Topic overview

Networking and Internet Architecture

2134 works6487 researchers0 institutions

Topic snapshot

What this area looks like now

2134works
6487authors
0experts visible
0communities

Next steps

Move from topic reading into action

The graph preview below keeps the nearby papers, people and communities visible in the same reading flow.

Topic graph

See the topic as a live network

Open full explorer

Inspect nearby papers, researchers, institutions and communities without opening a separate graph page.

Building this graph slice

BZPEER is loading the nearby papers, people, topics and institutions for this page.

Papers in this area

24 featured work(s)

preprint2015arXiv

Power Distribution of Device-to-Device Communications in Underlaid Cellular Networks

Device-to-device (D2D) communications have recently emerged as a novel transmission paradigm in wireless cellular networks. D2D transmissions take place concurrently with the usual cellular connections, and thus, controlling the interference brought to the macro-cellular user equipment (UE) is of vital importance. In this paper, we consider the uplink transmission of a tier of D2D users that operates as an underlay for the traditional cellular network. Using network model based on stochastic geometry, we derive the equilibrium cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the D2D transmit power. Considering interference-limited and relatively lossy environment cases, closed form equations are derived for the power CDF. Finally, a tight closed-form upper-bound for the derived power distribution is proposed, and the analytical results are validated via simulation.

preprint2013arXiv

Achievable Rate Regions for Network Coding

Determining the achievable rate region for networks using routing, linear coding, or non-linear coding is thought to be a difficult task in general, and few are known. We describe the achievable rate regions for four interesting networks (completely for three and partially for the fourth). In addition to the known matrix-computation method for proving outer bounds for linear coding, we present a new method which yields actual characteristic-dependent linear rank inequalities from which the desired bounds follow immediately.

preprint2017arXiv

WNOS: An Optimization-based Wireless Network Operating System

This article investigates the basic design principles for a new Wireless Network Operating System (WNOS), a radically different approach to software-defined networking (SDN) for infrastructure-less wireless networks. Departing from well-understood approaches inspired by OpenFlow, WNOS provides the network designer with an abstraction hiding (i) the lower-level details of the wireless protocol stack and (ii) the distributed nature of the network operations. Based on this abstract representation, the WNOS takes network control programs written on a centralized, high-level view of the network and automatically generates distributed cross-layer control programs based on distributed optimization theory that are executed by each individual node on an abstract representation of the radio hardware. We first discuss the main architectural principles of WNOS. Then, we discuss a new approach to generate solution algorithms for each of the resulting subproblems in an automated fashion. Finally, we illustrate a prototype implementation of WNOS on software-defined radio devices and test its effectiveness by considering specific cross-layer control problems. Experimental results indicate that, based on the automatically generated distributed control programs, WNOS achieves 18%, 56% and 80.4% utility gain in networks with low, medium and high levels of interference; maybe more importantly, we illustrate how the global network behavior can be controlled by modifying a few lines of code on a centralized abstraction.

preprint2019arXiv

Analysis and Visualization of Deep Neural Networks in Device-Free Wi-Fi Indoor Localization

Device-free Wi-Fi indoor localization has received significant attention as a key enabling technology for many Internet of Things (IoT) applications. Machine learning-based location estimators, such as the deep neural network (DNN), carry proven potential in achieving high-precision localization performance by automatically learning discriminative features from the noisy wireless signal measurements. However, the inner workings of DNNs are not transparent and not adequately understood especially in the indoor localization application. In this paper, we provide quantitative and visual explanations for the DNN learning process as well as the critical features that DNN has learned during the process. Toward this end, we propose to use several visualization techniques, including: 1) dimensionality reduction visualization, to project the high-dimensional feature space to the 2D space to facilitate visualization and interpretation, and 2) visual analytics and information visualization, to quantify relative contributions of each feature with the proposed feature manipulation procedures. The results provide insightful views and plausible explanations of the DNN in device-free Wi-Fi indoor localization using channel state information (CSI) fingerprints.

preprint2018arXiv

Leveraging Textual Specifications for Grammar-based Fuzzing of Network Protocols

Grammar-based fuzzing is a technique used to find software vulnerabilities by injecting well-formed inputs generated following rules that encode application semantics. Most grammar-based fuzzers for network protocols rely on human experts to manually specify these rules. In this work we study automated learning of protocol rules from textual specifications (i.e. RFCs). We evaluate the automatically extracted protocol rules by applying them to a state-of-the-art fuzzer for transport protocols and show that it leads to a smaller number of test cases while finding the same attacks as the system that uses manually specified rules.

preprint2018arXiv

Optimal Energy Distribution with Energy Packet Networks

We use Energy Packet Network paradigms to investigate energy distribution problems in a computer system with energy harvesting and storages units. Our goal is to minimize both the overall average response time of jobs at workstations and the total rate of energy lost in the network. Energy is lost when it arrives at idle workstations which are empty. Energy is also lost in storage leakages. We assume that the total rate of energy harvesting and the rate of jobs arriving at workstations are known. We also consider a special case in which the total rate of energy harvesting is sufficiently large so that workstations are less busy. In this case, energy is more likely to be sent to an idle workstation. Optimal solutions are obtained which minimize both the overall response time and energy loss under the constraint of a fixed energy harvesting rate.

preprint2018arXiv

Fast Node Cardinality Estimation and Cognitive MAC Protocol Design for Heterogeneous Machine-to-Machine Networks

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) networks are an emerging technology with applications in numerous areas including smart grids, smart cities, vehicular telematics, and healthcare. In this paper, we design two estimation protocols for rapidly obtaining separate estimates of the number of active nodes of each traffic type in a heterogeneous M2M network with $T$ types of M2M nodes (e.g., those that send emergency, periodic, normal type data etc), where $T \geq 2$ is an arbitrary integer. One of these protocols, Method I, is a simple scheme, and the other, Method II, is more sophisticated and performs better than Method I. Also, we design a medium access control (MAC) protocol that supports multi-channel operation for a heterogeneous M2M network with an arbitrary number of types of M2M nodes, operating as a secondary network using Cognitive Radio technology. Our Cognitive MAC protocol uses the proposed node cardinality estimation protocols to rapidly estimate the number of active nodes of each type in every time frame; these estimates are used to find the optimal contention probabilities to be used in the MAC protocol. We compute a closed form expression for the expected number of time slots required by Method I to execute as well as a simple upper bound on it. Also, we mathematically analyze the performance of the Cognitive MAC protocol and obtain expressions for the expected number of successful contentions per frame and the expected amount of energy consumed. Finally, we evaluate the performances of our proposed estimation protocols and Cognitive MAC protocol using simulations.

preprint2019arXiv

JSDoop and TensorFlow.js: Volunteer Distributed Web Browser-Based Neural Network Training

In 2019, around 57\% of the population of the world has broadband access to the Internet. Moreover, there are 5.9 billion mobile broadband subscriptions, i.e., 1.3 subscriptions per user. So there is an enormous interconnected computational power held by users all around the world. Also, it is estimated that Internet users spend more than six and a half hours online every day. But in spite of being a great amount of time, those resources are idle most of the day. Therefore, taking advantage of them presents an interesting opportunity. In this study, we introduce JSDoop, a prototype implementation to profit from this opportunity. In particular, we propose a volunteer web browser-based high-performance computing library. JSdoop divides a problem into tasks and uses different queues to distribute the computation. Then, volunteers access the web page of the problem and start processing the tasks in their web browsers. We conducted a proof-of-concept using our proposal and TensorFlow.js to train a recurrent neural network that predicts text. We tested it in a computer cluster and with up to 32 volunteers. The experimental results show that training a neural network in distributed web browsers is feasible and accurate, has a high scalability, and it is an interesting area for research.

preprint2020arXiv

Simplified Ray Tracing for the Millimeter Wave Channel: A Performance Evaluation

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication is one of the cornerstone innovations of fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks, thanks to the massive bandwidth available in these frequency bands. To correctly assess the performance of such systems, however, it is essential to have reliable channel models, based on a deep understanding of the propagation characteristics of the mmWave signal. In this respect, ray tracers can provide high accuracy, at the expense of a significant computational complexity, which limits the scalability of simulations. To address this issue, in this paper we present possible simplifications that can reduce the complexity of ray tracing in the mmWave environment, without significantly affecting the accuracy of the model. We evaluate the effect of such simplifications on link-level metrics, testing different configuration parameters and propagation scenarios.

preprint2020arXiv

Mapping the Interplanetary Filesystem

The Interplanetary Filesystem (IPFS) is a distributed data storage service frequently used by blockchain applications and for sharing content in a censorship-resistant manner. Data is distributed within an open set of peers using a Kademlia-based distributed hash table (DHT). In this paper, we study the structure of the resulting overlay network, as it significantly influences the robustness and performance of IPFS. We monitor and systematically crawl IPFS' DHT towards mapping the IPFS overlay network. Our measurements found an average of 44474 nodes at every given time. At least 52.19% of these reside behind a NAT and are not reachable from the outside, suggesting that a large share of the network is operated by private individuals on an as-needed basis. Based on our measurements and our analysis of the IPFS code, we conclude that the topology of the IPFS network is, in its current state, closer to an unstructured overlay network than it is to a classical DHT. While such a structure has benefits for robustness and the resistance against Sybil attacks, it leaves room for improvement in terms of performance and query privacy.

preprint2020arXiv

Creating Efficient Blockchains for the Internet of Things by Coordinated Satellite-Terrestrial Networks

Blockchain has emerged as a promising technology that can guarantee data consistency and integrity among distributed participants. It has been used in many applications of the Internet of Things (IoT). However, since IoT applications often introduce a massive number of devices into blockchain systems, the efficiency of the blockchain becomes a serious problem. In this article, we analyze the key factors affecting the efficiency of blockchain. Unlike most existing solutions that handle this from the computing perspective, we consider the problem from the communication perspective. Particularly, we propose a coordinated satellite-terrestrial network to create efficient blockchains. We also derive a network scheduling strategy for the proposed architecture. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed system can support blockchains for higher efficiency. Moreover, several open research issues and design challenges will be discussed.

preprint2020arXiv

SARDO: An Automated Search-and-Rescue Drone-based Solution for Victims Localization

Natural disasters affect millions of people every year. Finding missing persons in the shortest possible time is of crucial importance to reduce the death toll. This task is especially challenging when victims are sparsely distributed in large and/or difficult-to-reach areas and cellular networks are down. In this paper we present SARDO, a drone-based search and rescue solution that exploits the high penetration rate of mobile phones in the society to localize missing people. SARDO is an autonomous, all-in-one drone-based mobile network solution that does not require infrastructure support or mobile phones modifications. It builds on novel concepts such as pseudo-trilateration combined with machine-learning techniques to efficiently locate mobile phones in a given area. Our results, with a prototype implementation in a field-trial, show that SARDO rapidly determines the location of mobile phones (~3 min/UE) in a given area with an accuracy of few tens of meters and at a low battery consumption cost (~5%). State-of-the-art localization solutions for disaster scenarios rely either on mobile infrastructure support or exploit onboard cameras for human/computer vision, IR, thermal-based localization. To the best of our knowledge, SARDO is the first drone-based cellular search-and-rescue solution able to accurately localize missing victims through mobile phones.

preprint2020arXiv

Entanglement formation in continuous-variable random quantum networks

Entanglement is not only important for understanding the fundamental properties of many-body systems, but also the crucial resource enabling quantum advantages in practical information processing tasks. While previous works on entanglement formation and networking focus on discrete-variable systems, light---as the only travelling carrier of quantum information in a network---is bosonic and thus requires a continuous-variable description in general. In this work, we extend the study to continuous-variable quantum networks. By mapping the ensemble-averaged entanglement dynamics on an arbitrary network to a random-walk process on a graph, we are able to exactly solve the entanglement dynamics and reveal unique phenomena. We identify squeezing as the source of entanglement generation, which triggers a diffusive spread of entanglement with a parabolic light cone. The entanglement distribution is directly connected to the probability distribution of the random walk, while the scrambling time is determined by the mixing time of the random walk. The dynamics of bipartite entanglement is determined by the boundary of the bipartition; An operational witness of multipartite entanglement, based on advantages in sensing tasks, is introduced to characterize the multipartite entanglement growth. A surprising linear superposition law in the entanglement growth is predicted by the theory and numerically verified, when the squeezers are sparse in space-time, despite the nonlinear nature of the entanglement dynamics. We also give exact solution to the equilibrium entanglement distribution (Page curves), including its fluctuations, and found various shapes dependent on the average squeezing density and strength.

preprint2020arXiv

Rethinking Blockchains in the Internet of Things Era from a Wireless Communication Perspective

Due to the rapid development of Internet of Things (IoT), a massive number of devices are connected to the Internet. For these distributed devices in IoT networks, how to ensure their security and privacy becomes a significant challenge. The blockchain technology provides a promising solution to protect the data integrity, provenance, privacy, and consistency for IoT networks. In blockchains, communication is a prerequisite for participants, which are distributed in the system, to reach consensus. However, in IoT networks, most of the devices communicate through wireless links, which are not always reliable. Hence, the communication reliability of IoT devices influences the system security. In this article, we rethink the roles of communication and computing in blockchains by accounting for communication reliability. We analyze the tradeoff between communication reliability and computing power in blockchain security, and present a lower bound to the computing power that is needed to conduct an attack with a given communication reliability. Simulation results show that adversarial nodes can succeed in tampering a block with less computing power by hindering the propagation of blocks from other nodes.

preprint2020arXiv

Model-Free Control as a Service in the Industrial Internet of Things: Packet loss and latency issues via preliminary experiments

Model-Free Control (MFC), which is easy to implement both from software and hardware viewpoints, permits the introduction of a high level control synthesis for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the Industry 4.0. The choice of the User Diagram Protocol (UDP) as the Internet Protocol permits to neglect the latency. In spite of most severe packet losses, convincing computer simulations and laboratory experiments show that MFC exhibits a good Quality of Service (QoS) and behaves better than a classic PI regulator.

preprint2020arXiv

Satellite Broadcasting Enabled Blockchain Protocol: A Preliminary Study

Low throughput has been the biggest obstacle of large-scale blockchain applications. During the past few years, researchers have proposed various schemes to improve the systems' throughput. However, due to the inherent inefficiency and defects of the Internet, especially in data broadcasting tasks, these efforts all rendered unsatisfactory. In this paper, we propose a novel blockchain protocol which utilizes the satellite broadcasting network instead of the traditional Internet for data broadcasting and consensus tasks. An automatic resumption mechanism is also proposed to solve the unique communication problems of satellite broadcasting. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has a lower communication cost and can greatly improve the throughput of the blockchain system. Theoretical estimation of a satellite broadcasting enabled blockchain system's throughput is 6,000,000 TPS with a 20 gbps satellite bandwidth.

preprint2020arXiv

Renewable Energy Assisted Function Splitting in Cloud Radio Access Networks

Cloud-Radio Access Network (C-RAN) is a promising network architecture to reduce energy consumption and the increasing number of base station deployment costs in mobile networks. However, the necessity of enormous fronthaul bandwidth between a remote radio head and a baseband unit (BBU) calls for novel solutions. One of the solutions introduces the edge-cloud layer in addition to the centralized cloud (CC) to keep resources closer to the radio units (RUs). Then, split the BBU functions between the center cloud (CC) and edge clouds (ECs) to reduce the fronthaul bandwidth requirement and to relax the stringent end-to-end delay requirements. This paper expands this architecture by combining it with renewable energy sources in CC and ECs. We explain this novel system and formulate a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem, which aims to reduce the operational expenditure of this system. Due to the NP-Hard property of this problem, we solve the smaller instances by using a MILP Solver and provide the results in this paper. Moreover, we propose a faster online heuristic to find solutions for high user densities. The results show that make splitting decisions by considering renewable energy provides more cost-effective solutions to mobile network operators (MNOs). Lastly, we provide an economic feasibility study for renewable energy sources in a CRAN architecture, which will encourage the MNOs to use these sources in this architecture.

preprint2020arXiv

Network Capabilities for the HL-LHC Era

High Energy Physics (HEP) experiments rely on the networks as one of the critical parts of their infrastructure both within the participating laboratories and sites as well as globally to interconnect the sites, data centers and experiments instrumentation. Network virtualisation and programmable networks are two key enablers that facilitate agile, fast and more economical network infrastructures as well as service development, deployment and provisioning.Adoption of these technologies by HEP sites and experiments will allow them to design more scalable and robust networks while decreasing the overall cost and improving the effectiveness of the resource utilization.The primary challenge we currently face is ensuring that WLCG and its constituent collaborations will have the networking capabilities required to most effectively exploit LHC data for the lifetime of the LHC. In this paper we provide a high level summary of the HEPiX NFV Working Group report that explored some of the novel network capabilities that could potentially be deployment in time for HL-LHC.

preprint2020arXiv

Measurement-Based Evaluation Of Google/Apple Exposure Notification API For Proximity Detection in a Commuter Bus

We report on the results of a measurement study carried out on a commuter bus in Dublin, Ireland using the Google/Apple Exposure Notification (GAEN) API. This API is likely to be widely used by Covid-19 contact tracing apps. Measurements were collected between 60 pairs of handset locations and are publicly available. We find that the attenuation level reported by the GAEN API need not increase with distance between handsets, consistent with there being a complex radio environment inside a bus caused by the metal-rich environment. Changing the people holding a pair of handsets, with the location of the handsets otherwise remaining unchanged, can cause variations of +/-10dB in the attenuation level reported by the GAEN API. Applying the rule used by the Swiss Covid-19 contact tracing app to trigger an exposure notification to our bus measurements we find that no exposure notifications would have been triggered despite the fact that all pairs of handsets were within 2m of one another for at least 15 mins. Applying an alternative threshold-based exposure notification rule can somewhat improve performance to a detection rate of 5% when an exposure duration threshold of 15 minutes is used, increasing to 8% when the exposure duration threshold is reduced to 10 mins. Stratifying the data by distance between pairs of handsets indicates that there is only a weak dependence of detection rate on distance.

preprint2020arXiv

Compact Oblivious Routing in Weighted Graphs

The space-requirement for routing-tables is an important characteristic of routing schemes. For the cost-measure of minimizing the total network load there exist a variety of results that show tradeoffs between stretch and required size for the routing tables. This paper designs compact routing schemes for the cost-measure congestion, where the goal is to minimize the maximum relative load of a link in the network (the relative load of a link is its traffic divided by its bandwidth). We show that for arbitrary undirected graphs we can obtain oblivious routing strategies with competitive ratio $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(1)$ that have header length $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(1)$, label size $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(1)$, and require routing-tables of size $\tilde{\mathcal{O}}(\operatorname{deg}(v))$ at each vertex $v$ in the graph. This improves a result of Räcke and Schmid who proved a similar result in unweighted graphs.

preprint2020arXiv

WLCG Networks: Update on Monitoring and Analytics

WLCG relies on the network as a critical part of its infrastructure and therefore needs to guarantee effective network usage and prompt detection and resolution of any network issues including connection failures, congestion and traffic routing. The OSG Networking Area, in partnership with WLCG, is focused on being the primary source of networking information for its partners and constituents. It was established to ensure sites and experiments can better understand and fix networking issues, while providing an analytics platform that aggregates network monitoring data with higher level workload and data trans-fer services. This has been facilitated by the global network of the perfSONAR instances that have been commissioned and are operated in collaboration with WLCG Network Throughput Working Group. An additional important updateis the inclusion of the newly funded NSF project SAND (Service Analytics and Network Diagnosis) which is focusing on network analytics. This paper describes the current state of the network measurement and analytics platform and summarizes the activities taken by the working group and our collaborators. This includes the progress being made in providing higher level analytics,alerting and alarming from the rich set of network metrics we are gathering.

preprint2020arXiv

Implementation of Symbol Timing Recovery for Estimation of Clock Skew

Time synchronization in any distributed network can be achieved by using application layer protocols for time correction. Time synchronization method proposed in this article uses symbol timing recovery at the physical layer to correct application layer clock. This cross layer methodology diminishes the quantity of message trades needed by application layer for time synchronization thus resulting in energy saving. Precision of skew estimate can be increased by using multiple message exchanges. Examination of the cross layer strategy including the simulation results, the experimentation outcomes and mathematical analysis demonstrates that clock skew at physical layer is same as of application layer, which is actually the skew of hardware clock within the node.

preprint2020arXiv

Challenges of AI in Wireless Networks for IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT), hailed as the enabler of the next industrial revolution, will require ubiquitous connectivity, context-aware and dynamic service mobility, and extreme security through the wireless network infrastructure. Artificial Intelligence (AI), thus, will play a major role in the underlying network infrastructure. However, a number of challenges will surface while using the concepts, tools and algorithms of AI in wireless networks used by IoT. In this article, the main challenges in using AI in the wireless network infrastructure that facilitate end-to-end IoT communication are highlighted with potential generalized solution and future research directions.

preprint2020arXiv

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles in Smart Agriculture: Applications, Requirements and Challenges

In the next few years, smart farming will reach each and every nook of the world. The prospects of using unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) for smart farming are immense. However, the cost and the ease in controlling UAVs for smart farming might play an important role for motivating farmers to use UAVs in farming. Mostly, UAVs are controlled by remote controllers using radio waves. There are several technologies such as WiFi or ZigBee that are also used for controlling UAVs. However, Smart Bluetooth (also referred to as Bluetooth Low Energy) is a wireless technology used to transfer data over short distances. Bluetooth smart is cheaper than other technologies and has the advantage of being available on every smart phone. Farmers can use any smart phone to operate their respective UAVs along with Bluetooth Smart enabled agricultural sensors in the future. However, certain requirements and challenges need to be addressed before UAVs can be operated for smart agriculture-related applications. Hence, in this article, an attempt has been made to explore the types of sensors suitable for smart farming, potential requirements and challenges for operating UAVs in smart agriculture. We have also identified the future applications of using UAVs in smart farming.

People in this topic

12 visible researcher(s)