Networks

Vehicular named data network (VNDN) has emerged as a promising network technology, where the focus of communication is moved from host-centric to information-centric. Since, the VNDN is at its early stage in development, there are several open issues to be explored and pending interest table (PIT) management is one of them. In VNDN, PIT stores each broadcasted interest until the required content is retrieved or its timer (PEL: PIT entry lifetime) expires. When the PIT storage is full, the vehicles discard new incoming interests, thus decreasing the network performance. Therefore, in this letter, we propose a dynamic PEL (DPEL) scheme that enables each relaying vehicle to dynamically compute PEL timer for each incoming interest using its interest satisfaction rate (ISR) and the hop count. The higher the ISR and the longer the hop count, the shorter the time the relaying vehicle keeps the PIT entry. Simulation results show DPEL reduces by more than 75% the PEL and the number of entries in VNDN.

Vehicular content centric network (VCCN): a survey and research challenges

Recently, Content Centric Networking (CCN) has been proposed for the Future Internet. Since CCN is at an early bud stage, many issues are still unidentified and open. In this paper, we investigate the feasibility of applying the CCN concept to vehicular communications (named as Vehicular CCN, VCCN in this work). In addition, we identify a number of VCCN challenges such as naming, name resolution, routing or forwarding strategies, content storing, management and policy of forwarding information base and pending interest table management, security and trust issues, etc.