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In this paper, we study the problem of joint routing, link scheduling and power control to support high data rates for broadband wireless multi-hop networks. We first address the problem of finding an optimal link scheduling and power control policy that minimizes the total average transmission power in the wireless multi-hop network, subject to given constraints regarding the minimum average data rate per link, as well as peak transmission power constraints per node. Multi-access signal interference is explicitly modeled. We use a duality approach whereby, as a byproduct of finding the optimal policy, we find the sensitivity of the minimal total average power with respect to the average data rate for each link. Since the minimal total average power is a convex function of the required minimum average data rates, shortest path algorithms with the link weights set to the link sensitivities can be used to guide the search for a globally optimum routing. We present a few simple examples that show our algorithm can find policies that support data rates that are not possible with conventional approaches. Moreover, we find that optimum allocations do not necessarily route traffic over minimum energy paths.

In this paper, we introduce a novel congestion control algorithm for TCP over multihop IEEE 802.11 wireless networks implementing rate-based scheduling of transmissions within the TCP congestion window. We show how a TCP sender can adapt its transmission rate close to the optimum using an estimate of the current 4-hop propagation delay and the coefficient of variation of recently measured round-trip times. The novel TCP variant is denoted as TCP with Adaptive Pacing (TCP-AP). Opposed to previous proposals for improving TCP over multihop IEEE 802.11 networks, TCP-AP retains the end-to-end semantics of TCP and does neither rely on modifications on the routing or the link layer nor requires cross-layer information from intermediate nodes along the path. A comprehensive simulation study using ns-2 shows that TCP-AP achieves up to 84 % more goodput than TCP NewReno, provides excellent fairness in almost all scenarios, and is highly responsive to changing traffic conditions.

The shared-medium multi-hop nature of wireless ad hoc networks poses fundamental challenges to the design of effective resource allocation algorithms that are optimal with respect to resource utilization and fair across different network flows. None of the existing resource allocation algorithms in wireless ad hoc networks have realistically considered end-to-end flows spanning multiple hops. Moreover, strategies proposed in wireline networks are not applicable in the context of wireless ad hoc networks, due to their unique characteristics of location-dependent contention. In this paper, we propose a new price-based resource allocation framework in wireless ad hoc networks to achieve optimal resource utilization and fairness among competing end-to-end flows. We build our pricing framework on the notion of maximal cliques in wireless ad hoc networks, as compared to individual links in traditional wide-area wireline networks. Based on such a price-based theoretical framework, we present a two-tier iterative algorithm. Distributed across wireless nodes, the algorithm converges to a global network optimum with respect to resource allocations. We further improve the algorithm towards asynchronous network settings, and prove its convergence. Extensive simulations under a variety of network environments have been conducted to validate our theoretical claims. ming

The capacity of an arbitrary ad-hoc network is difficult to estimate due to interference between the links. We use a conflict graph that models this interference relationship to determine if a set of flow rates can be accommodated. Using the cliques (complete subgraphs) of the conflict graph, we derive constraints that are sufficient for a set of flow rates to be feasible, yet are guaranteed to be within a constant bound of the optimal. We also compute an alternate set of sufficient constraints that can be easily derived from the rows of the matrix representation of the conflict graph. These two sets of constraints are particularly useful because their construction and verification may be distributed across the nodes of a network. We also extend the ad-hoc network model to incorporate variations in the interference range, and obstructions in the network.

The capacity of an ad-hoc network is severely affected by interference between links, and several efforts to model this effect make use of ‘clique ’ structures in the ad-hoc graphs. We propose a fully distributed heuristic algorithm to approximate cliques in such networks. We further propose methods to shrink the generated set of cliques to a set of maximal cliques. Simulation results verify the efficacy of the heuristic algorithms and also analyze their computation time.

In a mobile ad hoc network (MANET), how to maximize the utilization of the limited bandwidth while maintaining fairness among the contending nodes is one of the most challenging issues due to the hidden terminal problem in a multihop scenario. In CSMA/CA-based IEEE 802.11, Carrier Sensing (CS), Collision Avoidance (CA), and Contention Resolution (CR), the three main components of the protocol, affect its performance. While the effects of CA and CR on the performance have been emphasized in the literature, to the best of our knowledge there is no research-work taking into account CS's effect. In this paper, we focus on the CS mechanism to improve the performance. In the current IEEE 802.11 standards, whenever a node detects an erroneous frame (e.g., a sensing range frame) on the medium, it defers the transmission by a fixed duration (represented by EIFS). We show that this duration is sometimes smaller and sometimes larger than the desired period by which the transmission should be deferred, and it leads to substantial unfairness and throughput degradation. We propose an enhanced carrier sensing (ECS) scheme, which distinguishes among the type of the erroneous frames based on their lengths and defers the transmission accordingly. Simulation results show that the ECS improves the fairness as well as the throughput substantially.

Recent studies have shown that the performance of wireless multihop ad hoc networks is very poor. In this paper, we first demonstrate that one important reason of the poor performance is the close coupling between medium contention and network congestion. Therefore, we present a framework of distributed flow control and medium access control to address both medium contention and network congestion. The proposed scheme utilizes the MAC layer control frames to efficiently conduct the network layer’s flow control function and only allows the upstream nodes to forward enough packets to make it possible for the downstream nodes to fully utilize the shared channel but never introduce severe MAC collisions and network congestion. Extensive simulations illustrate that the proposed scheme well controls congestion and greatly alleviates medium collisions. It achieves up to 12 times the end-to-end throughput of IEEE 802.11, maintains a short delay and a low control overhead, and improves the fairness regardless of the hop count and the traffic load.

INTRODUCTION Available bandwidth estimation is a vital component of admission control for quality-of-service (QoS) in both wireline as well as wireless networks. In wireless networks, the available bandwidth undergoes fast time-scale variations due to channel fading and error from physical obstacles. These effects are not present in wireline networks, and make estimation of available bandwidth in wireless networks a challenging task. Furthermore, the wireless channel is also a shared-access medium, and the available bandwidth also varies with the number of hosts contending for the channel. Wireless last-hop networks employing the IEEE 802.11 protocol in Distributed Co-ordination Function (DCF) mode are becoming increasingly popular. In DCF mode, the 802.11 protocol [1] does not require any centralized entity to co-ordinate users' transmissions. The MAC layer uses a CSMA/CA algorithm for shared use of the medium. In this extended abstract, we present an available bandwidth estimation

Abstract—The ad hoc deployment of a sensor network causes unpredictable patterns of connectivity and varied node density, resulting in uneven bandwidth provisioning on the forwarding paths. When congestion happens, some sensors may have to reduce their data rates. It is an interesting but difficult problem to determine which sensors must reduce rates and how much they should reduce. This paper attempts to answer a fundamental question about congestion resolution: What are the maximum rates at which the individual sensors can produce data without causing congestion in the network and unfairness among the peers? We define the maxmin optimal rate assignment problem in a sensor network, where all possible forwarding paths are considered. We provide an iterative linear programming solution, which finds the maxmin optimal rate assignment and a forwarding schedule that implements the assignment in a low-rate sensor network. We prove that there is one and only one such assignment for a given configuration of the sensor network. We also study the variants of the maxmin fairness problem in sensor networks. Index Terms—Multipath maxmin fairness, wireless sensor networks, data collection applications, iterative linear programming. 1