CAREER: Cross-Layer Integrated Protocol Design for Broadband Wireless Data Networks: A Microeconomic Approach

无线技术的使用有可能显著降低成本并促进宽带数据接入的增长，目前主要是有线网络的安装和维护成本。无线网络中的一个重大挑战是跨层设计问题，本研究通过将宽带无线网络建模为具有两部分交互经济的复杂系统，无线带宽（本地）和网络核心链路容量（端到端）来解决这一问题。媒体访问控制（MAC）提供带宽复用方案，而在传输层，拥塞/速率控制决定需求，从而决定缓冲区和容量分配。换句话说，宽带无线网络的优化设计可以看作是各种资源在自治用户之间的可扩展且最优的利用/共享问题。经济学家一直在研究不同背景下的类似问题，如空气污染、交通管理等。例如，众所周知，在所有这些情况下，集中决策并不总是可能的或可取的。与此同时，由于每个用户都有偏离公共利益的动机（称为“公地悲剧”），不受管制的访问可能导致过度使用（这是次优的）。同样，在宽带无线网络的跨层设计中，解决公平性、最佳分配和去中心化之间的基本权衡是必不可少的。本研究提供了一种新颖的方法来解决这些跨协议栈层的问题，并将这些跨学科的研究整合到学术课程中。

The use of wireless technology has the potential to significantly reduce the cost and enhance the growth of broadband data access, which is currently dominated by the cost of installation and maintenance of wired networks. A significant challenge in wireless networks is the issue of cross-layer design, which this research addresses by modeling broadband wireless networks as a complex system of interacting economies with two parts, wireless bandwidth (local), and the network core link-capacities (end-to-end). Media access control (MAC) provides a bandwidth multiplexing scheme, while at the transport layer, congestion/rate control determine the demand, hence the buffer and capacity allocation. In other words, the optimal design of broadband wireless networks can be viewed as the problem of scalable yet optimal utilization/sharing of various resources among autonomous users. Economists have been studying similar problems in various contexts such as air pollution, traffic management, etc. It is known, for example, that in all of these scenarios a centralization of decisions is not always possible or desirable. At the same time, unregulated access can result in over-utilization (which is suboptimal) due to each user's incentive to deviate from the common good (known as "tragedy of the commons"). Similarly, addressing the fundamental trade-offs between fairness, optimal allocation, and decentralization is essential in a cross-layer design of broadband wireless networks. This research provides a novel methodology that addresses such issues across various layers of protocol stack, and integrates these interdisciplinary studies into the academic curriculum.