Wireless Data Networking

Research: From Concept to

Practice
Songwu Lu
UCLA
 Drivers for Wireless Networking
Research
New Services,
Top Up
Architectures, Requirements

Transport Layer
Network Layer
Down Link Layer Bottom

New Wireless
Communications Technology
 Key Driver: Wireless
Communications
• Many examples of them:
– Sector Antenna, antenna arrays, Smart antennas
– Adaptive modulation, MIMO, OFDM, UWB, ..
– Cognitive radio, software radio, spectrum sharing, channel management
– Multiple radios, device heterogeneity
– …
• many orthogonal dimensions
– RF spectrum, antenna, data processing, …
• main goal: improve performance in terms of spectral efficiency
• Challenge: How to exploit these new PHY communication
capabilities in the protocols?
 Root Cause of Problems
two largely disconnected communities
• speak different terminologies
– wireless communications:
• Symbols, signals
• probabilistic terms:
– information theoretic bounds
– confidence factor on symbol reception, …
– wireless networking
• Packets, bits
• deterministic terms
– Correct/wrong binary reception
 Root Cause of Problems (2)
Two largely disconnected communities
• different methodologies
– wireless communications
• solid theoretic foundation on information theory
• a set of well known assumptions: noises, interferences, etc.
• Theory Design-->Analysis-->prototype in chips-->experiments
– wireless networking
• mostly on heuristics
• network setting “ad hoc”: no agreed benchmarks/base settings
• Heuristic Design-->Simulations--Network Prototype-->Experiments
 Perspective From Wireless
Networking
• We are not on the driver’s seat so far
– communication has driven the technology so far
– we are followers

• No need to be sad
– still plenty of space
• the direct communication almost NEVER works in reality at
the 1st place!
– other brothers also facing similar situations sometime
• Internet: PC/hardware industry
• Cellular: mobile phones
Research Life Cycle in Traditional
Wireless Networking Researcher
1. wait for new radio communication tech. to come to
life
2. be the 1st to design networking solution to it
3. not so lucky?
• understand the problem better
• check other aspects/components in the system
1. apply the set of tricks in your bag
2. claim credit/declare failure
• Experiments!!!!
• Positive success: insights learned
• Negative failure: lessons learned
 Two Design Guidelines
2 most popular design principles used in the research
community

1. Adaptation
high-dimension dynamics

1. Coordination

coherent system
 Bag of Tricks in Adaptation
• Model-referenced design
– Ideal model to capture expected behaviors under idealized situation
• e.g., error-free, static settings
– Track the reference model under realistic conditions/scenarios
• Mobility, wireless channel dynamics, …

• Opportunistic design approach

– Make each perform under peak conditions
– Exploit the system population
– Leverage system diversity
• Multiple receivers, multiple devices, multiple applications/flows, …
Bag of Tricks in Coordination

• Cross-Layer design
– not integrated design cross layers
– information sharing, informed decision at other
layers
–…

• Coordination via “indirection”

– Adaptation-aware proxy provides indirection: act
as converter/translator
 Illustration Case: Rate
Adaptation in Wi-Fi
Problem: Adapt transmission rate to channel quality
54Mbps 12Mbps
Signal is good
Signal becomes weaker

Sender Receiver

•The 802.11 a/b/g/n standards allow for

multiple rates based on adaptive modulation
–802.11b: 4 rate options (1,2,5.5,11Mbps)
–802.11a: 8 options (6,9,12,18,24,36,48,54)
–802.11g: 12 options (11a set + 11b set)
 As the Lucky, 1st Guy
• Driver: adaptive modulation
• Good news: SNR based feedback not there!
• Opportunity: packet-level information available
• Solution:
– Hypothesis: packet loss indicates channel quality change
– Tricks:
• Decrease transmission rate upon severe packet loss
• 10 consecutive successes → increase rate
 Rules For Not So Lucky?
Understand the problem better
– if a problem is not better understood, it is probably
best not to provide a new solution at all

– no rush for quick solutions

• incremental improvement is #1 enemy in research!

– do not improve on flawed design!!

• adding gas into fire
 Experiments to Discover (No)
Problems

Case: packet collision scenario?

Hidden Receiver Sender

Station

ARF AARF SampleRate Fixed Rate

UDP Goodput 0.65 0.56 0.58 1.46
(Mbps)

The sender performs worse with Rate Adaptation!

 Find Root Cause

• The sender should not decrease the rate upon

collision losses
– Decreasing rate increases collisions !
Decrease
Tx
rate
Increase
Severe Fail to handle Tx
time
loss hidden-station!
Increase
collision
Prob.
 Solution?
• Straightforward idea: Software 802.11 MAC

RTS/CTS RRAA

• more thinking: make Loss Estimation

Rate Selection send

RTS/CTS adaptive
feedback
Adaptive RTS

– reduce overhead RTS Option

– infer collision levels Hardware

• Performance: ~80% PHY

throughput gain
 Now MIMO Case?
• Driver: 802.11-pre-n MIMO
• Good/Bad News: SNR feedback to
some extent
– more direct & timely information on channel
quality?
– Loss-based design obsolete?
 SNR vs Rate vs Throughput
•SNR vs rate vs thruput are non-monotonic in fine grain
•main trend can still be correct
•RF Chamber experiments
 Solution in MiRA
• using SNR pre-selects a range of rates
– determine a rate window [minRate, maxRate].
• Loss-based best rate choice within the
window
– play old tricks using loss-based design
 Experiments on Static Clients:
UDP
Gains in blue arrows refer to MiRA vs. Atheros RA
 Static Clients Scenario: TCP
Gains in blue arrows refer to MiRA vs. Atheros RA
Broader View on Well-Known
Areas
• look at other systems component the design
works with

• illustrative example: Network Coding

– hot topics
– several papers on top conferences, from groups
@ MIT, Microsoft Research, …

– what can I do?

Network Coding in Reality:
Wi-Fi

b) @ 6Mbps
Nets
Multicast/broadcast (a XOR a XOR b

 Base rate without RA

 Used in COPE, Wi-Fi
broadcast

 NC is worse ! 54Mbps 24Mbps

 Xmit time w/o NC

 2L/54 + 2L/24
Bob
 Xmit time with NC Alice
 L/54 +L/24+L/6

 Conclusion: NC works but

loses without any RA!
a b

Native NC (@ base rate) May NOT gain at all !

 NC Gain May Vanish
a XOR b
 Simple multicast RA
solution:
 multicast = min
(rate_receiver)
 NC gain reduces
54Mbps 6Mbps
 NC: 25% (4 tx ->3 tx)
 In the literature
 Actual gain (11a): 5% Bob
 NC tx time: 2*L/6+L/54 Alice
 No NC: 2*L/54+2*L/6
 802.11b: 1/24 (11M&1M)
 Root cause: NC cannot a b
exploit rate diversity!
NC gain (@ optimal rate) may reduce in rate diversity case!
 My View on New Frontiers
• no need to get squeezed in crowded
traditional areas

• bag of tricks grow much slower!

• problem space is wild wide west!

 Wireless Networking on a Chip
• 1000s of cores Systems on a Chip
• wired interconnect: latency, physical wiring constraints
• High-speed wireless shortcuts
 Composable Wireless
Networking
• composable & modular from radio to
networking

• Radios become dynamically loadable

modules
– no clear separation of multi-radios
– Software Defined Radios platforms
 “Green” Wireless
Infrastructure
• infrastructure is power hungry
– asymmetric design in cellular network
• more complexity @ base stations
– from radio communication, to signaling, to higher
layers
• lots of energy-saving proposals @client
side
– no on the infrastructure
 Resilience-Oriented Design
• mostly performance driven for wireless networking
so far

• resilience as the 1st principle

– not as patches
– learn the success from the Internet

• still early to have a nice try

 Still Unhappy? Looking Up
• New requirements
– Security, privacy, robustness/dependability,
distributed management

• New applications and services

– MMS, P2P image/video sharing, IP TV streaming, …
– (Location-based, context-aware, personalized,
pervasive) services
 My View on Pervasive Cloud
Computing
• Data stored in the “Cloud”
• Data follows you & your devices
• Data accessible anywhere
• Data can be shared with others

messages
preferences
news
contacts
calendar investments

maps mailing lists

e-mails
phone numbers
photo music

“Anytime, Anywhere, Any device” Data Service

 Research Sub-areas
1. Data Center Networking: Improving the Cloud
Infrastructure

2. New Services For Mobile Devices

– Security: Virus detection
– Location-based Service,
– social networking,…

1. Better Access for the Client

1. Improving Wi-Fi, 3G+, … for user access
2. Opportunistic Client-Client Service
 Final Words
• Life can be good or bad in wireless
networking research
– It is more about your choice

• You are part of inventing the artifact for

wireless networking
 Acknowledgments
• most real work is done by the real heroes in
projects:
– Students:
• Innaois Yannis, Suk-Bok Lee, Starsky Wong,
Hao Yang, Haiyun Luo,…
– Colleagues:
• Lixia Zhang, Mario Gerla, Chuanxiong Guo,
Jacky Shen, Yongguang Zhang, Shugong Xu,
…