Contribución a la mejora de las prestaciones en redes de acceso inalámbricas no convencionales

Resumo

The presence of multi-hop topologies within all types of wireless communications is becoming more and more common, and this tendency is expected to be maintained in the near future. Although they were originally conceived to compensate the lack of subjacent infrastructure in certain scenarios, these deployments have attracted the interest of different actors in the wireless communications value chain (including network operators) and thus it is logical to think that their relevance will gradually increase. In fact, there already exist some standardization initiatives which corroborate this point to some extent. Furthermore, other additional factors, such as the rapid growth which has been seen in wireless sensor technologies, also strengthen the use of these topologies.. In spite of the growing activity in the multi-hop deployment field, it is still necessary to establish, in a quantitative way, their potential benefits, both for the end-users of the communication systems, as well as for the operators, considering, in addition, the high degree of heterogeneity which will characterize wireless networks in the future. On the other hand, as far as algorithms and protocols to be used over this type of topology are concerned, and despite the intense research which has been conducted into them, there is still a large number of issues to be tackled. First, the simple fact that their initial requirements and challenges have been modified can, and must, influence their basic principles. In addition, it becomes necessary to address their validation on real platforms and, on the other hand, to ensure that simulation-based evaluations of their performance make use of realistic models which accurately reflect the conditions which are observed in real scenarios. This dissertation tackles, on the one hand, the quantitative evaluation of the improvements which are achievable when using multi-hop topologies to extend legacy network deployments. One first aspect which is logical to consider is the increase in the coverage which is brought about. In this sense, a two-fold approach has been followed, employing both an analytical as well as a simulation-based analysis, to establish what the gain is. Two network models have been used, being complementary to each other; the first one assumes a complete lack of network planning for the deployment of the access elements, while the second one assumes an optimum distribution of them. Although their characteristics are completely different, the results are somehow similar for both cases. Furthermore, it can be concluded that, despite the coverage extension which can be obtained, it is indeed possible to establish a reasonable limit on the maximum number of hops to be used, since the improvement becomes less relevant for higher values. This aspect could influence the design of routing techniques to be used over this type of topology. Furthermore, other additional benefits have been also analyzed, using a network deployment in which the presence of heterogeneity (multi-access) is evident. The multi-hop extensions have been integrated within a generic access selection algorithm which enables the modification of the weights which are assigned to the different entities (both the end-user terminals and the network) as well as to the set of parameters and constraints to be considered when selecting the most appropriate access alternative. It is concluded that for both the end-users, who improve their perception of the quality of service, and the network, which is able to increase the overall amount of traffic possible to be handled, multi-hop extensions are certainly beneficial. In addition, the dissertation also tackles the improvement of the routing techniques which are traditionally employed over multi-hop networks, which are based on minimizing the number of hops between the two sides of the communication. To accomplish this, and using the Cross-Layer Optimisation paradigm, an improved version of the DSR protocol is proposed, namely SADSR. It uses information about the subjacent link qualities to modulate the route selection algorithm. It is worth highlighting that a fully empirical (on a real platform) validation has been conducted, addressing one of the most pressing demands within this field. The results obtained allow us to infer that the proposal made in the framework of this dissertation is clearly outperforming the original DSR version. Although the added value provided by empirical validations is unquestionable, they also have some limitations. First, they normally do not favour the establishment of large topologies, or to undertake repetitive experiments aimed at finding an average behaviour. In this sense, a simulation-based analysis is also used so as to compare the SADSR with the original DSR version as well as with other proposals which have recently attracted interest from the scientific community. The results obtained by the validation carried out on a real platform are confirmed, since the performance brought about by the SADSR is somewhat higher than that of the other strategies. In order to perform the previous analysis the use of a realistic channel model, able to capture with a high degree of accuracy the behaviour exhibited on real platforms, is mandatory. To fulfil this requirement, the dissertation also tackles the design, implementation, and integration within the Network Simulator platform of BEAR, a channel model based on auto-regressive filtering. It is mainly characterized by being able to emulate the bursty presence of errors which is observed over real channels. The design is based on an extensive set of measurements which is used to assess the validity of the proposal.