Topics on Wireless Mesh Networks

1. Performance study/analysis of congestion control characteristics in 802.11s

IEEE 802.11s standard is currently under development. It provides mesh capability to 802.11 radios. Amongst other features, the standard also provides congestion control. In this project you can review the congestion control requirements for mesh routers, identify the current state of 802.11s implementation in various simulators (ns-2, ns-3, amongst others), and provide a performance analysis of these congestion control features in a large mesh network with a mix of traffic. Identify the weaknesses of the current algorithms, and propose, implement, and evaluate improvements to address these weaknesses.

2. Fairness characteristics in multi-radio (or multi-gateway) WMNs

WMNs using 802.11 radios experience a fairness problem in which nodes closer to the gateway obtain higher throughput at the cost of distant nodes in the network. This fairness problem has extensively been studied in the context of a single channel network with a single gateway. In this project you can identify the fairness characteristics of a multi-channel network with multiple gateway nodes. Where necessary, you will propose mechanisms for improving the fairness in this network. You can use simulations/testbed experiments to measure the performance characteristics of your proposed solution. 

3. Multimedia over mobile wireless mesh networks (WMN)

In the presence of multimedia traffic and user mobility, the performance of WMN is highly dependent on the link configuration and the used operational protocols. Therefore, the nature of this work is folded in to evaluating the throughput performance of WMNs through performance driven approaches. Furthermore, design operational protocols that are user mobility aware and examine these protocols over a real life experimental testbed. Your work has two major parts. The first is measuring and characterizing physical properties of wireless mesh networks. The second is proposing and analyzing the route stability and adaptively to support mobile users and multimedia traffic. Your work should be supported by simulation.

Topics on Wireless Sensor Networks

4. Interference characterization of 802.11 and 802.15.3 radios

802.11 b/g/n networks and Bluetooth radios operate in the same frequency band. In this project you will characterize the impact of interference from Bluetooth radios on wireless LAN performance. In particular, radio configuration (power settings, channels, etc.) may be able to limit interference between these networks. In this project you will review the current state of the work, identify area(s) for improvements, and verify the performance characteristics via simulations.

5. Mobile Wireless Sensor Networks

In this work, you are to assume that the destination node moves (mobile sink). Every sensor need to maintain a connection with the mobile sink. You are required to first analyze and research the mobility in wireless sensor networks. Second, present an Ad-hoc Routing Protocol, which efficiently routes data to a mobile destination. You need to keep into consideration when the sink moves, data traffic can use the existing topology to efficiently probe, repair, and communicate changes without a need for many control packets. Your protocol should be verified using simulation.

Topics on Cognitive Radio and White Space Networks

6. Towards an intelligent antenna design to support cognitive radio

Cognitive radio in wireless communication domain enables unlicensed users to change their transmission or reception parameters to communicate efficiently avoiding interference with licensed users. This alteration of parameters is based on the active monitoring of several factors in the external and internal radio environment, such as radio frequency spectrum, user behavior and network state. In this project, you need first to investigate several antennas design that leads to better facilitate cognitive radio. Second, propose a smart antenna design which can cancel interference and intelligently recognizes licensed and unlicensed users to access the spectrum.

7. Cross-layer design for enabling dynamic spectrum access in cognitive radios

The growth of multi-billion dollar wireless industry hinges on providing increasingly sophisticated wireless services and applications in a ubiquitous manner. However, such services and applications are resource-intensive and require a stringent QoS in order to be sustainable. New design models and paradigms have recently become an important research focus. The most well-known effort in this direction is the cross-layer optimization strategies that attempt to improve individual protocols based on certain information from other layers (e.g., PHY and MAC information exchange). In this project, you are to research strategies for dynamic spectrum access (DSA) or spectrum agility (SA) as an important step in evolution towards cognitive design. Second, you are to propose a framework for cognition-enabling components (at both kernel and application-level) together with associated access interfaces. The framework is expected to provide a unifying abstraction for different cognitive elements to operate together seamlessly without being crippled by unwarranted spillover-effects.

8. IEEE 802.11 deployment over white space

White spaces refer to frequencies allocated to a broadcasting service but not used locally. FCC recently determined the final rules for the use of white space for unlicensed wireless devices. The new rules removed mandatory sensing requirements which greatly facilitate the use of the spectrum with geolocation based channel allocation. The final rules adopt a proposal from the broadcast industry for very strict emission rules that prevent the direct use of IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) in a single channel effectively making the new spectrum unusable for Wi-Fi technologies. In this project, you are to research the pos and cons of having operating 802.11 devices on white space. Second, highlight one single problem and propose a mechanism that enables coordination between TV channels and 802.11 devices. Your idea should be illustrated by various real life scenarios.

Topics on Optical Networks

9. Monitoring and failure localization in all optical networks

Monitoring and failure localization has long been considered as a critical task in the control and management of backbone carrier networks, and has been a research focus by both industry and academia for achieving a distributed and autonomous environment that can support strict quality of service (QoS) requirements and fast failure restoration. Motivated by the importance of this problem, the main goal of this project l is to efficiently obtain the solution to the monitoring structure routing problem under a suite of constraints, which comprehensively considers the number of monitoring nodes, the amount of monitoring resources, and/or the resultant monitoring delay. You are to first investigate existing fault localization and monitoring techniques. Second, formulate a technique to localize a failure and perform the necessary network routing updates.

10. TCP over optical burst switched networks

Due to the bufferless nature, TCP over Optical Burst Switched (OBS) networks suffer from false congestion detection, where a packet loss event due to random burst contention in a lightly-loaded OBS network may trigger TCP congestion control mechanisms, thereby degrading the performance of TCP. In this project, you need to first understand the underlying transmission characteristics of OBS networks and compare them with existing circuit switched networks. Second, examine different TCP implementations (e.g., Reno, new Reno, Sack) when running over OBS networks. Finally, propose a scheme for supporting TCP over OBS networks verified by simulations.