Ad Hoc Routing with Early Unidirectionality Detection and Avoidance
This paper is motivated by the observation that current research in ad hoc networks mostly assumes a physically flat network architecture with the nodes having homogeneous characteristics, roles, and networking- and processing-capabilities (e.g., network resources, computing power, and transmission power). In real-world ad hoc networks however, node heterogeneity is inherent. New mechanisms at the network layer are required for effective and efficient utilization of such heterogeneous networks. We discuss the issues and challenges for routing protocol design in heterogeneous ad hoc networks, and focus on the problem of quickly detecting and avoiding unidirectional links. We propose a routing framework called Early Unidirectionality Detection and Avoidance (EUDA) that utilizes geographical distance and path loss between the nodes for fast detection of asymmetric and unidirectional routes. We evaluate our scheme through ns-2 simulation and compare it with existing approaches. Our results demonstrate that our techniques work well in these realistic, heterogeneous ad hoc networking environments with unidirectional links.

title: An interactive video delivery and caching system using video summarization
abstract: With the advance of high-speed network technologies, the availability and popularity of streaming media content over the Internet has grown rapidly in recent years. The delivery and caching of streaming media must be handled in a different fashion than that of traditional non-streaming objects such as HTML or image files, because of its distinct characteristics and user viewing patterns. We propose a novel scheme that provides users with the video summary (a number of key-frame images) before they download the file, and options for them to select the starting playback position. We introduce the content analysis service to achieve these functionalities. The video content analysis performs shot boundary detection, key-frame selection, and face detection and tracking. The results of the processing are a segmented video sequence and an XML-based meta-data describing the video content. We also design a caching system that utilizes our video abstraction and summarization technique. Our integrated video delivery and caching system combines content-aware segmentation, prefix caching, prefetching, and cooperative caching. We describe how our scheme can be applied in three proposed caching architectures.

title: On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol in Multihop Wireless Mobile Networks
abstract: An ad hoc network is a dynamically reconfigurable wireless network with no fixed infrastructure or central administration. Each host is mobile and must act as a router. Routing and multicasting protocols in ad hoc networks are faced with the challenge of delivering data to destinations through multihop routes in the presence of node movements and topology changes. This paper presents the On-Demand Multicast Routing Protocol (ODMRP) for wireless mobile ad hoc networks. ODMRP is a mesh-based, rather than a conventional tree-based, multicast scheme and uses a forwarding group concept; only a subset of nodes forwards the multicast packets via scoped flooding. It applies on-demand procedures to dynamically build routes and maintain multicast group membership. ODMRP is well suited for ad hoc wireless networks with mobile hosts where bandwidth is limited, topology changes frequently, and power is constrained. We evaluate ODMRP performance with other multicast protocols proposed for ad hoc networks via extensive and detailed simulation.

title: Caching strategies in transcoding-enabled proxy systems for streaming media distribution networks
abstract: With the wide availability of high-speed network access, we are experiencing high quality streaming media delivery over the Internet. The emergence of ubiquitous computing enables mobile users to access the Internet with their laptops, PDAs, or even cell phones. When nomadic users connect to the network via wireless links or phone lines, high quality video transfer can be problematic due to long delay or size mismatch between the application display and the screen. Our proposed solution to this problem is to enable network proxies with the transcoding capability, and hence provide different, appropriate video quality to different network environment. The proxies in our transcoding-enabled caching (TeC) system perform transcoding as well as caching for efficient rich media delivery to heterogeneous network users. This design choice allows us to perform content adaptation at the network edges. We propose three different TeC caching strategies. We describe each algorithm and discuss its merits and shortcomings. We also study how the user access pattern affects the performance of TeC caching algorithms and compare them with other approaches. We evaluate TeC performance by conducting two types of simulation. Our first experiment uses synthesized traces while the other uses real traces derived from an enterprise media server logs. The results indicate that compared with the traditional network caches, with marginal transcoding load, TeC improves the cache effectiveness, decreases the user-perceived latency, and reduces the traffic between the proxy and the content origin server.

title: Distributed querying of Internet distance information

title: Improving aggregated channel performance through decentralized channel monitoring
abstract: Aggregating low-speed WAN links into a higher-speed logical link promises to improve data-transfer rates to collaborating communities of wireless mobile multihomed devices. Such bandwidth aggregation systems must adapt to link dynamics as the number of links and the channel conditions vary with time due to mobility, power dissipation, and channel interference. A monitoring architecture that accurately measures the link dynamics and promptly feeds this information to the system is vital to realize significant bandwidth aggregation performance gains. In this paper we present various architectural design alternatives for such a monitoring system, and evaluate them using both analysis and simulation. We show that a properly-designed monitoring system can accurately measure and quickly respond to changes in communication link performance while minimizing the control overhead.

title: Neighbor supporting ad hoc multicast routing protocol
abstract: An ad hoc network is a multi-hop wireless network formed by a collection of mobile nodes without the intervention of fixed infrastructure. Limited bandwidth and a high degree of mobility require that routing protocols for ad hoc networks be robust, simple, and energy-conserving. This paper proposes a new ad hoc multicast routing protocol called Neighbor-Supporting Multicast Protocol (NSMP). NSMP adopts a mesh structure to enhance resilience against mobility. And NSMP utilizes node locality to reduce the overhead of route failure recovery and mesh maintenance. NSMP also attempts to improve route efficiency and reduce data transmissions. Our simulation results show that NSMP delivers packets efficiently while substantially reducing control overhead in various environments.

title: A Z Approach in Validating ORA-SS Data Models
abstract: The rapid growth of the World Wide Web has resulted in more data being accessed over the Internet. In turn there is an increase in the use of semistructured data, which plays a crucial role in many web applications particularly with the introduction of XML and its related technologies. This increase in use makes the design of good semistructured data structures essential. The Object Relationship Attribute model for Semistructured data (ORA-SS) is a graphical notation for designing and representing semistructured data. In this paper, we demonstrate an approach to formally validate the ORA-SS data models in order to enhance the correctness of semistructured data design. A mathematical semantics for the ORA-SS notation is defined using the Z formal language, and further validation processes are carried out to check the correctness of the semistructured data models at both the schema and instance levels.

title: A new wireless ad hoc multicast routing protocol
abstract: An ad hoc network is a multi-hop wireless network of mobile nodes without the intervention of fixed infrastructure. Limited bandwidth and mobility require that ad hoc routing protocols be robust, simple, and energy conserving. This paper proposes a new ad hoc multicast routing protocol called neighbor-supporting multicast protocol (NSMP). NSMP adopts a mesh structure to enhance resilience against mobility. And NSMP utilizes node locality to reduce the overhead of route maintenance. NSMP also attempts to improve route efficiency and reduce data transmissions. Our simulation results show that NSMP delivers packets efficiently while substantially reducing control overhead in various environments.

title: Assessing local influence for nonlinear structural equation models with ignorable missing data
abstract: A method is proposed in this paper to assess the local influence of minor perturbations for a nonlinear structural equation model with missing data that are missing at random. The main idea is to apply Zhu and Lee's ( (2001) 111) approach to the conditional expectation of the complete-data log-likelihood function in the corresponding EM algorithm for deriving the conformal normal curvature. Building blocks for achieving the diagnostic measures are computed via latent variables that are generated by the Gibbs sampler and Metropolis-Hastings algorithm. It is shown that the proposed methodology is feasible for a wide variety of perturbation schemes. To illustrate the methodology, results that are obtained from analyses of some artificial examples, a simulation study, and a real example are presented.

title: Multisensor raster and vector data fusion based on uncertainty modeling
abstract: We propose a new methodology for fusing temporally changing multisensor raster and vector data by developing a spatially and temporally varying uncertainty model of acquired and transformed multisensor measurements. The proposed uncertainty model includes errors due to (1) each sensor by itself, e.g., sensor noise; (2) transformations of measured values to obtain comparable physical entities for data fusion and/or to calibrate sensor measurements; (3) vector data spatial interpolation that is needed to match different spatial resolutions of multisensor data; and (4) temporal interpolation that has to take place if multisensor acquisitions are not accurately synchronized. The proposed methodology was tested using simulated data with varying (a) amount of sensor noise, (b) spatial offset of point sensors generating vector data, and (c) model complexity of the underlying physical phenomenon. We demonstrated the multisensor fusion approach with a data set from a structural health monitoring application domain.