Abstract

Today, the performance of Wireless Multihop Networks (WMNs) is still limited by the lower layers. While recent cross-layer approaches take advantage of the characteristics of the medium, they are often based on traditional physical layers such as OFDM . State-of-the-art techniques used in one-hop scenarios, such as Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) or Interference Alignment (IA), pose a significant challenge in practical multihop networks, since typically Channel State Information (CSI) at the transmitter is required. Due to its volatile nature, disseminating timely CSI in the network is often infeasible. We propose Corridor-based Routing to enable advanced physical layers in WMNs. Instead of routing packets from node to node, we forward them along fully-connected groups of nodes. As a result (1) CSI only needs to be exchanged locally to enable cooperation in a group, and (2) groups can adaptively choose the best physical layer technique according to CSI . We present a cross-layer protocol that realizes Corridor-based Routing in WMNs. Moreover, we design corridor forwarding mechanisms based on OFDMA and IA. We implement Corridor-based Routing in practice on a software-defined radio platform, and show that we achieve significant throughput gains for both OFDMA and IA.

Bio: Adrian Loch is a PhD student at the Secure Mobile Networking Lab at Technische Universität Darmstadt (Germany) since April 2011. Before, he graduated in Electrical Engineering from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (Spain). His research interests are routing, performance, and security in wireless networks. In particular, he focuses on practical cross-layer design for wireless multihop networks using software-defined radios.