CAREER: Self-organizing Algorithm and Protocol Design for Infrastructureless Wireless Networks

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Emerging infrastratureless wireless networking technologies such as MANET [1], sensor networks [31],and bluetooth [2] will seek to support advanced applications such as smart environment, "zero conf"teleconferencing setups, collaborative learning, wireless access to Web services, and emergency rescureoperations. This class of applications is mission critical, and the network has to address a number of criticalissues in order to cope with the anticipated design requirements of such applications. In aninfrastructureless wireless network, no underlying infrastructure, such as cellular layout and central control units e.g. base stations, is available for networking support. A large number of networking devices are allowed to communicate with one another over the shared wireless medium in an ad hoc manner. Someunique design challenges posed by such networks include fully distributed and localized design, sustainedquality of service (QoS), efficient network resource utilization, unconstrained scalability and robust systemperformance. State-of-the-art solutions are inadequate to address these issues and meet the applications'requirements. A fundamental problem is that an infrastructureless wireless network is a large-scaledistributed system that may consist of a very large number of wireless networking components (e.g.thousands, even millions in a sensor network), which have limited power and computing resources and areprone to channel errors and failures. Therefore, any feasible system solution must be fully distributed andlocalized, scalable, and robust. In some sense, the microscopic behavior of each individual node may not bevery critical, but network nodes must collectively achieve the desired global macroscopic property. In this project, we propose a novel self-organizing protocol and algorithm design approach for suchnetworks, in order to meet the challenges posed by applications as well as the network itself. In a self-organizing design approach, local decision makers self-organize themselves and coordinate among oneanother, in order to collectively achieve the desired global property. We apply our proposed designmethodology in two largely unaddressed problem domains: fair packet scheduling in multihop wirelessnetworks, and robust report forwarding in sensor networks. Toward this end, we present four self-organizing packet-scheduling algorithms and a novel report forwarding protocol that we have developedrecently [22, 24, 35, 36, 46, 47]. The key innovations of this work are: A model-referenced self-organizing algorithm and protocol design approach. A suite of self-organizing packet scheduling algorithms for infrastructureless wireless networks thatprovide QoS performance bounds in terms of fairness, throughput and delay, maximize channel spatialreuse, and arbitrate the conflict between achieving fairness and maximizing channel utilization. A novel self-organizing data forwarding protocol that allows for unconstrained scalability, supportsrobust message delivery along the optimal forwarding band, and ensures efficient power consumptionin the context of sensor networks. The expected research results from this project include a formal investigation of self-organizing designapproach, and a detailed design, analysis, and evaluation of the self-organizing algorithms and protocols forpacket scheduling and report forwarding. The resulting software will be freely available to the researchcommunity. The education plan in this proposal includes offering a new graduate course, reinventing anundergraduate networking course, recruiting more students into undergraduate research programs, andsetting up an undergraduate networking laboratory.