Large-scale deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) with a high density of access points ... more Large-scale deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) with a high density of access points (APs) has become commonplace due mainly to its potential for numerous benefits, such as ubiquitous service coverage, seamless handover, and improved link quality. However, the increased AP density can induce significant channel contention among neighboring cells, thus causing severe performance degradation and throughput imbalance between cells. There have been a plethora of research efforts to improve the WLAN performance, but most of them focused only on single WLAN environments without accounting for intercell contention. The de facto QoS provisioning mechanism for WLANs, i.e., the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), is no exception to this. The EDCA focuses only on inter-flow priority distinction and has not considered the effect of inter-cell contention which significantly restricts its efficiency. This paper presents an enhanced QoS provisioning framework that takes into account inter-cell level differentiation as well as inter-flow level priority, which may be viewed as extension of QoS provisioning from a single-WLAN domain to a multi-WLAN domain. We also propose an architecture for managing multi-AP systems in which a central controller regulates the wireless channel occupancy of APs by adaptively configuring the cell-level QoS parameters. Our extensive simulation results show that the proposed inter-AP cooperative QoS scheme overcomes the limit of legacy 802.11e and provides a high level of fairness in large-scale denselydeployed WLANs.
Wi-Fi based vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is an emerging solution to improve the ... more Wi-Fi based vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is an emerging solution to improve the safety, traffic efficiency, and comfort of passengers. However, due to the high mobility of vehicles and the limited coverage of Wi-Fi APs, the V2I system may suffer from frequent handoffs although roadside APs can support cost effective Internet connectivity. Such problem of V2I systems can be overcome with Mobile AP (MAP) platform. The MAPs yield longer service duration by moving along with vehicles, yet they provide a lower link capacities than the roadside APs. In this paper, we propose a new association control mechanism that effectively determines whether the vehicle will select a fixed roadside-AP or a nearby MAP in mobile vehicular network environments. We consider both the achievable link bandwidth and available connection duration as a selection criterion and provide their run-time estimation method. Extensive simulation using real traces show significant performance improvements.
Due to the ease of setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot and the availability of readily configurable mobile... more Due to the ease of setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot and the availability of readily configurable mobile operating systems, Wi-Fi tethering can be abused by misbehaving users to gain an unfair advantage in throughput performance. In this paper, we study the problem of detecting selfish nodes in Wi-Fi tethering environments. In particular, selfish nodes can manipulate carrier sensing thresholds to exploit recent advances in physical-layer concurrent transmission technologies as well as short link distance in a tethered network so as to achieve unfair throughput gains while evading detection. We propose a new MAC-layer detection algorithm based on frame sequence numbers that accurately detects selfish nodes.
Recently Network Mobility(NEMO) is being concerned as new mobility issue. Lots of NEMO issues are... more Recently Network Mobility(NEMO) is being concerned as new mobility issue. Lots of NEMO issues are already being touched in IETF NEMO WG but the solution is still premature especially to the Route Optimization (RO). NEMO has several problem spaces that need RO such as nested tunnels problem. Unfortunately, there is no solution that can be universally applied as one for all that results in supporting the coherent network mobility. In this paper, we propose a unified route optimization scheme that can solve several types of RO problem by using Path Control Header (PCH). In our scheme, Home Agent (HA) does piggyback the PCH on the packet which is reversely forwarded from Mobile Router (MR). That enables any PCH-aware routing facility on the route to make a RO tunnel with MR using the Care-of address of MR contained in the PCH. By applying to some already known NEMO RO problems, we show that our scheme can incrementally optimize the routes via default HA-MR tunnel through the simple PCH interpretation.
On selfish behavior using asymmetric carrier sensing in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks
The IEEE 802.11 utilizes carrier sensing mechanism to support multiple users effectively with sma... more The IEEE 802.11 utilizes carrier sensing mechanism to support multiple users effectively with small number of collisions. However, if there are hidden nodes, IEEE 802.11 nodes suffer from consecutive collisions and experience extremely low throughput. Due to the nature of non-cooperative property, every 802.11 node tries to maximize its own throughput irrespective of total network performance. In this paper, we
Analysis of dynamic low power listening schemes in wireless sensor networks
IEEE Communications Letters, 2009
In this letter, we evaluate the performance of dynamic Low Power Listening (LPL) schemes via an a... more In this letter, we evaluate the performance of dynamic Low Power Listening (LPL) schemes via an analytical model. We also analyze the impact of polling interval parameters on energy consumption.
A Fire Detection and Rescue Support Framework with Wireless Sensor Networks
Recently, wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has been widely used in various fields such as... more Recently, wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has been widely used in various fields such as public safety applications since it provides a wide range of surveillance and monitoring applications with an inexpensive price. In this paper, we investigate the use of wireless sensor network technology for fire detection and rescue system. We propose a framework, which can detect fires promptly and support rescue activities, using wireless sensor devices. Our framework consists of fire detection sensor network, information gathering layer, middleware, and escape support system. We have implemented a test-bed and evaluated the performance of fire detection via experiments.
The IEEE 802.11 standard for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) employs a Medium Access Control... more The IEEE 802.11 standard for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) employs a Medium Access Control (MAC), called Distributed Coordination Function (DCF), which is based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA). The collision avoidance mechanism utilizes the random backoff prior to each frame transmission attempt. The random nature of the backoff reduces the collision probability, but cannot completely eliminate collisions. It is known that the throughput performance of the 802.11 WLAN is significantly compromised as the number of stations increases. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed reservationbased MAC protocol, called Early Backoff Announcement (EBA), which is backward compatible with the legacy DCF. Under EBA, a station announces its future backoff information in terms of the number of backoff slots via the MAC header of its frame being transmitted. All the stations receiving the information avoid collisions by excluding the same backoff duration when selecting their future backoff value. Through extensive simulations, EBA is found to achieve a significant increase in the throughput performance as well as a higher degree of fairness compared to the 802.11 DCF.
Recent works in empirical 802.11 wireless LAN performance evaluation have shown that cross-layer ... more Recent works in empirical 802.11 wireless LAN performance evaluation have shown that cross-layer interactions in WLANs can be subtle, sometimes leading to unexpected results. Two such instances are: (i) significant throughput degradation resulting from automatic rate fallback (ARF) having difficulty distinguishing collision from channel noise, and (ii) scalable TCP over DCF performance that is able to mitigate the negative performance effect of ARF by curbing multiple access contention even when the number of stations is large. In this paper, we present a framework for analyzing complex crosslayer interactions in 802.11 WLANs, with the aim of providing effective tools for understanding and improving WLAN performance. We focus on cross-layer interactions between ARF, DCF, and TCP, where ARF adjusts coding at the physical layer, DCF mediates link layer multiple access control, and TCP performs end-to-end transport. We advance station-centric Markov chain models of ARF, ARF-DCF with and without RTS/CTS, and TCP over DCF that may be viewed as multi-protocol extensions of Bianchi's IEEE 802.11 model. We show that despite significant increase in complexity the analysis framework leads to tractable and accurate performance predictions. Our results complement empirical and simulation-based findings, demonstrating the versatility and efficacy of station-centric Markov chain analysis for capturing cross-layer WLAN dynamics.
This letter presents a novel analytic model that accurately evaluates the performance of a single... more This letter presents a novel analytic model that accurately evaluates the performance of a single-hop IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN). By using a closed queuing network, we model an IEEE 802.11 WLAN system that consists of a fixed number of stations and derive the saturated throughput of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF). The ns-2 simulation results show that our new analysis model is very accurate in evaluating the performance of the IEEE 802.11 DCF.
Wireless Internet access is facilitated by IEEE 802.11 WLANs that, in addition to realizing a spe... more Wireless Internet access is facilitated by IEEE 802.11 WLANs that, in addition to realizing a specific form of CSMA/CA-distributed coordination function (DCF)implement a range of performance enhancement features such as multi-rate adaptation that induce cross-layer protocol coupling. Recent works in empirical WLAN performance evaluation have shown that cross-layer interactions can be subtle, sometimes leading to unexpected outcomes. Two such instances are: significant throughput degradation (a bell-shaped throughput curve) resulting from automatic rate fallback (ARF) having difficulty distinguishing collision from channel noise, and scalable TCP performance over DCF that is able to curtail effective multiple access contention in the presence of many contending stations. The latter also mitigates the negative performance effect of ARF. In this paper, we present station-centric Markov chain models of WLAN cross-layer performance aimed at capturing complex interactions between ARF, DCF, and TCP. Our performance analyses may be viewed as multi-protocol extensions of Bianchi's IEEE 802.11 model that, despite significantly increased complexity, lead to tractable and accurate performance predictions due to modular coupling. Our results complement empirical and simulation-based findings, demonstrating the versatility and efficacy of station-centric Markov chain analysis for capturing cross-layer WLAN dynamics.
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2008
One of the key challenges in designing a rate adaptation scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WL... more One of the key challenges in designing a rate adaptation scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) is to differentiate bit errors from link-layer collisions. Many recent rate adaptation schemes adopt the RTS/CTS mechanism to prevent collision losses from triggering unnecessary rate decrease.
Rate adaptation is one of the basic functionalities in today's 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs). Alth... more Rate adaptation is one of the basic functionalities in today's 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs). Although it is primarily designed to cope with the variability of wireless channels and achieve higher system spectral efficiency, its design needs careful consideration of cross-layer dependencies, in particular, linklayer collisions. Most practical rate adaptations focus on the time-varying characteristics of wireless channels, ignoring the impact of link-layer collisions. As a result, they may lose their effectiveness due to unnecessary rate downshift wrongly triggered by the collisions. Some recently proposed rate adaptations use RTS/CTS to suppress the collision effect by differentiating collisions from channel errors. The RTS/CTS handshake, however, incurs significant overhead and is rarely activated in infrastructure WLANs. In this paper, we introduce a new approach for optimizing the operation of rate adaptations by adjusting the rate-increasing and decreasing parameters based on link-layer measurement. To construct the algorithm, we study the impact of rate-increasing and decreasing thresholds on performance and show that dynamic adjustment of thresholds is an effective way to mitigate the collision effect in multi-user environments. Our method does not require additional probing overhead incurred by RTS/CTS exchanges and may be practically deployed without change in firmware. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution, comparing with existing approaches through extensive simulations.
In this paper, we study the performance of 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) and propos... more In this paper, we study the performance of 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) and propose a distributed packet scheduling scheme that improves the short-term fairness among stations in a WLAN. First, we present a completely different analytical model to analyze the performance of 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF), which models the channel contention dynamics of an IEEE 802.11 system, rather than the individual user perspective adopted by most previous analytical works based on Markov chains. Our model is much simpler than previous Markov chain models that have been used popularly to model the DCF's binary exponential backoff (BEB) procedure. In our model, the backoff stage and the value of the backoff counter are represented as a queueing system and the residual service time at the queue, respectively. Then, we model an entire 802.11 WLAN as a closed queuing network and derive the performance of the 802.11 DCF based on the queueing theory. Next, by exploiting the analytic results, we develop a simple distributed runtime estimation scheme that effectively calculates the number of contending stations. Finally, we propose a distributed packet scheduling scheme that improves the short-term fairness to the IEEE 802.11 network. The scheme utilizes the token bucket mechanism and controls the packet arrival rate sent down to the medium access control (MAC) layer from the logical link control (LLC) layer by adjusting the token-generation rate according to the measured channel contention level. Performance evaluation results show that our scheduling scheme provides a higher degree of short-term fairness as well as throughput improvement.
Large-scale deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) with a high density of access points ... more Large-scale deployment of IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) with a high density of access points (APs) has become commonplace due mainly to its potential for numerous benefits, such as ubiquitous service coverage, seamless handover, and improved link quality. However, the increased AP density can induce significant channel contention among neighboring cells, thus causing severe performance degradation and throughput imbalance between cells. There have been a plethora of research efforts to improve the WLAN performance, but most of them focused only on single WLAN environments without accounting for intercell contention. The de facto QoS provisioning mechanism for WLANs, i.e., the Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA), is no exception to this. The EDCA focuses only on inter-flow priority distinction and has not considered the effect of inter-cell contention which significantly restricts its efficiency. This paper presents an enhanced QoS provisioning framework that takes into account inter-cell level differentiation as well as inter-flow level priority, which may be viewed as extension of QoS provisioning from a single-WLAN domain to a multi-WLAN domain. We also propose an architecture for managing multi-AP systems in which a central controller regulates the wireless channel occupancy of APs by adaptively configuring the cell-level QoS parameters. Our extensive simulation results show that the proposed inter-AP cooperative QoS scheme overcomes the limit of legacy 802.11e and provides a high level of fairness in large-scale denselydeployed WLANs.
Wi-Fi based vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is an emerging solution to improve the ... more Wi-Fi based vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) communication is an emerging solution to improve the safety, traffic efficiency, and comfort of passengers. However, due to the high mobility of vehicles and the limited coverage of Wi-Fi APs, the V2I system may suffer from frequent handoffs although roadside APs can support cost effective Internet connectivity. Such problem of V2I systems can be overcome with Mobile AP (MAP) platform. The MAPs yield longer service duration by moving along with vehicles, yet they provide a lower link capacities than the roadside APs. In this paper, we propose a new association control mechanism that effectively determines whether the vehicle will select a fixed roadside-AP or a nearby MAP in mobile vehicular network environments. We consider both the achievable link bandwidth and available connection duration as a selection criterion and provide their run-time estimation method. Extensive simulation using real traces show significant performance improvements.
Due to the ease of setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot and the availability of readily configurable mobile... more Due to the ease of setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot and the availability of readily configurable mobile operating systems, Wi-Fi tethering can be abused by misbehaving users to gain an unfair advantage in throughput performance. In this paper, we study the problem of detecting selfish nodes in Wi-Fi tethering environments. In particular, selfish nodes can manipulate carrier sensing thresholds to exploit recent advances in physical-layer concurrent transmission technologies as well as short link distance in a tethered network so as to achieve unfair throughput gains while evading detection. We propose a new MAC-layer detection algorithm based on frame sequence numbers that accurately detects selfish nodes.
Recently Network Mobility(NEMO) is being concerned as new mobility issue. Lots of NEMO issues are... more Recently Network Mobility(NEMO) is being concerned as new mobility issue. Lots of NEMO issues are already being touched in IETF NEMO WG but the solution is still premature especially to the Route Optimization (RO). NEMO has several problem spaces that need RO such as nested tunnels problem. Unfortunately, there is no solution that can be universally applied as one for all that results in supporting the coherent network mobility. In this paper, we propose a unified route optimization scheme that can solve several types of RO problem by using Path Control Header (PCH). In our scheme, Home Agent (HA) does piggyback the PCH on the packet which is reversely forwarded from Mobile Router (MR). That enables any PCH-aware routing facility on the route to make a RO tunnel with MR using the Care-of address of MR contained in the PCH. By applying to some already known NEMO RO problems, we show that our scheme can incrementally optimize the routes via default HA-MR tunnel through the simple PCH interpretation.
On selfish behavior using asymmetric carrier sensing in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks
The IEEE 802.11 utilizes carrier sensing mechanism to support multiple users effectively with sma... more The IEEE 802.11 utilizes carrier sensing mechanism to support multiple users effectively with small number of collisions. However, if there are hidden nodes, IEEE 802.11 nodes suffer from consecutive collisions and experience extremely low throughput. Due to the nature of non-cooperative property, every 802.11 node tries to maximize its own throughput irrespective of total network performance. In this paper, we
Analysis of dynamic low power listening schemes in wireless sensor networks
IEEE Communications Letters, 2009
In this letter, we evaluate the performance of dynamic Low Power Listening (LPL) schemes via an a... more In this letter, we evaluate the performance of dynamic Low Power Listening (LPL) schemes via an analytical model. We also analyze the impact of polling interval parameters on energy consumption.
A Fire Detection and Rescue Support Framework with Wireless Sensor Networks
Recently, wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has been widely used in various fields such as... more Recently, wireless sensor network (WSN) technology has been widely used in various fields such as public safety applications since it provides a wide range of surveillance and monitoring applications with an inexpensive price. In this paper, we investigate the use of wireless sensor network technology for fire detection and rescue system. We propose a framework, which can detect fires promptly and support rescue activities, using wireless sensor devices. Our framework consists of fire detection sensor network, information gathering layer, middleware, and escape support system. We have implemented a test-bed and evaluated the performance of fire detection via experiments.
The IEEE 802.11 standard for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) employs a Medium Access Control... more The IEEE 802.11 standard for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) employs a Medium Access Control (MAC), called Distributed Coordination Function (DCF), which is based on Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA). The collision avoidance mechanism utilizes the random backoff prior to each frame transmission attempt. The random nature of the backoff reduces the collision probability, but cannot completely eliminate collisions. It is known that the throughput performance of the 802.11 WLAN is significantly compromised as the number of stations increases. In this paper, we propose a novel distributed reservationbased MAC protocol, called Early Backoff Announcement (EBA), which is backward compatible with the legacy DCF. Under EBA, a station announces its future backoff information in terms of the number of backoff slots via the MAC header of its frame being transmitted. All the stations receiving the information avoid collisions by excluding the same backoff duration when selecting their future backoff value. Through extensive simulations, EBA is found to achieve a significant increase in the throughput performance as well as a higher degree of fairness compared to the 802.11 DCF.
Recent works in empirical 802.11 wireless LAN performance evaluation have shown that cross-layer ... more Recent works in empirical 802.11 wireless LAN performance evaluation have shown that cross-layer interactions in WLANs can be subtle, sometimes leading to unexpected results. Two such instances are: (i) significant throughput degradation resulting from automatic rate fallback (ARF) having difficulty distinguishing collision from channel noise, and (ii) scalable TCP over DCF performance that is able to mitigate the negative performance effect of ARF by curbing multiple access contention even when the number of stations is large. In this paper, we present a framework for analyzing complex crosslayer interactions in 802.11 WLANs, with the aim of providing effective tools for understanding and improving WLAN performance. We focus on cross-layer interactions between ARF, DCF, and TCP, where ARF adjusts coding at the physical layer, DCF mediates link layer multiple access control, and TCP performs end-to-end transport. We advance station-centric Markov chain models of ARF, ARF-DCF with and without RTS/CTS, and TCP over DCF that may be viewed as multi-protocol extensions of Bianchi's IEEE 802.11 model. We show that despite significant increase in complexity the analysis framework leads to tractable and accurate performance predictions. Our results complement empirical and simulation-based findings, demonstrating the versatility and efficacy of station-centric Markov chain analysis for capturing cross-layer WLAN dynamics.
This letter presents a novel analytic model that accurately evaluates the performance of a single... more This letter presents a novel analytic model that accurately evaluates the performance of a single-hop IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN). By using a closed queuing network, we model an IEEE 802.11 WLAN system that consists of a fixed number of stations and derive the saturated throughput of the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF). The ns-2 simulation results show that our new analysis model is very accurate in evaluating the performance of the IEEE 802.11 DCF.
Wireless Internet access is facilitated by IEEE 802.11 WLANs that, in addition to realizing a spe... more Wireless Internet access is facilitated by IEEE 802.11 WLANs that, in addition to realizing a specific form of CSMA/CA-distributed coordination function (DCF)implement a range of performance enhancement features such as multi-rate adaptation that induce cross-layer protocol coupling. Recent works in empirical WLAN performance evaluation have shown that cross-layer interactions can be subtle, sometimes leading to unexpected outcomes. Two such instances are: significant throughput degradation (a bell-shaped throughput curve) resulting from automatic rate fallback (ARF) having difficulty distinguishing collision from channel noise, and scalable TCP performance over DCF that is able to curtail effective multiple access contention in the presence of many contending stations. The latter also mitigates the negative performance effect of ARF. In this paper, we present station-centric Markov chain models of WLAN cross-layer performance aimed at capturing complex interactions between ARF, DCF, and TCP. Our performance analyses may be viewed as multi-protocol extensions of Bianchi's IEEE 802.11 model that, despite significantly increased complexity, lead to tractable and accurate performance predictions due to modular coupling. Our results complement empirical and simulation-based findings, demonstrating the versatility and efficacy of station-centric Markov chain analysis for capturing cross-layer WLAN dynamics.
IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2008
One of the key challenges in designing a rate adaptation scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WL... more One of the key challenges in designing a rate adaptation scheme for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs) is to differentiate bit errors from link-layer collisions. Many recent rate adaptation schemes adopt the RTS/CTS mechanism to prevent collision losses from triggering unnecessary rate decrease.
Rate adaptation is one of the basic functionalities in today's 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs). Alth... more Rate adaptation is one of the basic functionalities in today's 802.11 wireless LANs (WLANs). Although it is primarily designed to cope with the variability of wireless channels and achieve higher system spectral efficiency, its design needs careful consideration of cross-layer dependencies, in particular, linklayer collisions. Most practical rate adaptations focus on the time-varying characteristics of wireless channels, ignoring the impact of link-layer collisions. As a result, they may lose their effectiveness due to unnecessary rate downshift wrongly triggered by the collisions. Some recently proposed rate adaptations use RTS/CTS to suppress the collision effect by differentiating collisions from channel errors. The RTS/CTS handshake, however, incurs significant overhead and is rarely activated in infrastructure WLANs. In this paper, we introduce a new approach for optimizing the operation of rate adaptations by adjusting the rate-increasing and decreasing parameters based on link-layer measurement. To construct the algorithm, we study the impact of rate-increasing and decreasing thresholds on performance and show that dynamic adjustment of thresholds is an effective way to mitigate the collision effect in multi-user environments. Our method does not require additional probing overhead incurred by RTS/CTS exchanges and may be practically deployed without change in firmware. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our solution, comparing with existing approaches through extensive simulations.
In this paper, we study the performance of 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) and propos... more In this paper, we study the performance of 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) and propose a distributed packet scheduling scheme that improves the short-term fairness among stations in a WLAN. First, we present a completely different analytical model to analyze the performance of 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF), which models the channel contention dynamics of an IEEE 802.11 system, rather than the individual user perspective adopted by most previous analytical works based on Markov chains. Our model is much simpler than previous Markov chain models that have been used popularly to model the DCF's binary exponential backoff (BEB) procedure. In our model, the backoff stage and the value of the backoff counter are represented as a queueing system and the residual service time at the queue, respectively. Then, we model an entire 802.11 WLAN as a closed queuing network and derive the performance of the 802.11 DCF based on the queueing theory. Next, by exploiting the analytic results, we develop a simple distributed runtime estimation scheme that effectively calculates the number of contending stations. Finally, we propose a distributed packet scheduling scheme that improves the short-term fairness to the IEEE 802.11 network. The scheme utilizes the token bucket mechanism and controls the packet arrival rate sent down to the medium access control (MAC) layer from the logical link control (LLC) layer by adjusting the token-generation rate according to the measured channel contention level. Performance evaluation results show that our scheduling scheme provides a higher degree of short-term fairness as well as throughput improvement.
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Papers by Jaehyuk Choi