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This paper investigates the performance analysis of dual selection (i.e., combining user selection and transmit antenna selection) with maximal ratio combining (MRC) over nonidentical imperfect channel estimation in a multiple-input multiple-output system. This paper derives the exact and approximate cumulative density function and probability density function (PDF) for the dual selection with MRC over nonidentical imperfect channel estimation. Using the distribution, the exact and approximate closed-form expressions of the outage probability are derived with quantification of diversity order. Further, this paper derived the exact ergodic capacity and approximate outage capacity of the the dual selection via Gaussian and Gamma approximations. The numerical results show that the capacity of the dual selection with MRC is enhanced by the number of receive antennas as well as the number of user terminals and sum of channel correlation coefficients, while the order of the receive spatial diversity for outage probability is eliminated by the nonidentical channel estimation error. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of throughput, delay, and their tradeoff in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) has been investigated on different assumptions. Nevertheless, few papers consider the supportive infrastructure in MANETs. With the help of supportive infrastructure, i.e., cellular networks, the performance of throughput and delay in MANETs can be improved. The impact of supportive infrastructure on the throughput–delay tradeoff in MANETs is an open research point. In this paper, we are interested in the optimal throughput–delay tradeoff in MANETs with supportive infrastructure. We investigate the supportive infrastructure that only provides transmission pipes between distant nodes. We study the optimal throughput–delay tradeoff in MANETs on different assumptions such as different densities of nodes and base stations (BSs), discrete/continuous mobility models with various velocities, and the fast/slow mobility assumption. We obtain the asymptotically optimal throughput–delay tradeoff and propose transmission policies based on random linear coding (RLC) to achieve the optimal throughput–delay tradeoff asymptotically. From the obtained optimal throughput–delay tradeoff, we find that supportive infrastructure reduces the delay bound from velocity, which is a lower bound of delay caused by nodes' velocity. In particular, if supportive infrastructure can cover the entire network, then the delay bound from velocity vanishes when per-node throughput does not exceed a threshold. Moreover, we find that there also exists a delay bound from the transmission range of the instant transmission. In addition, we observe that, for the optimal throughput–delay tradeoff in the large throughput region, the case in the continuous mobility model outperforms the case in the discrete mobility model, and the case on the slow mobility assumption outperforms the case on the fast mobility assumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the scaling law of the network throughput of a special type of heterogeneous networks is studied, where a secondary network composed of cognitive users shares the same resources opportunistically with a primary network of licensed users. Some pioneering works in this area showed that this type of heterogeneous networks performs as well as two stand-alone networks under the dense network model. A key assumption behind this conclusion is that the density of the secondary network is higher than that of the primary network in the order sense, which essentially decouples the two overlaid networks as the secondary network dominates asymptotically. In this paper, we endeavor to investigate this problem with a weaker condition that the dimensions of the two overlaid networks are on the same order, under the extended network model. Our analysis shows that, with the ratio of the two network sizes larger than a threshold, this weaker (and arguably more practical) condition does not degrade either network throughput scaling. Our result further reveals the potential of cognitive radio (CR) technology in real applications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editors discusses various reports within the issue on topics including vehicular communication networks and telematics applications, the traffic flow control methods used to reduce vehicular fuel consumption, and a dynamic equalization scheme for reducing the packet error rate during data transmission.

Traffic volume measurement is critical in vehicular networks. Existing research on traffic volume measurement mainly focuses on single-point traffic statistics. In this paper, we switch our view from single-point to multi-point and study the important problem of privacy-preserving multi-point traffic volume measurement in vehicular cyber-physical systems (VCPSs), which complements the state of the art. While embracing automatic traffic data collection, which the VCPS provides through vehicle-to-infrastructure communications, we also need to accept the accompanying challenges: First, the privacy of all participating vehicles should be preserved as an inherent requirement of a VCPS; second, the measurement scheme should be efficient enough to fit today's large-scale vehicular networks. In this paper, we start from a novel scheme that measures traffic volume between two arbitrary points (locations) through variable-length bit array masking. Then, we extend the idea of variable-length bit array masking to address the more challenging problem of three-point traffic measurement and present a general framework to measure traffic among three or more locations. We also perform extensive simulations to demonstrate the superior performance, applicability, and scalability of our schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, the throughput maximization of millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) ultradense networks (UDN) using dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) is considered. Most of the existing works only allow temporal-domain access and admit at most one user at each time slot, resulting in significant underutilization of spectrum resource, which will be less attractive to mm-wave UDN applications. A generalized temporal-spatial sharing scheme is proposed in this paper for UDN by exploiting the location information of incumbent devices, where multiple users are allowed to access each channel simultaneously via spatial separations. For distributed applications, the global information exchange among secondary users (SU) tends to be impractical, given the unaffordable signaling overhead and latency. Thus, a noncooperative game with fine-grained two-dimensional reuse is formulated, which leads to a more efficient access strategy. It is then proved to be an ordinary potential game (OPG), which guarantees the existence of the strategy Nash equilibrium (NE). Finally, an improved decentralized reinforcement learning algorithm is designed, with which SUs can learn from wireless environments and adapt toward an NE point, relying on the individual observation and the historical action reward (rather than the global information exchanging). The convergence efficiency of the new scheme is also rigorously proved. Numerical simulations are provided to validate the performances of the proposed schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The next generation of mobile communication has progressed toward the deployment of small cells to meet the growing demands of increased capacity and QoS as compared to the conventional method, where all the computations were performed by the base station (BS)'s only. To reduce burden at the BS side, small cells deployment has been stressed upon, thus resulting in the formation of ultradense networks (UDN) having high concentration of small cells (e.g., picocell, femtocell, hotspots) and as a counter effect of which distance between two small cells is reduced to a greater extent. With such a close association of cells in UDN, the probability of frequent handovers also increases abruptly. As a result, the chances for attacker to spoof the bandwidth also increases many folds. In this paper, we have analyzed SNR, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio, and channel quality information channel parameters, such that the position of moving users at which handover is initiated in picocell deployment of UDN can be traced out successfully or region where the probability of attackers presence is high. Through this paper, we have tried to introduce the attacking scenario for the high mobility conditions in UDN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose an adaptive vehicle clustering algorithm based on fuzzy C-means algorithm, which aims at minimizing power consumption of the vehicles. Specifically, the proposed algorithm firstly dynamically allocates the computing resources of each virtual machine in the vehicle, according to the popularity of different virtualized network functions. The optimal clustering number to minimize the total energy consumption of vehicles is determined using the fuzzy C-means algorithm and the clustering head is selected based on vehicles moving direction, weighted mobility, and entropy. Simulation results are provided to confirm that the proposed algorithm can decrease the power consumption of vehicles while satisfying the vehicle delay requirement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of disseminating continuous data flow from a given source node to all other network nodes is known as the dynamic broadcast problem, which is also a fundamental problem in multi-hop wireless networks (e.g., wireless ad hoc and sensor networks). Due to link unreliability and node mobility, the topology of a network typically changes with time. Little work has been conducted to address the dynamic broadcast problem in time-varying wireless multi-hop networks, especially under the popular Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) interference model. In this paper, we study the dynamic broadcast problem in SINR-based time-varying directed acyclic multi-hop wireless networks formed by point-to-point wireless links. We consider the SINR-based link transmission rate model involved in the slot-based link scheduling. We first prove a tight upper bound for the broadcast capacity of the multi-hop wireless networks under study. We then propose an online max-weight Throughput-Optimal Dynamic Broadcast algorithm (TODB) which performs link weight allocation, link scheduling, and data forwarding for each time slot according to the current network connectivity and data reception rates of nodes. We derive the throughput-optimality of the TODB algorithm by proving that the broadcast throughput of TODB can achieve the aforementioned upper bound of the broadcast capacity. We evaluate the performance of TODB in terms of throughput and latency via simulations and the results validate its effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opportunistic scheduling for a wireless network with hybrid links is studied in this paper. Specifically, two link types are considered: a link of the first type always has a much lower transmission rate than a link of the second type. To avoid starvation in the first type of links, two link types must be treated differently in opportunistic scheduling, and quality of service (QoS) constraints, such as maximum delay or minimum throughput, must be imposed on the first link type. Considering QoS constraints, a distributed opportunistic scheduling scheme is derived based on the optimal stopping theory. Two scenarios are considered for the QoS-oriented opportunistic scheduling scheme. In the first scenario, all links within the same link type follow the same rate distribution. Thus, QoS constraints are imposed on the entire link type. In the second scenario, links of the first type follow heterogeneous rate distributions. Thus, QoS requirements need to be imposed on links with the worst performance. Performance results show that the new opportunistic scheduling scheme outperforms the existing ones in most scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we study how to defend against full-duplex active eavesdropping attacks in the cooperative communication system. Unlike passive eavesdropping attackers, a full-duplex active eavesdropper acts as both a jammer and a classical eavesdropper in full-duplex mode, and seeks to maximize eavesdropping. Furthermore, in a real-world network, the relays may be selfish and have their own objectives due to competing/limited resources. This may lead to the failure of cooperative communication if there is no incentive to stimulate relays to participate in forwarding the transmitter's messages. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a three-stage Stackelberg game approach to model the behaviors of attacker, and the competitions among the transmitter, relays and attacker. Through finding the Stackelberg equilibrium of our scheme, the legitimate users can achieve cooperative communication to improve the secrecy capacity and to defend against full-duplex active eavesdropping attacks. Findings from the evaluations demonstrate that with an increasing number of channels, our scheme can significantly reduce the intercept probability; therefore, the security performance is improved. It is shown that our scheme can greatly improve the utilities of both the transmitter and multiple relays over the results of the Nash equilibrium scheme and rand power control scheme, which means that the relays are more willing to participate in the cooperative communication, and the transmitter can achieve better secure transmission in our scheme. We also demonstrate that our scheme outperforms other existing schemes, i.e., power control with smart jamming game in a single-channel model/multiple-channel model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the problem of designing and allocating transmission sequences to users in a mobile ad hoc network that has no spatial boundary. A basic tenet of the transmission sequence approach for addressing media access control (MAC) is that under normal operating conditions, there is no feedback-triggered retransmission. This obviously is a major departure from the Slotted-ALOHA or carrier-sense multiple-access (CSMA)-type approaches. While these traditional solutions enjoy excellent throughput performance, a fundamental drawback is that they are based on feedback information. For systems without a naturally defined central controller that can play the role of a base station, the task of providing feedback information could easily become unmanageable. This highlights the advantage of the feedback-free approach. A second advantage is the ability to handle unlimited spatial coverage. We propose in this paper a concept for MAC that is akin to frequency reuse. However, instead of reusing frequency, the new approach allows transmission sequences to be reused. A study of the transmission sequence approach against other approaches is conducted by comparing the minimal frame lengths that can guarantee the existence of conflict-free transmissions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A wet road is slippery so vehicles often slow down their speed to increase the safety margin, thus usually reducing the average speed. This reduction in average speed may produce a chain reaction that shifts, extends, or amplifies a slowdown on downstream road segments. Conventional average-speed forecasting approaches are unable to respond to sudden chain reactions because these approaches do not consider the effect of weather factors and upstream road segments. Since accurate forecast of average speed can improve gas consumption, carbon dioxide emissions, and travel time, this paper proposes a short-term average-speed forecast and adjustment (ASFA) approach based on a study of prediction bias correlation among adjacent road segments and on weather factors, such as temperature, humidity, and rainfall. First, this approach applies an artificial neural network to predict the average speed of a road segment. Then, vehicles can monitor current traffic to calculate average speed via vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Finally, the vehicles adjust the predicted average speed according to the observed average speed. Real traffic measurements and weather data are used for the evaluation of the proposed scheme and Civic Boulevard in Taipei City is selected as the prediction target. The results show that the proposed ASFA improves accuracy by 57.4% when compared with a hybrid approach on an urban street during rush hour. This paper estimates and simulates a case study by aggregating traffic data in 186 ms on Shi-Min Boulevard via the VANETs during rush hour. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The wireless-powered communication paradigm brings self-sustainability to the on-vehicle sensors by harvesting the energy from radiated radio frequency (RF) signals. This paper proposes a novel transmission and resource allocation strategy for the scenario where multiple wireless powered vehicle area networks (VAN) co-existed with high density. The considered multi-VAN system consists of a remote master access point (MAP), multiple on-vehicle hybrid access points (HAPs) and sensors. Unlike previous works, we consider that the sensors can recycle the radiated radio frequency energy from all the HAPs when HAPs communicate with MAP, so the dedicated signals for energy harvesting (EH) are unnecessary. The proposed strategy can achieve simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) without complex receiver architecture requirements. The extra EH and interference caused by the dense distribution of VANs, which are rarely explored, are fully considered. To maximize the sum throughput of all the sensors while guaranteeing the transmission from HAPs to the MAP, we jointly optimize the time allocation, system energy consumption, power allocation, and receive beamforming. Due to the non-convexity of the formulated problem, we address the sub-problems separately through the Rayleigh quotient, Frobenius norm minimization and convex optimization. Then an efficient iterative algorithm to obtain sub-optimal solutions. The simulation results and discussions illustrate the proposed scheme's effectiveness and advantages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports experimental results on self-organizing wireless networks carried by small flying robots. Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) composed of small unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are flexible, inexpensive, and fast to deploy. This makes them a very attractive technology for many civilian and military applications. Due to the high mobility of the nodes, maintaining a communication link between the UAVs is a challenging task. The topology of these networks is more dynamic than that of typical mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and of typical vehicle ad hoc networks. As a consequence, the existing routing protocols designed for MANETs partly fail in tracking network topology changes. In this paper, we compare two different routing algorithms for ad hoc networks: optimized link-state routing (OLSR) and predictive OLSR (P-OLSR). The latter is an OLSR extension that we designed for FANETs; it takes advantage of the Global Positioning System (GPS) information available on board. To the best of our knowledge, P-OLSR is currently the only FANET-specific routing technique that has an available Linux implementation. We present results obtained by both media-access-control (MAC) layer emulations and real-world experiments. In the experiments, we used a testbed composed of two autonomous fixed-wing UAVs and a node on the ground. Our experiments evaluate the link performance and the communication range, as well as the routing performance. Our emulation and experimental results show that P-OLSR significantly outperforms OLSR in routing in the presence of frequent network topology changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) has recently drawn significant interest for its dual use of radio signals to provide wireless data and energy access at the same time. However, a challenging secrecy communication issue arises as the messages sent to the information receivers (IRs) may be eavesdropped upon by energy receivers (ERs), which are presumed to harvest energy only from received signals. To tackle this problem, we propose in this paper an artificial-noise (AN)-aided transmission scheme to facilitate the secrecy information transmission to IRs and, yet, meet the energy harvesting requirement for ERs, under the assumption that the AN can be canceled at IRs but not at ERs. Specifically, the proposed scheme splits the transmit power into two parts: to send the confidential message to the IR and an AN to interfere with the ER, respectively. Under a simplified three-node wiretap channel setup, the transmit power allocations and power splitting ratios over fading channels are jointly optimized to minimize the outage probability for delay-limited secrecy information transmission or to maximize the average rate for no-delay-limited secrecy information transmission, subject to a combination of average and peak power constraints (APC and PPC) at the transmitter (Tx) and an average energy harvesting constraint at the ER. Both the secrecy outage probability minimization and average rate maximization problems are shown to be nonconvex, and for each, we propose the optimal solution based on the dual decomposition and the suboptimal solution based on the alternating optimization. Furthermore, two benchmark schemes are introduced for comparison where the AN is not used at the Tx and where the AN is used but cannot be canceled by the IR, respectively. Finally, the performances of proposed schemes are evaluated by simulations in terms of various tradeoffs for wireless (secrecy) information versus energy transmissions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Providing guaranteed quality of service (QoS) for multimedia applications is a challenging topic in wireless mesh networks (WMNs). This paper proposes a distributed resource reservation (RR) mechanism with novel admission control to guarantee QoS performance of real-time sessions (RTSNs) while improving bandwidth utilization in WMNs. The proposed RR mechanism establishes logical clusters (LCs) for identifying interference relationships between nodes and avoids simultaneous transmissions from interfering nodes. Following the established LCs, a cooperative contention and collision-free channel access is achieved in hybrid medium access control (MAC) for multihop data forwarding in WMNs. To efficiently utilize the scarce resources in a contention-free period, soft and hard resources are reserved for RTSNs according to their QoS demands. This is achieved by a novel admission control algorithm. Furthermore, an analytical model is derived for investigating the RR parameters of the proposed mechanism. Simulation results show that the proposed mechanism guarantees the QoS for RTSNs while improving bandwidth utilization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Security is the main concern and bottleneck for widely deployed wireless applications due to the fact that wireless channels are vulnerable to attacks and that wireless bandwidth is a constrained resource. In this sense, it is desirable to adaptively achieve security according to the available resource. In particular, mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) based on cooperative communication (CC) present significant challenges to security issues, as well as issues of network performance and management. In this paper, we focus on authentication and topology control issues. Although authentication and topology control are separately studied in most existing works, they are, in fact, closely correlated in MANETs. For example, both authentication and topology control schemes have significant impacts on throughput. In this paper, we jointly consider authentication and topology control. Specifically, we analyze the effective throughput with upper layer authentication schemes and physical-layer schemes related to channel conditions and relay selections for CCs. A joint authentication and topology control (JATC) scheme is proposed to improve the throughput. JATC is formulated as a discrete stochastic optimization problem, which does not require prior perfect channel status but only channel estimate. We also mathematically prove the tracking convergence property and the convergence rate of the discrete stochastic optimization approach in this paper. Simulation results show that our scheme can substantially improve throughput in MANETs with CC. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent advances in wireless technologies have given rise to the emergence of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). In such networks, the limited coverage of WiFi and the high mobility of the nodes generate frequent topology changes and network fragmentations. For these reasons, and taking into account that there is no central manager entity, routing packets through the network is a challenging task. Therefore, offering an efficient routing strategy is crucial to the deployment of VANETs. This paper deals with the optimal parameter setting of the optimized link state routing (OLSR), which is a well-known mobile ad hoc network routing protocol, by defining an optimization problem. This way, a series of representative metaheuristic algorithms (particle swarm optimization, differential evolution, genetic algorithm, and simulated annealing) are studied in this paper to find automatically optimal configurations of this routing protocol. In addition, a set of realistic VANET scenarios (based in the city of Málaga) have been defined to accurately evaluate the performance of the network under our automatic OLSR. In the experiments, our tuned OLSR configurations result in better quality of service (QoS) than the standard request for comments (RFC 3626), as well as several human experts, making it amenable for utilization in VANET configurations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The development of delay-tolerant networks (DTNs) has attracted significant attention in the network research community. In this paper, we propose a new type of DTN - a homingpigeon-based DTN (HoP-DTN). In the HoP-DTN, each node owns a dedicated messenger (called a pigeon). The only form of internode communication is for a pigeon to periodically carry a batch of messages originated at the home node, deliver them to the corresponding destination nodes, and return home. Clearly, given message-expiration times, some messages may not reach their destinations by the deadline. Through analysis and simulations, we study the relationship between key parameters of the system, including average message delay, expiration time, delivery ratio, arrival rate, and batch size of messages. Various simulations have been conducted to demonstrate the accuracy of our analysis. Our theoretical study and simulations present a deep insight into the characteristics of the proposed system. Some interesting observations from simulations are discussed in detail in this paper, and the results demonstrate that our proposed scheme performs better in terms of average message delay, message-delivery ratio, and cost-effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study the statistical properties of the connectivity of Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) with user mobility. It is assumed that the nodes travel along a multilane highway that allows vehicles to pass each other. The nodes arrive at the highway through one of the traffic entry points according to a Poisson process and then travel in the same direction according to a user mobility model until they reach their exit points. The nodes on the highway may be able to communicate with each other. We derive the probability distribution of the node population size on the highway and the node's location distribution. Then, we determine the mean cluster size and the probability that the nodes will form a single cluster. The analysis of this paper also applies to any path in a network of highways, as well as to two-way traffic. The numerical results show the significance of mobility on the connectivity of VANETs. We also present simulation results that confirm the accuracy of the analysis. The results of this paper may be used to study the routing algorithms, throughput, or delay in VANETs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are widely deployed to enhance the wireless network capacity and to provide communication services to mobile users beyond the infrastructure coverage. Recently, with the help of a promising technology called network virtualization, multiple service providers (SPs) can share the infrastructures and wireless resources owned by the mobile network operators (MNOs). Then, they provide specific services to their mobile users using the resources obtained from MNOs. However, wireless resource sharing among SPs is challenging as each SP wants to maximize their utility/profit selfishly while satisfying the QoS requirement of their mobile users. Therefore, in this paper, we propose joint users association and wireless resource sharing problem in the cell-free UAVs-assisted wireless networks with the objective of maximizing the total network utility of the SPs while ensuring QoS constraints of their mobile users and the resource constraints of the UAVs deployed by MNOs. To solve the proposed mixed-integer non-convex problem, we decompose the proposed problem into two subproblems: users association, and resource sharing problems. Then, a two-sided matching algorithm is deployed in order to solve users association problem. We further deploy the whale optimization and Lagrangian relaxation algorithms to solve the resource sharing problem. Finally, extensive numerical results are provided in order to show the effectiveness of our proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until now, multi-hop device-to-device (MD2D) routing in mobile wireless networks has been designed to operate over a single-protocol routing framework. Consequently, to the best of our knowledge, no framework has been developed to enable the dynamic deployment and switching of multiple MD2D routing protocols under one framework. This paper proposes a multi-protocol framework to introduce the idea of clustering a cell and deploying different MD2D routing protocols for each cluster based on the cluster requirements. To this end, four clusters are developed with varying network conditions (i.e., node density, mobility rate, and the number of flows). Then, the performance of our two previously designed multi-hop routing protocols, namely hybrid SDN architecture for wireless distributed networks (HSAW) and source-based virtual ad hoc routing protocol (VARP-S), are investigated in each cluster in terms of energy consumption, end-to-end (E2E) delay, packet loss, and cellular-band overhead. Based on the achieved simulation results, a multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach based on the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is developed to choose the most suitable protocol for each cluster to provide the best performance. The simulation results indicate that our proposed multi-protocol framework provides better performance compared to traditional single-protocol architectures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of energy-aware multihop cooperation among the mobile terminals (MTs) that cooperatively download a common content from a wireless network. The base station (BS) unicasts or multicasts the content to selected MTs that, in turn, either unicast or multicast it to other MTs, forming a multihop ad hoc network with a predefined maximum allowed number of hops. This paper presents the optimization formulations whose solution gives the exact optimal set of receiving MTs from the BS, the optimal multihop ad hoc network, and the optimal unicasting and multicasting transmission bit rates that minimize the total energy consumption of the MTs. Second, a simplified multicasting formulation is proposed that has a close-to-optimal performance with notably lower computational complexity. Third, interference avoidance among the transmitting MTs is considered. For each presented formulation, the complexity is identified, and results show that some formulations can be efficiently solved for medium network sizes, while others are more computationally complex. Thus, polynomial-time heuristic solutions are presented that have close-to-optimal performance. Results demonstrate remarkable energy consumption reduction gains and wireless resources savings under various network scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research on the broadcasting of signal countdown messages (SCMs) to vehicles via vehicular ad hoc network (VANET) technology has shown that it can reduce \CO2 emissions and energy consumption; however, past studies have lacked consideration of car following and vehicle gliding mode. In this paper, two green driving suggestion models, namely, the Maximize Throughput Model (MaxTM) and the Minimize Acceleration and Deceleration Model (MinADM), are proposed to minimize the \CO2 emissions by considering real-time traffic information nearby the intersection. The two proposed strategies are compared with an open traffic light control model (OTLCM) . The main facts this paper demonstrate are that traffic models lack consideration of car following, which would make the simulation result unrealistic, that the proposed MaxTM can reduce more \CO2 emissions than the MinADM and the OTLCM, and the total travel time in the MaxTM is also better than the other two models so that the general traffic performance can be improved. Simulation results show that the performance of \CO2 emissions of the MaxTM is 5%–102% better than the MinADM and 13%–209% better than the OTLCM in the simulation cases, and the performance of \CO2 emissions of the MaxTM is 8%–14% better than the MinADM and 15%–231% better than the OTLCM in the real traffic cases. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates the delay sensitive secure transmission problem in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-relayed vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). Specifically, we take the security assurance into account and formulate this problem as a total information delay minimization problem by optimizing the UAV relay trajectory and channel allocation. To tackle this optimization problem, we propose an alternating optimization framework, where the UAV relay trajectory is solved by the Newton method, and the channel allocation is obtained by relax-and-round and sequential convex approximation methods. Finally, simulation results show the performance improvement of our algorithm compared with the current works in terms of the total information delay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Broadcasting is an important operation in wireless networks where control information is usually propagated as broadcasts for the realization of most networking protocols. In traditional ad hoc networks, broadcasts are conducted on a common channel, which is shared by all nodes in the network. However, in cognitive radio (CR) ad hoc networks, unlicensed users may observe heterogeneous spectrum availability, which is unknown to other unlicensed users before the control information was broadcast. Thus, it is extremely challenging that broadcasts can be successfully conducted without knowing the spectrum availability information in advance. In addition, since broadcast collisions (i.e., simultaneous reception of broadcast messages at the same node) often lead to the waste of network resources, they should be efficiently mitigated in multihop scenarios. In this paper, a quality-of-service (QoS)-based broadcast protocol under Blind Information for multihop CR ad hoc networks, i.e., \QB^2\IC, is proposed with the aim of having a high success rate and short broadcast delay. In our design, we do not assume that unlicensed users are aware of the network topology, the spectrum availability information, and time synchronization information. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper that investigates the broadcast issue in multihop CR ad hoc networks under blind information. Simulation results show that our proposed \QB^2\IC protocol outperforms other broadcast schemes in terms of a higher success rate and shorter average broadcast delay. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) can significantly improve traffic safety and efficiency. The basic idea is to allow vehicles to send traffic information to roadside units (RSUs) or other vehicles. Vehicles have to be prevented from some attacks on their privacy and misuse of their private data. For this reason, security and privacy preservation issues are important prerequisites for VANETs. The identity-based batch verification (IBV) scheme has been recently proposed to make VANETs more secure and efficient for practical use. In this paper, we point out that the current IBV scheme has some security risks. We introduce an improved scheme that can satisfy the security and privacy desired by vehicles. The proposed IBV scheme provides the provable security in the random oracle model. In addition, the batch verification of the proposed scheme needs only a small constant number of pairing and point multiplication computations, independent of the number of messages. We show the efficiency advantages of the proposed scheme through performance evaluations in terms of computation delay and transmission overhead. Moreover, the extensive simulation is conducted to verify the efficiency and applicability of the proposed scheme in the real-world road environment and vehicular traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we analyze the capacity and delay in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), considering the correlation of node mobility (correlated mobility). Previous studies on correlated mobility investigated the maximum capacity with the corresponding delay in several subcases; the problem of optimal capacity under various delay constraints (the optimal capacity–delay tradeoff) still remains open. To this end, we deeply explore the characteristics of correlated mobility and figure out the fundamental relationships between the network performance and the scheduling parameters. Based on that, we establish the overall upper bound of the capacity–delay tradeoff in all the subcases of correlated mobility. Then, we try to obtain the achievable lower bound by identifying the optimal scheduling parameters on certain constraints. Results demonstrate the whole picture of how the correlation of node mobility impacts the capacity, the delay, and the corresponding tradeoff between them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Delay-tolerant networks often adopt the message replication methodology to increase the opportunity that destinations can receive messages from a source node in a network. Repeatedly replicating messages, however, consumes significant resources such as local buffer space on nodes and internode communication bandwidth. Previous buffer management and scheduling policies mainly contributed to a simple scenario of message unicasting from a source to a singular destination in a network. When message multicasting toward multiple destinations is considered, previous solutions perform inefficiently. This paper proposes a new buffer management and scheduling policy for message multicasting in delay-tolerant networks. The proposed policy is an optimal-based design with a new utility function, which can prioritize messages in a buffer for maximizing the successful delivery rate in a network. Simulation results manifest the efficacy of the proposed scheme under different mobility benchmarks in delay-tolerant networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In the era of ubiquitous computing, offloading certain computing tasks to the mobile ad hoc cloud (MAHC) could help mobile devices reduce execution time. However, if multiple resource demanders (RDs) offload tasks to the MAHC without a proper scheduling policy, it may cause unbalanced load distribution among resource providers (RPs), which will affect the overall quality of service (QoS). To this end, in this paper, we propose a multi-agent independent learning approach aiming to optimize the QoS of MAHC. Firstly, for the distributed MAHC, we formulate the QoS optimization model as a non-cooperative game, where each RD competes for maximizing its own utility. Secondly, based on the potential game theory, we prove the existence of Nash equilibrium. A multi-agent independent learning algorithm is then proposed to obtain the equilibrium points, and the convergence of this algorithm is analyzed. Simulation results confirm that the proposed approach helps balance the load distribution and enhances the QoS of MAHC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The problem of routing security in vehicular ad hoc networks has become a major concern for researchers. Compared with cryptography-based solutions, trust-based solutions are considered to be more acceptable as a promising approach, which mainly define two operations: trust computing and security application. In this paper we first study trust properties and construct a novel trust inference model, where two trust attributes named subjective trust and recommendation trust, are selected to quantify the trust level of a specific vehicle. The SCGM(1,1)-weighted Markov prediction algorithm based on fluctuation recognition is utilized to calculate the subjective trust accurately, meanwhile a new evaluation method of recommendation credibility based on the feedback mechanism is introduced for the calculation of recommendation trust. We subsequently exploit the advantages of mesh structure and design a light-weight trust-aware multicast routing protocol (i.e., LTMRP), which can establish secure and reliable communication paths by selecting trusted relay vehicles. To further improve the routing efficiency, two mechanisms including forwarding nodes reuse mechanism and trust-aware route handoff mechanism are proposed. Simulation verification and comparison of the relevant trust models and trust-based protocols are accomplished by three simulation platforms (i.e., Netlogo, SUMO, and NS-2).The convincing results show that our trust model obtains strong resistibility to multiple malicious attacks. Moreover, examined in four routing metrics, the experimental results indicate that LTMRP performs better than the other relevant protocols. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider a network reconstruction problem using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) where stationary ad hoc networks are severely damaged in a post-disaster scenario. The main objective of this paper is to repair the network by supplementing aerial wireless links into the isolated ground network using UAVs. Our scheme performs network probing from the air and finds out crucial spots where both local and global routing performance can significantly be recovered if deployed. First, we propose a novel distributed coverage path planning algorithms with independent and computationally lightweight navigation based on adaptivezigzagpatterns. Second, we present route topology discovery schemes that capture both local andnon-local network connectivity by extracting inherent route skeletons via stitching partial local paths obtained from the simple packet probing by UAVs. Finally, we find the optimal UAV relay deployment positions that can improve network-wide data delivery most effectively based on three novel approaches of an optimization technique, an iterative heuristic algorithm, and a topology partitioning ofstrongly connected component. Simulation results demonstrate that our distributed traversing algorithms reduce the complete coverage time, the travel distance, and the duplicate coverage compared to other counterpart algorithms. Our deployment algorithms recover severely impaired routes, incurring reasonable computational overhead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies finding the secure path according to the secrecy connectivity probability (SCP) in the multihop ad hoc networks in the presence of inhomogeneous eavesdropper clusters. We consider both random and fixed eavesdropper clusters, where the former case assumes that there is no knowledge of the locations of the clusters and the latter case assumes that the locations of the clusters can be estimated accurately. First, we derive the end-to-end SCP to characterize the secrecy performance of a given path in a general multihop wireless network with half-duplex randomize-and-forward relaying. Then, we consider a full-duplex scheme at the legitimate receiver, which receives the useful information while broadcasting a jamming signal to the potential eavesdroppers to further enhance the secrecy connectivity. Then, a novel secure routing algorithm that can provide the maximum SCP for any legitimate transmitter/receiver pair in a distributed manner is proposed. The theoretical analysis is verified by Monte Carlo simulation results. The results show that our secure routing algorithm provides similar results compared to an exhaustive search. For the random eavesdropper cluster case, the optimal route is independent of the knowledge of the cluster, which is the same as the homogeneous eavesdropper case. However, for the case where eavesdropper clusters are fixed and their locations are knowna priori, the optimal path selection depends on the radii and locations of the eavesdropper clusters and the average number of eavesdroppers in each cluster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In IEEE-802.11-based wireless mesh networks (WMNs), unfair bandwidth sharing may arise, because the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance protocol is designed to provide per-station fairness only in one hop. As the hop count from a mobile client to the gateway node increases, the throughput of the node drastically decreases. In this paper, we propose a fair bandwidth allocation scheme for multiradio multichannel WMNs. This scheme provides fair bandwidth sharing among the nodes in a WMN, regardless of their hop distance from the gateway node. To achieve fairness, we first estimate the number of active nodes attached to each router and calculate the effective weights of routers based on the estimation. Then, we differentiate their contention window using their weights. For this method, we derive a multihop packet collision model. The proposed scheme is fully distributed and does not require any global information. Through an extensive simulation study, we show that our scheme ensures per-node fairness without loss of the total aggregate throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The mobility pattern of users is one of the distinct features of vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) compared with other types of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). This is due to the higher speed and the roadmap-restricted movement of vehicles. In this paper, we propose a new analytical mobility model for VANETs based on product-form queueing networks. In this model, we map the topology of the streets and the behavior of vehicles at both intersections and different parts of the streets onto different parameters of a BCMP¹ open queueing network comprising M/G/∞ nodes. This model represents a sparse situation for VANETs. To include the effect of dense situation on the mobility model, we modify the proposed queueing network as a new one comprising nodes with state-dependent service rates, i.e., M/G(n)/∞ nodes. With respect to the product-form solution property of the proposed queueing networks, we are able to find the spatial traffic distribution for vehicles at both sparse and dense situations. Furthermore, we are able to modify the proposed queueing network to find the lower and upper bounds for the probability of connectivity. In the last part of this paper, we show the flexibility of the proposed model by several numerical examples and confirm our modeling approach by simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Address allocation is an essential part in maintaining a mobile ad hoc network (MANET) effectively, and several address allocation schemes have been proposed. In this paper, we present a set of analytical models to evaluate the efficiency of address allocation schemes. The derived models quantitatively characterize the efficiency of four popular address allocation schemes in terms of latency and communication overhead. Through the analysis, we achieve numerical results that show the impact of network parameters on the efficiency of these schemes. We also conduct simulations and compare with analytical results to validate our models. The analytical model developed in this paper is able to more accurately predict the performance of address allocation schemes over a various range of loss rates and would be useful in providing more insights for the study of an efficient address allocation scheme in MANETs. To our understanding, this is the first attempt in mathematically investigating the performance of addressing schemes in ad hoc networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To cope with an exponentially increasing demand on mobile data traffic in cellular networks, high-capacity WiFi and device-to-device networks can be exploited as a complementary means to offload and reduce the traffic load of cellular networks. This paper proposes a novel cooperative content dissemination strategy for a heterogeneous network consisting of different types of devices, such as WiFi access points (APs), smartphones, and intelligent vehicles. The proposed strategy offloads a significant proportion of data traffic from cellular networks to WiFi or device-to-device networks using ad hoc connections that opportunistically emerge when mobile devices move and meet one another. The strategy is particularly suited for dissemination of delay-tolerant content. Detailed analysis is provided for the content dissemination process in heterogeneous mobile networks adopting the proposed strategy. On this basis, the optimal parameter settings for the content dissemination strategy are discussed. Simulation and numerical results show that the proposed strategy significantly reduces the amount of data traffic for cellular networks while guaranteeing the successful delivery of content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successive interference cancelation can resolve collisions involving multiple packets and, hence, improve the throughput of an 802.11 network. This technique, however, requires packets to be sent with different power levels. In this paper, we first develop a detailed analytical model to determine the throughput of 802.11 networks with this multiple-packet reception capability. We then study the problem of determining the optimal probability distribution associating with these power levels when the network is operated in infrastructure and ad hoc modes, respectively. In the infrastructure mode, the problem is formulated as an optimization problem with a solution to be broadcast to all the nodes by the access point. In the ad hoc mode, the same problem is formulated as a mixed-strategy game, where individual nodes strategically choose the probability distribution of the transmitting power levels to maximize its own throughput. We show that the Nash equilibrium of this game is Pareto optimal and fair. Furthermore, the resulting throughput of the distributed approach is close to the optimal performance of the infrastructure mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An intelligent location-aware data aggregation mechanism for real-time observation, estimation, and efficient dissemination of any kind of traffic information in vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) is presented in this paper. The mechanism introduces a location awareness algorithm, enabling spatiotemporal database indexing and providing the location context of the messages without the use of advanced positioning systems such as satellite navigation and digital maps. Intelligent passive clustering and adaptive broadcasting are used to minimize the number of messages exchanged, packet collisions, and network load. The incoming messages are fused by a Kalman filter, allowing the description of the traffic-related information as a system characterized by as many variables as needed, depending on the application design. The scheme allows the comparison of aggregates and single observations, which enables their merging and better overall accuracy. Old information in aggregates is removed by real-time database refreshing, thus leaving only newer relevant information for the driver to make real-time decisions in traffic. The mechanism is generic and can be used for any kind of VANET information. It is evaluated by extensive simulations to show the efficiency and accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Network slicing is emerging as a promising solution for end-to-end resource management and orchestration together with Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV) technologies. In this paper, a comprehensive network slicing framework is presented to achieve end-to-end (E2E) QoS provisioning among customized services in 5G-driven VANETs. The proposed scheme manages the cooperation of both RAN and Core Network (CN), using SDN, NFV and Edge Computing technologies. Furthermore, a dynamic radio resource slice optimization scheme is formulated mathematically, that handles a mixture of mission-critical and best effort traffic, by delivering the QoS provisioning of Ultra-reliability and low latency. The proposed scheme adjusts the optimal bandwidth slicing and dynamically adapts to instantaneous network load conditions in a way that a targeted performance is guaranteed. The problem is solved using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) and results are compared with the previously proposed 5 G VANET architecture. Simulation reveal that the proposed slicing framework is able to optimize resources and deliver on the key performance metrics for mission critical communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the performance of a general two-hop relay (2HR)- $(x,w,f) $ packet delivery scheme that combines both erasure coding and packet replication techniques in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). Under this packet delivery scheme, a group of $x$ packets is first encoded into $w(w\geq x) $ coded packets using erasure coding, and each coded packet is then replicated to at most $f$ distinct relay nodes that can help to forward the coded packets to its destination node. The original packets can be recovered when $x$ distinct coded packets reach the destination node. To understand the packet delivery process under the 2HR- $(x,w,f) $ scheme, we develop a multidimensional Markov chain framework, and based on this analytical expressions on the packet delivery ratio and corresponding expected packet delivery cost are further derived. Finally, extensive simulation and numerical studies are conducted to illustrate the efficiency of the developed theoretical models and to illustrate our findings. Our results indicate that the replication parameter $f$ should be carefully selected in order to obtain a high packet-delivery-ratio performance while maintaining a relatively low delivery cost. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The wireless multihop backhaul is a unique feature of wireless mesh networks (WMNs), which necessitates redesign of association control algorithms. In this paper, we formulate and propose approximation algorithms for the problem of optimal joint association and bandwidth allocation in WMNs, considering max–min fairness (MM) and proportional fairness (PF) objectives. We first relax the integral association constraint and get an optimal fractional association solution. Then, we propose two rounding algorithms, namely, largest fraction rounding and bipartite graph rounding, to get an integral solution and analyze their theoretical approximation ratios. Finally, we propose two approximation ratio improvement algorithms so that the improved approximation ratio can more accurately reflect the true performance gap between the produced solution and the optimal one. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithms achieve performance that is close to the optimal and outperform popular heuristic algorithms. We also compare the performance of PF and MM in WMNs in terms of network throughput and fairness in user bandwidth. Finally, we compare the performances of the proposed rounding algorithms and show that the approximation ratio can be reduced to 1–2 by the proposed ratio improvement algorithms. Therefore, our proposed algorithm is able to achieve nearly optimal association control, as well as bandwidth allocation, considering MM or PF, with small approximation ratios, in WMNs. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we analyze the impact of network coding (NC) configuration on the performance of ad hoc networks with the consideration of two significant factors, namely, the throughput loss and the decoding loss, which are jointly treated as the overhead of NC. In particular, physical-layer NC and random linear NC are adopted in static and mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), respectively. Furthermore, we characterize the goodput and delay/goodput tradeoff in static networks, which are also analyzed in MANETs for different mobility models (i.e., the random independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) mobility model and the random walk model) and transmission schemes (i.e., the two-hop relay scheme and the flooding scheme). Moreover, the optimal configuration of NC, which consists of the data size, generation size, and NC Galois field, is derived to optimize the delay/goodput tradeoff and goodput. The theoretical results demonstrate that NC does not bring about order gain on delay/goodput tradeoff for each network model and scheme, except for the flooding scheme in a random i.i.d. mobility model. However, the goodput improvement is exhibited for all the proposed schemes in mobile networks. To our best knowledge, this is the first work to investigate the scaling laws of NC performance and configuration with the consideration of coding overhead in ad hoc networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multicasting is the transmission of data to a group of nodes identified by a single destination address. Furthermore, multicasting is considered as an appropriate transmission method for multimedia services. Multimedia applications are expected to become more prevalent over mobile ad hoc networks in the near future. Therefore, achieving reliability in multimedia communications is an important task. Video compression technologies are about reducing and removing redundant video data so that a digital video file can be effectively sent over a network. With modern compression standards, such as Moving Picture Expert Group 2 (MPEG-2), MPEG-4, and H.264, which is also known as advanced video coding MPEG-4 part 10, losses of different frames have different impacts on video quality. In this paper, we propose a leader-based reliable multicast medium-access control layer protocol for multimedia applications to enhance video quality. We present a Markov chain model and numerical formulation of our proposed protocol. Simulation results show that our proposed method is better than other protocols in terms of the number of decodable frames, peak signal-to-noise ratio (PSNR), and video quality. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Network coding achieves multicast network capacity by allowing intermediate nodes to mix information in packets. However, due to the mixing operation, network coding is vulnerable to pollution attacks. Different from conventional cryptographic solutions, watchdog-based solutions, which have been recently proposed for network coding, rely on trusted nodes to monitor and verify behaviors of transmission nodes. However, the impact of lossy wireless communications has not been considered. Since false alarm and misdetection depend on the loss rate, these false results can happen with high probability when packet loss happens. In this paper, we propose VANDER, which is a novel cooperative watchdog scheme in heterogeneous wireless networks, where multiple watchdogs collaborate and efficiently detect pollution attacks in a lossy wireless environment. The novelty of our approach is that, when lossy overhearing happens, watchdogs work cooperatively to share the packet information, where no extra overhead is introduced to normal transmission nodes, and rather than retransmitting all lost packets among watchdogs, watchdogs use randomly generated Vandermonde hashes to detect corrupted packets. Moreover, VANDER is capable of detecting successive colluded adversaries. In addition to the low false alarm and misdetection probabilities, VANDER also achieves low computational complexity and communication overhead. Numerical experiments are provided to support the theoretical analysis of VANDER. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In relay-assisted cellular networks, when and how to cooperate for potential relay nodes is an important issue, particularly from the energy-aware perspective. Moreover, addressing the dynamic cooperative partner-selection problem with incomplete private information is a challenging issue, particularly in the competitive and changing environments. In this paper, we model the energy-aware dynamic competition of cooperative partner selection as an evolutionary game. Specifically, the replicator dynamics are applied to model the adaptation of strategic interactions while considering the dynamic nature in time dependence, and the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) is referred to as the robust solution of the proposed game. Moreover, we prove the uniqueness of the resulting ESS, guarantee the convergence to the ESS, and analyze the convergence behavior under the replicator dynamics from different perspectives. In practical terms, we further develop a cooperative partner-selection evolutionary algorithm based on the Q-learning approach, which only requires local knowledge for the potential relay nodes. In addition, we extend our observation by studying the dynamic cooperative partner selection with delay and discuss the properties of the resulting ESS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distinctive features of mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), including dynamic topology and open wireless medium, may lead to MANETs suffering from many security vulnerabilities. In this paper, using recent advances in uncertain reasoning that originated from the artificial intelligence community, we propose a unified trust management scheme that enhances the security in MANETs. In the proposed trust management scheme, the trust model has two components: trust from direct observation and trust from indirect observation. With direct observation from an observer node, the trust value is derived using Bayesian inference, which is a type of uncertain reasoning when the full probability model can be defined. On the other hand, with indirect observation, which is also called secondhand information that is obtained from neighbor nodes of the observer node, the trust value is derived using the Dempster–Shafer theory (DST), which is another type of uncertain reasoning when the proposition of interest can be derived by an indirect method. By combining these two components in the trust model, we can obtain more accurate trust values of the observed nodes in MANETs. We then evaluate our scheme under the scenario of MANET routing. Extensive simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Specifically, throughput and packet delivery ratio (PDR) can be improved significantly with slightly increased average end-to-end delay and overhead of messages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fast handoff support is a basic requirement for an Internet-based wireless mesh network (WMN), aiming to guarantee mobile users continuous connection to the Internet, regardless of their physical locations or moving trajectory. Due to the multihop transmission of network-layer handoff signaling packets, handoff performance in WMNs can be largely degraded by the increasing number of wireless hops as well as the channel access contentions between data and signaling packets in the mesh backbone. However, these issues are ignored in existing handoff solutions and multichannel medium-access control schemes. In this paper, we address the seamless handoff support from a different perspective and propose a gateway scheduling-based (GaS) beamforming scheme for handoff support in single-radio multichannel multihop WMNs. Our proposed beamforming scheme can realize single-hop handoff signaling packet transmissions and eliminate the channel contentions between data and signaling packets. Simulation results show that the total handoff delay is significantly improved using our proposed GaS beamforming scheme under various scenarios, as compared with existing handoff solutions in multihop WMNs. In addition, due to the single-hop transmission of signaling packets, the signaling overhead in the wireless mesh backbone can be substantially reduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ultradense networks have been identified as a promising technology to accomplish objectives of the fifth-generation wireless networks. However, the severe mutual interference generated by the densely deployed femtocells constitutes a great challenge. Different from the most prior studies that center on femtocell access points (FAPs) and neglect the influence of users’ location when allocating subchannels, a centralized user-centric merge-and-split rule based coalition formation game, which can be well supported in the framework of the cloud/centralized radio access network, is proposed. This user-centric game makes it possible to utilize user information (e.g., distance) in estimating interuser interference so that the interference mitigation can be more accurate and effective. Besides, a novel resource allocation algorithm based on graph theory is presented. It can eliminate intratier interference efficiently by allocating users who may severely interfere each other in the conflict-graph with orthogonal subchannels as far as possible in a distance-aware sequence, and allocating subchannels in a profit-calculating method if idle subchannels are unavailable. Furthermore, in order to overcome the limitation that “only one subchannel can be allocated to each user” in previous coalitional games, a supplementary allocation algorithm is put forward to allocate remainder subchannels such that the system spectral efficiency can be improved. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms improve the aggregate throughput up to 51.04%, 62.70%, 157.46%, and 482.42% comparing with the coalition formation game transmitted in a time-division multiple access (TDMA) manner within each coalition with virtual multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) case, the reuse 1 case, the FAP-centric coalition formation game with modified recursive core case, and the coalition formation game transmitted in a TDMA manner among users with virtual MIMO case, respectively. The coalitional game proposed in this paper converges to a final stable partition in finite iterations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]