Project Start Date
Project End Date

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are a type of ad hoc wireless network that uses multi-hop wireless communications to provide or improve connectivity between wireless devices. The objective of this project is to maintain high network utilization while providing low queuing delays. This is a complex problem due to the time-varying capacity of the wireless channel as well as random access mechanism of 802.11 MAC protocol. While arbitrarily large buffers can maintain high network utilization, this comes at the cost of large queuing delays. We implemented a novel buffer sizing mechanism which collectively considers a set of nodes within mutual interference range called the "collision domain". We provided a buffer size which is large enough to saturate the available capacity of the bottleneck collision domain that limits the carrying capacity of the network. Our experiment results showed a reduction in the end-to-end delays by a factor of 10. This work has been granted a patent by US patent office. The technology is being developed and attracted both Cisco and Qualcomm for possible licensing arrangement.

Funding

[2015-2016] PI "Bufferbloat in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks - Phase Two". Funded by KAUST Technology Transfer Office $169K
[2014-2015] PI "Bufferbloat in Wireless Multi-Hop Networks - Phase One". Funded by KAUST Technology Transfer office $80K.
[2012-2016] KAUST Baseline Funding

Talks

  • WQM: Practical, Adaptive, and Lightweight Wireless Queue Management System, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada, 2014. [PPT]

  • Quality of Service and Resource Optimization in Wireless Multihop Networks, Electronic Devices, Materials and Systems for Sustainable Future Conference (KAUST-NSF), 2014. [PPT]

  • Deflating Wireless Link Buffers", 2nd KACSTIT Conference, KSA, 2013. [PPT]

Software Packages

  1. DNB v1.2, Software licensing from KAUST under U.S. Patent no. 8,638,686, 2014. Optimizes the network delay in wireless mesh networks using distributed neighborhood buffers
  2. WQM v6.0, 2015. Linux buffer management implementation for wireless 802.11n systems

  3. QueueUti v1.0, 2010. NS-2 software library for measuring queue utilization in 802.11 nodes

WQM.zip Downloaded 85 times

QueueUti.zip Downloaded 78 times

By downloading any of our software packages, you acknowledge that these software packages are provided for the research purposes only and are not permitted for commercialization purposes. Also, you are aware of the fact that additional support is not offered, nor authors liable under any circumstances. If you happen to use any parts of our software packages, you acknowledge to provide a correct referencing providing the software package URL.

Prof. Philip Levis, Computer Science, Stanford University, USA

Related Publications

Showail, A., Jamshaid, K., & Shihada, B. (2016). Buffer sizing in wireless networks: challenges, solutions, and opportunities. IEEE Communications Magazine, 54(4), 130–137. doi:10.1109/mcom.2016.7452277
Handle
10754/348555
DOI
10.1109/mcom.2016.7452277
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Jamshaid, K., Shihada, B., Showail, A., & Levis, P. (2014). Deflating link buffers in a wireless mesh network. Ad Hoc Networks, 16, 266–280. doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2014.01.002
Handle
10754/348508
DOI
10.1016/j.adhoc.2014.01.002
Altmetrics
Alaslani, M., Showail, A., & Shihada, B. (2015). Green frame aggregation scheme for Wi-Fi networks. 2015 IEEE 16th International Conference on High Performance Switching and Routing (HPSR). doi:10.1109/hpsr.2015.7483076
Handle
10754/611775
DOI
10.1109/hpsr.2015.7483076
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A. Showail, K. Jamshaid, and B. Shihada, "WQM: An Aggregation-aware Queue Management Scheme for IEEE 802.11n based Networks", in Proc. ACM Sigcomm Capacity Sharing Workshop (CSWS), pp. 15-20, 2014.
Handle
10754/362482
DOI
10.1145/2630088.2630097
Altmetrics
Showail, A., Jamshaid, K., & Shihada, B. (2014). An empirical evaluation of bufferbloat in IEEE 802.11n wireless networks. 2014 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC). doi:10.1109/wcnc.2014.6953002
Handle
10754/362461
DOI
10.1109/wcnc.2014.6953002
Altmetrics
Nawab, F., Jamshaid, K., Shihada, B., & Ho, P. H. (2014). Fair packet scheduling in Wireless Mesh Networks. Ad Hoc Networks, 13, 414–427. doi:10.1016/j.adhoc.2013.09.002
Handle
10754/348507
DOI
10.1016/j.adhoc.2013.09.002
Altmetrics
Shihada, B., Jamshaid, K. (2014). Buffer sizing for multi-hop networks, Patent. https://hdl.handle.net/10754/594738
Handle
10754/594738