We will review some of the major results in random graphs and some of the more challenging open problems. We will cover algorithmic and structural questions. We will touch on newer models, including those related to the WWW.

Random graphs

Intermittently connected mobile networks are sparse wireless networks where most of the time there does not exist a complete path from the source to the destination. These networks fall into the general category of Delay Tolerant Networks. There are many real networks that follow this paradigm, for example, wildlife tracking sensor networks, military networks, inter-planetary networks, etc. In this context, conventional routing schemes would fail.To deal with such networks researchers have suggested to use flooding-based routing schemes. While flooding-based schemes have a high probability of delivery, they waste a lot of energy and suffer from severe contention, which can significantly degrade their performance. Furthermore, proposed efforts to significantly reduce the overhead of flooding-based schemes have often be plagued by large delays. With this in mind, we introduce a new routing scheme, called Spray and Wait, that "sprays" a number of copies into the network, and then "waits" till one of these nodes meets the destination.Using theory and simulations we show that Spray and Wait outperforms all existing schemes with respect to both average message delivery delay and number of transmissions per message delivered; its overall performance is close to the optimal scheme. Furthermore, it is highly scalable retaining good performance under a large range of scenarios, unlike other schemes. Finally, it is simple to implement and to optimize in order to achieve given performance goals in practice.

/pdf/spray-and-wait-an-efficient-routing-scheme-for-50seq3wqos.pdf

Spray and wait: an efficient routing scheme for intermittently connected mobile networks

Wireless vehicular communication has the potential to enable a host of new applications, the most important of which are a class of safety applications that can prevent collisions and save thousands of lives. The automotive industry is working to develop the dedicated short-range communication (DSRC) technology, for use in vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside communication. The effectiveness of this technology is highly dependent on cooperative standards for interoperability. This paper explains the content and status of the DSRC standards being developed for deployment in the United States. Included in the discussion are the IEEE 802.11p amendment for wireless access in vehicular environments (WAVE), the IEEE 1609.2, 1609.3, and 1609.4 standards for Security, Network Services and Multi-Channel Operation, the SAE J2735 Message Set Dictionary, and the emerging SAE J2945.1 Communication Minimum Performance Requirements standard. The paper shows how these standards fit together to provide a comprehensive solution for DSRC. Most of the key standards are either recently published or expected to be completed in the coming year. A reader will gain a thorough understanding of DSRC technology for vehicular communication, including insights into why specific technical solutions are being adopted, and key challenges remaining for successful DSRC deployment. The U.S. Department of Transportation is planning to decide in 2013 whether to require DSRC equipment in new vehicles.

Dedicated Short-Range Communications (DSRC) Standards in the United States

In this paper, we define and explore proofs of retrievability (PORs). A POR scheme enables an archive or back-up service (prover) to produce a concise proof that a user (verifier) can retrieve a target file F, that is, that the archive retains and reliably transmits file data sufficient for the user to recover F in its entirety.A POR may be viewed as a kind of cryptographic proof of knowledge (POK), but one specially designed to handle a large file (or bitstring) F. We explore POR protocols here in which the communication costs, number of memory accesses for the prover, and storage requirements of the user (verifier) are small parameters essentially independent of the length of F. In addition to proposing new, practical POR constructions, we explore implementation considerations and optimizations that bear on previously explored, related schemes.In a POR, unlike a POK, neither the prover nor the verifier need actually have knowledge of F. PORs give rise to a new and unusual security definition whose formulation is another contribution of our work.We view PORs as an important tool for semi-trusted online archives. Existing cryptographic techniques help users ensure the privacy and integrity of files they retrieve. It is also natural, however, for users to want to verify that archives do not delete or modify files prior to retrieval. The goal of a POR is to accomplish these checks without users having to download the files themselves. A POR can also provide quality-of-service guarantees, i.e., show that a file is retrievable within a certain time bound.

PORs: Proofs of Retrievability for Large Files

Vehicular networks are very likely to be deployed in the coming years and thus become the most relevant form of mobile ad hoc networks. In this paper, we address the security of these networks. We provide a detailed threat analysis and devise an appropriate security architecture. We also describe some major design decisions still to be made, which in some cases have more than mere technical implications. We provide a set of security protocols, we show that they protect privacy and we analyze their robustness and efficiency.

/pdf/securing-vehicular-ad-hoc-networks-4sgegi8hgk.pdf

Securing vehicular ad hoc networks

Fractal image compression is a new technique for encoding images compactly. It builds on local self-similarities within images. Image blocks are seen as rescaled and intensity transformed approximate copies of blocks found elsewhere in the image. This yields a self-referential description of image data, which --- when decoded --- shows a typical fractal structure. This paper provides an elementary introduction to this compression technique. We have chosen the similarity to a particular variant of vector quantization as the most direct approach to fractal image compression. We discuss the hierarchical quadtree scheme and vital complexity reduction methods. Furthermore, we survey some of the advanced concepts such as fast decoding, hybrid methods, and adaptive partitionings. We conclude with a list of relevant WEB resources including complete public domain C implementations of the method and a comprehensive list of up-to-date references.

Fractal Image Compression - An Introductory Overview

Due to the large amount of nodes that could comprise a vehicular network, simulation is a valuable tool used for the design and analysis of inter-vehicle communication protocols. In this paper we first describe all the components of a simulation framework that has ns-2 as core building block. Our main contributions are an accurate implementation of the MAC and PHY modules adjusted to vehicular environments together with a well defined set of metrics to evaluate communication protocols for vehicular networks. Second, we make use of the simulation framework to perform a detailed analysis of periodic exchange of broadcast messages when adjusting transmission power and packet generation rate for different propagation models

Simulation platform for inter-vehicle communications and analysis of periodic information exchange

The discrepancy between real-world radio channel behavior and its standard modeling in simulations (unit disk graph) is a major reason for protocols to perform differently - often worse - than predicted when deployed in a real-world setup. As researchers having to deal with real ad hoc networks are aware of, assuming a fixed border for a node's communication range might not only lead to inaccurate results but also to a wrong judgment on the comparison between different protocols. We have set up a simulation study to investigate the effects of realistic channel characteristics on packet forwarding strategies for vehicular ad hoc networks. The contributions of this paper are threefold: i) we provide a performance evaluation of various routing/forwarding strategies under the realistic non-deterministic Nakagami radio propagation model and compare the results with the ones obtained using the standard two-ray-ground model. Validated German highway movement patterns are used to model node mobility. ii) We demonstrate that realistic channel conditions present an opportunity and not only a drawback for some forwarding strategies. More specifically, we show that for contention-based forwarding (CBF) techniques, realistic channel characteristics provide a positive impact in terms of an increased average hop distance. iii) We provide an analytical derivation of the expected hop distance for CBF that provides a basis to optimally adjust CBF parameters

Effects of a realistic channel model on packet forwarding in vehicular ad hoc networks

Vehicular safety communication promises to reduce accidents by assistance systems such as cross-traffic assistance. The information exchange is mostly foreseen to be handled via Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC). At intersections, DSRC reception is likely to be problematic due to Non-Line-Of-Sight reception conditions. Alternatively, the required information exchange could also be handled via cellular systems. While cellular systems provide potentially better coverage, they impose other performance constraints. This paper analyzes the suitability of UMTS and LTE for cross-traffic assistance as a worst case application in terms of load and latency demands. It investigates capacity and latency characteristics and discusses influence factors on performance as well as operational aspects. The focus is on the random access performance of the uplink channel. While cellular systems might have some advantages over DSRC, the study shows that UMTS will likely suffer from capacity limitations while LTE could perform reasonably well.

A comparison of UMTS and LTE for vehicular safety communication at intersections

Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-roadside communications is required for numerous applications that aim at improving traffic safety and efficiency. In this setting, however, gauging system performance through field trials can be very expensive especially when the number of studied vehicles is high. Therefore, many existing studies have been conducted using either network or physical layer simulators; both approaches are problematic. Network simulators typically abstract physical layer details (coding, modulation, radio channels, receiver algorithms, etc.) while physical layer ones do not consider overall network characteristics (topology, network traffic types, and so on). In particular, network simulators view a transmitted frame as an indivisible unit, which leads to several limitations. First, the impact of the vehicular radio channel is typically not reflected in its appropriate context. Further, interference due to frame collisions is not modeled accurately (if at all) and, finally, the benefits of advanced signal processing techniques, such as interference cancellation, are difficult to assess. To overcome these shortcomings we have integrated a detailed physical layer simulator into the popular NS-3 network simulator. This approach aims to bridge the gap between the physical and network layer perspectives, allow for more accurate channel and physical layer models, and enable studies on cross-layer optimization. In this paper, we exemplify our approach by integrating an IEEE 802.11a and p physical layer simulator with NS-3. Further, we validate the augmented NS-3 simulator against an actual IEEE 802.11 wireless testbed and illustrate the additional value of this integration.

/pdf/enabling-accurate-cross-layer-phy-mac-net-simulation-studies-27heaf65ae.pdf

Hannes Hartenstein

Papers

Fractal Image Compression - An Introductory Overview

Simulation platform for inter-vehicle communications and analysis of periodic information exchange

Effects of a realistic channel model on packet forwarding in vehicular ad hoc networks

A comparison of UMTS and LTE for vehicular safety communication at intersections

Enabling Accurate Cross-Layer PHY/MAC/NET Simulation Studies of Vehicular Communication Networks