Towards Energy Consumption Measurement in a Cloud Computing Wireless Testbed

The evolution of the Next Generation Networks, especially the wireless broadband access technologies such as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), have increased the number of "all-IP" networks across the world. The enhanced capabilities of these access networks has spearheaded the cloud computing paradigm, where the end-users aim at having the services accessible anytime and anywhere. The services availability is also related with the end-user device, where one of the major constraints is the battery lifetime. Therefore, it is necessary to assess and minimize the energy consumed by the end-user devices, given its significance for the user perceived quality of the cloud computing services. In this paper, an empirical methodology to measure network interfaces energy consumption is proposed. By employing this methodology, an experimental evaluation of energy consumption in three different cloud computing access scenarios (including WiMAX) were performed. The empirical results obtained show the impact of accurate network interface states management and application network level design in the energy consumption. Additionally, the achieved outcomes can be used in further software-based models to optimized energy consumption, and increase the Quality of Experience (QoE) perceived by the end-users.

Service-Centric Networking

Content-centric networking is a novel paradigm for the Future Internet that treats content as a first class citizen. This paper argues that content-centric networking should be generalized towards a service-centric networking scheme. We propose a service-centric networking design based on an object-oriented approach, in which content and services are considered objects. We show implementation architectures for example services and how these can benefit from service-oriented networking.

Authentication and Authorisation Mechanisms in support of Secure Access to WMN Resources

Over the past several years, a number of design approaches in wireless mesh networks have been introduced to support the deployment of wireless mesh networks (WMNs). We introduce a novel wireless mesh architecture that supports authentication and authorisation functionalities, giving the possibility of a seamless WMN integration into the home's organization authentication and authorisation infrastructure. First, we introduce a novel authentication and authorisation mechanism for wireless mesh nodes. The mechanism is designed upon an existing federated access control approach, i.e. the AAI infrastructure that is using just the credentials at the user's home organization in a federation. Second, we demonstrate how authentication and authorisation for end users is implemented by using an existing web-based captive portal approach. Finally, we observe the difference between the two and explain in detail the process flow of authorized access to network resources in wireless mesh networks. The goal of our wireless mesh architecture is to enable easy broadband network access to researchers at remote locations, giving them additional advantage of a secure access to their measurements, irrespective of their location. It also provides an important basis for the real-life deployment of wireless mesh networks for the support of environmental research.

A smart multi-hop hierarchical routing protocol for efficient video communication over wireless multimedia sensor networks

For smart applications, nodes in wireless multimedia sensor networks (MWSNs) have to take decisions based on sensed scalar physical measurements. A routing protocol must provide the multimedia delivery with quality level support and be energy-efficient for large-scale networks. With this goal in mind, this paper proposes a smart Multi-hop hierarchical routing protocol for Efficient VIdeo communication (MEVI). MEVI combines an opportunistic scheme to create clusters, a cross-layer solution to select routes based on network conditions, and a smart solution to trigger multimedia transmission according to sensed data. Simulations were conducted to show the benefits of MEVI compared with the well-known Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) protocol. This paper includes an analysis of the signaling overhead, energy-efficiency, and video quality.

SNOMC: An overlay multicast protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks

Using multicast communication in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) is an efficient way to disseminate the same data (from one sender) to multiple receivers, e.g., transmitting code updates to a group of sensor nodes. Due to the nature of code update traffic a multicast protocol has to support bulky traffic and end-to-end reliability. We are interested in an energy-efficient multicast protocol due to the limited resources of wireless sensor nodes. Current data dissemination schemes do not fulfill the above requirements. In order to close the gap, we designed and implemented the SNOMC (Sensor Node Overlay Multicast) protocol. It is an overlay multicast protocol, which supports reliable, time-efficient, and energy-efficient data dissemination of bulky data from one sender to many receivers. To ensure end-to-end reliability, SNOMC uses a NACK-based reliability mechanism with different caching strategies.

Evaluating the Trade-off Between Energy Efficiency and QoE in Wireless Mesh Networks

The increasing usage of wireless networks creates new challenges for wireless access providers. On the one hand, providers want to satisfy the user demands but on the other hand, they try to reduce the operational costs by decreasing the energy consumption. In this paper, we evaluate the trade-off between energy efficiency and quality of experience for a wireless mesh testbed. The results show that by intelligent service control, resources can be better utilized and energy can be saved by reducing the number of active network components. However, care has to be taken because the channel bandwidth varies in wireless networks. In the second part of the paper, we analyze the trade-off between energy efficiency and quality of experience at the end user. The results reveal that a provider's service control measures do not only reduce the operational costs of the network but also bring a second benefit: they help maximize the battery lifetime of the end-user device.