CAREER: A Flexible Flow- and Error-Control Protocol-Integration Architecture for Multicast Services Over Mobile Networks

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Mobile multicast provides a highly efficient and flexible way of simultaneously disseminating data or information from one source to multiple location-independent receivers. However, providing the efficient flow and error-control for multicast services over the mobile networks presents many chal- lenges that are not encountered in the wired or unicast networks. First, multicast itself imposes the scalability problems in both flow and error control protocols. Second, random-loss probability over the wireless links are much higher than the wired networks due to the wireless noise, channel fad- ing, and frequent handoffs. Third, wireless link introduces non-congestion losses and heterogeneous loss properties, which requires the new flow and error-control schemes. Finally, the coexistence of unicast with multicast, wired with wireless, and real-time with non-real-time applications within a common network causes the significant diversity of Quality of Services (QoS) requirements and fair- ness issues. Unfortunately, the current advances in the development of new flow and error-control protocols supporting mobile multicast are not keeping pace with these challenges. Without investing immediate research effort in this area, these challenges will likely slow the rate at which we develop the next-generation Internet.There is no "one-size fits all" protocol that can solve all the above challenges by best meeting the significantly diverse flow and error-control requirements imposed by multicast services over mobile networks. To overcome this problem, we propose to develop a novel architecture which, using the decoupled flow and error structure, enables flexible integrations of different flow and error control protocols to efficiently fit the QoS requirements for any given specific mobile multicast transport. On the other hand, the proposed architecture also allows different flow and error-control protocols to coexist in a common network. While the proposed architecture focuses only on the flow and error control applied to multicast services over mobile networks in this proposal, it is a generic protocol developing methodology and thus can be beneficial in many other applications of protocol development. The specific research topics/areaB to be explored in detail in this proposal include:.Develop the flexible architecture on which different flow and error protocols can be integrated efficiently to meet the different QoS requirements for multicast services over mobile networks..Design the uniform/general interfacing techniques/structures for flexible integrations of different types of decoupled flow and error protocols..Investigate the fairness and coexistence issues of multiple protocols and their TCP-friendliness with currently existing TCP-traffics in the Internet..Validate and evaluate the proposed architecture, flow and error protocols, and protocol interfacing techniques through various analytical approaches, simulation tools, and testbed systems.Intellectual merit: The proposed research project is expected to have an important impact on the development of the general-purpose architecture for designing flexible integrations of multiple flow and error-control protocols for mobile multicast and other services in the next-generation Inter- net. The industrial collaboration is being pursued with a number of companies to obtain feedback and test the developed results in a real-life setting, and enable the technology transfer. The PI has ongoing research collaboration with IBM T. J. Watson Research Center and TI Digital Video Communication Department that will be leveraged upon in this project.Broader impact: The education component of the proposal focuses on building a strong un- dergraduate and graduate program in Computer Networking at Texas A&M University. To achieve this goal, the PI plans to undertake a number of educational projects during the next few years:.Develop a new graduate level course on mobile wireless networks..Design a lab set for the undergraduate course on Computer Networking..Integrate the planned research prototype as a test bed for graduate course on wireless networks.