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

无线技术的使用有可能大大降低宽带数据接入的成本并促进其增长，目前宽带数据接入的主要成本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的问题，本研究通过将宽带无线网络建模为一个复杂的系统来解决这一问题，该系统包括两个部分：无线带宽（本地）和网络核心链路容量（端到端）。 介质访问控制（MAC）提供带宽复用方案，而在传输层，拥塞/速率控制确定需求，因此确定缓冲器和容量分配。 换句话说，宽带无线网络的最佳设计可以被看作是自治用户之间的各种资源的可扩展但最佳利用/共享的问题。 经济学家一直在研究空气污染、交通管理等各种背景下的类似问题。例如，众所周知，在所有这些情况下，集中决策并不总是可能或可取的。 与此同时，不受管制的接入可能导致过度使用（这是次优的），因为每个用户都有偏离共同利益的动机（称为“公地悲剧”）。 类似地，解决公平性、最优分配和分散化之间的基本权衡对于宽带无线网络的跨层设计至关重要。 这项研究提供了一种新的方法，解决了这些问题，跨协议栈的各个层，并将这些跨学科的研究整合到学术课程。

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.