Zulkuf Genc

Robust 60 GHz Indoor Connectivity: Is It Possible with Reflections?

In this paper, we investigate the robustness of the 60 GHz connectivity in typical indoor environments by analyzing the outage probability. We define three realistic indoor scenarios which may host the 60 GHz networks in the future and perform simulations with a verified 3D ray tracing tool on them. In the first set of simulations, we show the impact of access unit position on the connectivity. In the next step, we show that increasing the obstacle density linearly decreases the outage probability of the 60 GHz network and this decrease is found to be sharper for certain positions of the access point. In the last step, we demonstrate the direct effect of reflective surface availability on the connectivity. A 60 GHz indoor network relying solely on the reflections in the absence of line-of-sight path is very vulnerable to outages even in moderately populated indoor environments.

Home Networking at 60 GHz: Challenges and Research Issues

The recent developments in CMOS technology are about opening a new exciting door to affordable 60-GHz radio applications. One promising application area for 60-GHz radio is home networks in which there is an increasing demand for multi-gigabit wireless networking. The research efforts so far have generally focused on utilizing the 60-GHz band for point-to-point communication by addressing its physical aspects like propagation characteristics and channel models. The issues of 60-GHz networking at the system level have not been adequately considered. In this paper, the challenges and the research issues of 60-GHz networking are reviewed from the system-level perspective. We present them in the context of wireless local area networks for future home networks with discussions on some possible solutions for the introduced challenges.

Epidemic-based reliable and adaptive multicast for mobile ad hoc networks

An emerging approach to distributed systems exploits the self-organization, autonomy and robustness of biological epidemics. In this article, we propose a novel bio-inspired protocol: EraMobile (Epidemic-based Reliable and Adaptive Multicast for Mobile ad hoc networks). We also present extensive performance analysis results for it. EraMobile supports group applications that require high reliability. The protocol aims to deliver multicast data reliably with minimal network overhead, even under adverse network conditions. With an epidemic-based multicast method, it copes with dynamic and unpredictable topology changes due to mobility. Our epidemic mechanism does not require maintaining any tree- or mesh-like structure for multicasting. It requires neither a global nor a partial view of the network, nor does it require information about neighboring nodes and group members. In addition, it substantially lowers overhead by eliminating redundant data transmissions. Another distinguishing feature is its ability to adapt to varying node densities. This lets it deliver data reliably in both sparse networks (where network connectivity is prone to interruptions) and dense networks (where congestion is likely). We describe the working principles of the protocol and study its performance through comparative and extensive simulations in the ns-2 network simulator.

Improving 60 GHz Indoor Connectivity with Relaying

The 60 GHz technology has a great potential to provide wireless communication at multi-gigabit rates in future home networks. To maintain the network connectivity with 60 GHz links, which are highly susceptible to propagation and penetration losses, is a major challenge. The quality and the robustness of the 60 GHz links can be improved by employing relay nodes in the network. In this paper, the contribution of relaying to the connectivity and the quality of the 60 GHz radio links is studied by modeling three indoor scenarios. It is analytically and through simulations shown that having a relay node in a 60 GHz network decreases the average freespace path loss 33% in the worst case scenario. The effects of relay device position and the obstacle density on the improvement of the average received signal level are investigated with a verified 3D ray tracing tool. A comparative simulation study on the performance of different relay configurations under various network conditions is conducted. The results yield that even a single relay device positioned at the height of other nodes can improve 50% of the links in considerable levels in a 60 GHz indoor network. It is also shown that additional relay nodes do not contribute to 60 GHz indoor connectivity significantly, if there are two properly positioned relay devices in a network which is moderately populated.

Epidemic-based approaches for reliable multicast in mobile ad hoc networks

We present a classification of epidemic-based approaches utilized in the context of mobile ad hoc networks (MANET) with a focus on reliable multicast protocols. We provide a brief description of the other approaches to reliable multicasting in MANETs as well. Then, we describe our protocol, namely EraMobile, offering Epidemic-based Reliable and Adaptive Multicast for Mobile ad hoc networks. EraMobiles target is group applications requiring high-level of reliability and the protocol aims to provide fully reliable multicast data delivery with minimal network overhead even in the adverse network conditions. EraMobile utilizes an epidemic-based method in multicast operation to cope with dynamic and unpredictable topology changes arising from the mobility. Our epidemic mechanism does not require the maintenance of any tree- or mesh-like structure for multicasting. It also needs neither having global or partial view of the network nor having information of neighboring nodes and group members. Besides, it substantially minimizes the overhead incurred by eliminating redundant data transmissions. Another distinguishing feature of EraMobile is its capability of adapting to varying node densities in order to provide reliable data delivery in both sparse networks, where the network connectivity is prone to interruptions, and dense networks, where congestion is likely to occur. EraMobile is shown to achieve fully reliable multicast data delivery studied through extensive simulations by outperforming the other protocols compared, especially in terms of both packet delivery ratio and overhead efficiency.

Agent-based information infrastructure for disaster management

The success of a disaster management process depends on effective, secure and efficient information flow. This paper proposes an agent-based distributed information infrastructure to enable the realization of such secure information flows in disasters. The proposed infrastructure uses software agents in the exchange and processing of information, secure and dynamic information sharing and automated information flow generation and configuration.

Cooperative Communications in Future Home Networks

The basic idea behind cooperative communications is that mobile terminals collaborate to send data to each other. This effectively adds diversity in the system and improves the overall performance. In this paper, we investigate the potential gains of cooperative communication in future home networks. We derive analytical expressions for the error probability of binary phase shift keying (BPSK) signals over Nakagami-m fading channels in a multi relay communication network. Following to the analytical study, we analyze the contribution of cooperative relaying to the 60GHz network connectivity through simulations using a realistic indoor environment model. We compare the performance of different relay configurations under variable obstacle densities. We show that a typical 60GHz indoor network should employ either a multi-relay configuration or a single-relay configuration with a smart relay selection mechanism to achieve acceptable outage rates. In the use of multiple-relay configuration, both analytical and simulation studies indicate that increasing the number of cooperative relays does not improve the system performance significantly after a certain threshold.

60 GHz PHY Performance Evaluation with 3D Ray Tracing under Human Shadowing

This work evaluates the system-level performance of 60 GHz channels by simulating a realistic living room scenario with various numbers of humans and three different antenna configurations. In the first step, a comprehensive ray tracing study with a 3D ray tracing tool is performed to determine the channel impulse responses. Feeding our PHY simulator with the collected channel responses, the performance figures are generated over received SNR. It was observed that for a satisfactory BER performance, a directional antenna with the minimum of 10 dB antenna gain should be used at least in the receiver side when there is human shadowing in the environment.

EraMobile: Epidemic-Based Reliable and Adaptive Multicast for MANETs

We present a novel protocol EraMobile (epidemic-based reliable and adaptive multicast for mobile ad hoc networks) and its performance analysis. EraMobiles target is group applications requiring high-level of reliability and the protocol aims to provide fully reliable multicast data delivery with minimal network overhead even in the adverse network conditions. EraMobile utilizes an epidemic-based method in multicast operation to cope with dynamic and unpredictable topology changes arising from the mobility. Our epidemic mechanism does not require the maintenance of any tree- or mesh-like structure for multicasting. It also needs neither having global or partial view of the network nor having information of neighboring nodes and group members. Besides, it substantially minimizes the overhead incurred by eliminating redundant data transmissions. Another distinguishing feature of EraMobile is its capability of adapting to varying node densities in order to provide reliable data delivery in both sparse networks, where the network connectivity is prone to interruptions, and dense networks, where congestion is likely to occur. We study the performance of EraMobile through comparative and extensive simulations on ns-2 network simulator. EraMobile is shown to achieve fully reliable multicasting for most of the scenarios investigated.

SFG: smart flooding by gossiping

We aspire to define a reliable and scalable multicast protocol for ad hoc networks. Our target is to utilize epidemic techniques in the design of this protocol. As the first step, we developed an information dissemination method called SFG and presented its initial performance results compared to flooding in this poster paper. The most important contribution of this work is offering a method which requires the nodes neither to be aware of network topology nor to have neighborhood knowledge to disseminate information.