Research on the Drivers Testbed

Here is a list of the research projects that focus on implementing wireless schemes using our open source drivers testbed:

Overview

1. Cooperative MAC protocols in Wireless Networks
2. Cooperative Layered Wireless Video Multicast
3. Security Implications of Cooperative Communications in Wireless Networks

Cooperative MAC protocols in Wireless Networks

A novel idea of user cooperation in wireless networks has been exploited to improve the performance of the IEEE 802.11 medium access control (MAC) protocol. We designed a new MAC protocol that is called CoopMAC that leverages the multi-rate capability of IEEE 802.11 and allows the mobile stations far away from the Access Point to transmit at a higher rate by using an intermediate station as a relay. In this project we focus on the implementation of cooperative MAC protocols with similar features as CoopMAC. For the implementation we use two approaches:

• Implementing Cooperative MAC protocols using Open Source Drivers: In this approach we use Linux open source wireless drivers and we modify them in order to support the CoopMAC functionality. Using the new cooperative driver we run experiments evaluating the efficiency of the protocol in a real environment.

Participating Students: Naveen Raman, Lin Jian

Cooperative Layered Wireless Video Multicast

Along with the increase in both the bandwidth of wireless networks and computational power of wireless handheld terminals, various wireless video applications are beginning to emerge. Among these, wireless video multicast is gaining a lot of momentum, since it enables delivery of popular events (such as a soccer game or headline news) to many wireless users in a bandwidth efficient manner. However, providing good and stable video quality to a large number of users with varying channel conditions remains elusive. In this project we study the integration of layered video coding with cooperative communication to enable efficient and robust video multicast in infrastructure-based wireless networks. For the evaluation of our protocol we implement them in the open source drivers platform.

Participating Students: Ozgu Alay, Zhe Xu

By May, 2008, we have successfully implemented this protocol and have done some experiments to show the effectiveness of this approach. It turns out a very good result. We have submitted a paper and it is being reviewed. We will have the result by late June. You can contact simon: zhe.xu.welcome@gmail.com for the paper if you are interested. Furthermore, here are two documents that you may find useful.

http://witestlab.poly.edu/attachment/wiki/MT/Implementation_of_CoopMAC_for_Wireless_Video_Multicast.ppt
http://witestlab.poly.edu/attachment/wiki/Orbit_Research/Simon-Ozgu_WICAT%20Poster.pdf

Security Implications of Cooperative Communications in Wireless Networks

Cooperative communications is an innovative technique that is expected to change the behavior of wireless networks in the near feature. In the MAC layer, this technique defines new protocols by enabling additional collaboration from stations that otherwise will not directly participate in the transmission. A typical example of such a protocol is CoopMAC, a cooperative MAC protocol that involves an intermediate station or helper in the communication between a transmitter and a receiver. Under this scheme, the transmitter sends its packets to the receiver by forwarding them through the helper. In this way the protocol takes advantage of spatial diversity and faster twohop transmission, significantly improving the performance of the network. In such an environment, where the sender relies on an intermediate helper to forward its packets to the original destination, numerous security issues may arise. The present security schemes need to be adapted in order to support endto-end security in the source-helper-destination communication model. In this project we study the potential security issues that cooperation may raise and dezighn new security schemes to address those concerns. To evaluate the feasibility of the proposed algorithms, we implement them using open source drivers platform.

Participating Student: Naveen Raman