Multihop wireless mesh networks can provide Internet access over a wide area with minimal infrastructure expenditure. In this work, we present a measurement driven deployment strategy and a data-driven model to study the impact of design and topology decisions on network-wide performance and cost. We perform extensive measurements in a twotier urban scenario to characterize the propagation environment and correlate received signal strength with application layer throughput. We find that well-known estimates for pathloss produce either heavily overprovisioned networks resulting in an order of magnitude increase in cost for high pathloss estimates or completely disconnected networks for low pathloss estimates. Modeling throughput with wireless interface manufacturer specifications similarly results in severely underprovisioned networks. Further, we measure competing, multihop flow traffic matrices to empirically define achievable throughputs of fully backlogged, rate limited, and web-emulated traffic. We find that while fully backlogged flows produce starving nodes, rate-controlling flows to a fixed value yields fairness and high aggregate throughput. Likewise, transmission gaps occurring in statistically multiplexed web traffic, even under high offered load, remove starvation and yield high performance. In comparison, we find that well-known noncompeting flow models for mesh networks over-estimate network-wide throughput by a factor of 2. Finally, our placement study shows that a regular grid topology achieves up to 50 percent greater throughput than random node placement.

Accurately selecting modulation rates for time-varying channel conditions is critical for avoiding performance degradations due to rate overselection when channel conditions degrade or underselection when channel conditions improve. In this paper, we design a custom cross-layer framework that enables (i) implementation of multiple and previously unimplemented rate adaptation mechanisms, (ii) experimental evaluation and comparison of rate adaptation protocols on controlled, repeatable channels as well as residential urban and downtown vehicular and non-mobile environments in which we accurately measure channel conditions with 100-µs granularity, and (iii) comparison of performance on a per-packet basis with the ideal modulation rate obtained via exhaustive experimental search. Our evaluation reveals that SNR-triggered protocols are susceptible to overselection from the ideal rate when the coherence time is low (a scenario that we show occurs in practice even in a nonmobile topology), and that “in-situ ” training can produce large gains to overcome this sensitivity. Another key finding is that a mechanism effective in differentiating between collision and fading losses for hidden terminals has severely imbalanced throughput sharing when competing links are even slightly heterogeneous. In general, we find trained SNRbased protocols outperform loss-based protocols in terms of the ability to track vehicular clients, accuracy within outdoor environments, and balanced sharing with heterogeneous links (even with physical layer capture).

Abstract — Anecdotal evidence suggests that home wireless networks may be unpredictable despite their limited size. In this work, we deploy six-node wireless testbeds in three houses in the United States and the United Kingdom. We examine the quality of links in home wireless networks and the effect of (i) transmission rate, (ii) transmission power, (iii) node location, (iv) type of house, and (v) 802.11 technology. We provide empirical evidence suggesting that homes are challenging environments for wireless communication. Wireless links in the home are highly asymmetric and heavily influenced by precise node location, transmission power, and encoding rate, rather than physical distance between nodes. In our measurements, many links were unable to utilize the maximum transmission rate of the deployed 802.11 technology, and a few provided no connectivity at all. These results suggest that creating an AP-based topology with maximum coverage and throughput in this environment is challenging. Our findings have implications on the design of future home wireless networks and requirements for future wifi-enabled consumer electronic devices. We show that coverage and performance can be improved using a multi-hop topology, implying that mesh capabilities may actually be needed in consumer electronics for seamless connectivity across the home. I.

Abstract—Anecdotal evidence suggests that home wireless networks may be unpredictable despite their limited size. In this work, we deploy six-node wireless testbeds in three houses in the United States and the United Kingdom. We examine the quality of links in home wireless networks and the effect of (i) transmission rate, (ii) transmission power, (iii) node location, (iv) type of house, (v) external interference, and (vi) 802.11 physical layer technology. We provide empirical evidence suggesting that homes are challenging environments for wireless communication. Wireless links in the home are highly asymmetric and heavily influenced by precise node location, transmission power, and encoding rate, rather than physical distance between nodes or local interference. We discuss our findings and their implications on the design of home 802.11 networks. ∗ I.

Abstract—In this paper, we perform an extensive measurement study on a multi-tier mesh network serving 4,000 users. Such dense mesh deployments have high levels of interaction across heterogeneous wireless links. We find that this heterogeneous backhaul consisting of data-carrying (forwarding) links and nondata-carrying (non-forwarding) links creates two key effects on performance. First, we show that low-rate management and control packets can produce a disproportionally large degradation in data throughput. We define a metric for this effect called Wireless Overhead Multiplier and use it to quantify the impact of MAC and PHY mechanisms on the the throughput degradation. Surprisingly, we show that these multiplicative effects are primarily driven by the non-forwarding links where, in the worst case, data packets lose physical layer capture to the overhead, yielding disproportionate throughput degradation. Finally, we show that when data flows contend in this worst-case scenario, the loss-based autorate policy is unnecessarily triggered, causing throughput imbalance and poor network utilization. I.

This thesis presents a measurement-parameterized performance study of deploy-ment factors in wireless mesh networks using four performance metrics: client cov-erage area, backhaul tier connectivity, protocol-dependent throughput, and per-user fair rates. For each metric, I identify and study deployment factors which strongly influence mesh performance via an extensive set of Monte Carlo simulations capturing realistic physical layer behavior. My findings include: (i) A random topology is un-suitable for a large-scale mesh deployment due to doubled node density requirements, yet a moderate level of perturbations from ideal grid placement has minor impact. (ii) Multiple backhaul radios per mesh node is a cost-effective deployment strategy as it leads to mesh deployments costing 50 % less than with a single-radio architecture. This work adds to the understanding of mesh deployment factors and their general impact on performance, providing further insight into practical mesh deployments. Acknowledgments First and foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Edward Knightly, for the guidance, support, and opportunities he has provided me. He has been a

Abstract—Contending flows in multi-hop 802.11 wireless networks compete with two fundamental asymmetries: (i) channel asymmetry, in which one flow has a stronger signal, potentially yielding physical layer capture, and (ii) topological asymmetry, in which one flow has increased channel state information, potentially yielding an advantage in winning access to the channel. Prior work has considered these asymmetries independently with a highly simplified view of the other. However, in this work, we perform thousands of measurements on coupled flows in urban environments and build a simple, yet accurate model that jointly considers information and channel asymmetries. We show that if these two asymmetries are not considered jointly, throughput predictions of even two coupled flows are vastly distorted from reality when traffic characteristics are only slightly altered (e.g., changes to modulation rate, packet size, or access mechanism). These performance modes are sensitive not only to small changes in system properties, but also small-scale link fluctuations that are common in an urban mesh network. We analyze all possible capture relationships for two-flow sub-topologies and show that capture of the reverse traffic can allow a previously starving flow to compete fairly. Finally, we show how to extend and apply the model in domains such as modulation rate adaptation and understanding the interaction of control and data traffic. I.

Backscatter communication offers an ultra-low power alternative to active radios in urban sensing deployments — communication is powered by a reader, thereby making it virtually “free”. While backscatter communication has largely been used for extremely small amounts of data transfer (e.g. a 12 byte EPC identifier from an RFID tag), sensors need to use backscatter for continuous and high-volume sensor data transfer. To address this need, we describe a novel link layer that exploits unique characteristics of backscatter communication to optimize throughput. Our system offers several optimizations including 1) understanding of multi-path self-interference characteristics and link metrics that capture these characteristics, 2) design of novel mobility-aware probing techniques that use backscatter link signatures to determine when to probe the channel, 3) bitrate selection algorithms that use link metrics to determine the optimal bitrate, and 4) channel selection mechanism that optimize throughput while remaining compliant within FCC regulations. Our results show upto 3 × increase in goodput over other mechanisms across a wide range of channel conditions, scales, and mobility scenarios.

Abstract—Rate adaptation, as a challenging issue for wireless network design, has been an active research topic for years. Existing schemes either assume perfect channel information, or conduct rate adaptation in a black box way, hence can not achieve desirable performance. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme called Correlation based Rate Adaptation (CORA) to address the rate adjustment problem. Unlike previous schemes, CORA splits rate into more atomic components and adjusts them according to the correlation between rate adaptation actions and transmission results. We use IEEE 802.11n as the context for CORA design, where transmission mode has been expanded to spatial dimension in addition to the usual modulation and convolution coding mechanisms. Performance evaluation shows that CORA can conduct rate adaptation in a more logical way and significantly outperform the comparison scheme. Keywords- rate adaptation; 802.11 wireless networks; 802.11n I.