Cross-layer Protocol Research Articles

A Cross-Layer Predictive and Preemptive Routing Protocol for Underwater Wireless Sensor Networks Using the Lagrange Interpolation

Underwater wireless sensor networks have become enabling technology for the seawater exploration. Since they raise numerous challenges and problems such as their limited battery and bandwidth, energy-constraint, 3D deployment, and temporary losses of connectivity or link failure, in this paper, a predictive and preemptive cross-layer protocol CLPP-VBF is proposed based on the vector-based forwarding protocol (VBF) for UWSNs, aimed to predict a future loss of connectivity or link failure problems using the Lagrange interpolation method, avoiding unnecessary transmission and rediscovering another new forwarder node in order to guarantee the data packets transmission reliability. The approach is a cooperation between the medium access layer (MAC) and network layer. The study has been implemented and evaluated using the well-known NS2 network simulator with an extension Aqua-sim; the simulation performance shows the merit of CLPP-VBF against VBF in term of delivered packets, average end-to-end delay, and energy consumption.

Secured cross‐layer cross‐domain routing in dense wireless sensor network: A new hybrid based clustering approach

In wireless sensor network (WSN), increasing the network life span remains as a crucial challenge yet to be resolved. The modeling of effectual methods is necessary for conserving the scarce energy resources in WSN. To overcome such issues, cross-layer protocols are exploited, which concerns routing the messages with increased lifetime. This study introduces a new cross-layer design routing model under a clustering-based approach. More importantly, the cluster head is optimally selected by a new hybrid algorithm termed as moth flame integrated dragonfly algorithm. Moreover, the optimal selection of cluster head is carried out based on parameters such as energy consumption, delay, distance, throughput, security, and overhead. Finally, the supremacy of the presented model is proved over existing models in terms of alive node analysis and network lifetime analysis. The experimental outcomes show that the proposed algorithm for test case 3 has accomplished a higher value of 66.229, which is 29.07%, 13.33%, 26.36%, and 9.67% better than conventional ant lion optimisation approach, grouped grey wolf search optimisation, firefly replaced position update in da, and alpha wolf-assisted whale optimization algorithm, respectively, for median case scenario.

MCA-MAC: Modified Cooperative Access MAC Protocol in Wireless Sensor Networks

Throughput, energy efficiency and average packet delivery delay are some of the most crucial metrics that should be considered in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). This paper proposes a modified Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for WSNs, called (MCA-MAC). MCA-MAC aims to improve the previous metrics and thus the overall performance of WSNs through using cooperative communication. It enables source nodes from using intermediate nodes as relays to send their data through them to the access point. MCA-MAC protocol is also acting as a cross layer protocol where the best end-to-end path between the source and destination is found through an efficient algorithm. Mathematical analysis demonstrates that MCA-MAC protocol can determine the optimal relay node that has the minimum transmission time for the given source-destination pair. Using Multi-Paradigm Programming Language (MATLAB) simulation environment, this paper estimates MCA-MAC protocol performance in terms of system throughput, energy efficiency and delay. The results show that MCA-MAC protocol outperforms the existing scheme called Throughput and Energy aware Cooperative MAC protocol (TEC-MAC) protocol under ideal and dynamic channel conditions. Under ideal conditions, MCA-MAC protocol achieved throughput, and energy efficiency improvements of 12%, and 50% respectively, more than TEC-MAC protocol. While the packet delay through using MCA-MAC has been decreased by about 48% less than TEC-MAC protocol.

An Asynchronous Anycast Cross-layer Protocol for WSN Suited to Noisy Environments

This paper presents AGA-MAC+: an asynchronous anycast protocol for wireless sensor networks. Latency is a problem for asynchronous MAC due to sleep-delay, since each relay must wait for the receiver to wake-up. Our protocol employs anycast communication to mitigate the one-hop-delay, selecting a group of neighboring nodes (Forwarding Candidate Set—FCS) as possible next hop. The first FCS member to wake up becomes the next relay, reducing latency. This new protocol is an improvement over AGA-MAC, our previous work, which considers data size to determine the number of FCS members. For large packets, small FCS leads to lower latency, whereas the reverse is true for small packets. This work expands this model, considering the quality of communication channels in FCS selection. In order to receive an error-free data packet with a given probability, nodes with a minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) can take part in FCS. The performance of our protocol was evaluated using GrubiX Simulator, considering an environment with noise and interference. AGA-MAC+ was compared with two other well-known protocols, for different packet sizes and SINR values. Comparing energy spent in the communication process, AGA-MAC+ presented a performance gain of at least 5%, in 88% of the cases. When latency is assessed, AGA-MAC+ outperforms both protocols for all scenarios, presenting an improvement of at least 18% in 83% of the tests.

Practical cross-layer testing of HARQ-induced delay variation on IP/RTP QoS and VoLTE QoE

As the PHY/MAC-layer IR-HARQ and RLC-layer ARQ error recovery procedures, adopted in LTE, may impose additional delay when their code-block retransmissions occur, the arising question is whether these significantly contribute to IP and consequently RTP packet delays, and finally degrade the overall application-layer end-to-end QoE, especially when voice is transmitted over LTE? With this regard, we propose and demonstrate a VoLTE QoS and QoE test procedure based on PHY/MAC/RLC/IP/TCP-UDP/RTP cross-layer protocol analysis and perceptual speech quality QoE measurements. We identified monotonic relationship between the paired observations: QoE and HARQ RTT, i.e. between the PESQ voice quality rating and the IP/RTP packet latency, for given BLER of the received MAC/RLC code-blocks. Specifically, we found out that, for the HARQ RTT value of about 8 ms, only up to 2 HARQ retransmissions (and consequently no RLC-ARQ one) is appropriate during any voice packet, otherwise delay accumulation might not be accordingly “smoothed out” by jitter/playback buffers along the propagation path.

Cross‐layer multipath congestion control, routing and scheduling design in ad hoc wireless networks

Demands for stable and efficient transmission are increasing due to the ongoing expansion of global wireless data traffic. One of the most promising ways to moderate burden of traffic load and decrease the queuing delay is to design cross-layer protocols. This paper considers a utility maximization problem for multipath ad hoc wireless networks via joint cross-layer congestion control, routing and scheduling design. In the formulated utility maximization problem, rate, scheduling and queuing delay constraints are involved under the condition of fixed channels and time varying channels. To solve this utility maximization problem, two scheduling methods are proposed, that is, perfect scheduling and distributed scheduling. In perfect scheduling, all nodes in the network contribute to the scheduling process, while distributed method only takes into account adjacent nodes. For both methods, the global convergence is proved. A comprehensive simulation evaluation is performed which shows that this proposed algorithms outperform existing cross layer protocols in terms of increasing source rate and reducing congestion price.

A Novel Cross-Layer Cross-Domain Routing Model and It’s Optimization for Cluster-Based Dense WSN

Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) plays its adorable performance in the current day communication as it could sense different environmental and physical parameters by utilizing low-cost sensor devices. The network's growth due to scientific enrichment has altogether made it feasible to design a cross-layer protocol based on the energy-efficient network. This obviously concerns the prolonging of network lifetime. This research work attempts to introduce a novel Cross-Layer Design Routing model under the clustering approach. The implemented work depends on a cross-layer mechanism via diverse layers (comprising physical layer and network layer). A cluster-based routing is introduced, where the optimal cluster head is selected using a new hybrid algorithm named Alpha Wolf-assisted Whale Optimization Algorithm (AW-WOA). Thereby, the shortest path is defined and ensures the prolonging of network lifetime. The proposed hybrid algorithm is the hybridized form of the Whale Optimization Algorithm (WOA) and Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO). Moreover, the optimal cluster head selection is purely based on certain constraints like energy consumption, delay, and distance, respectively. In the end, the performance of the implemented technique is proved over other conventional approaches with regards to the alive node and network lifetime. In the alive node analysis of supernode, on considering the 1st test case, the presented AW-WOA model at 2000 rounds accomplishes 100% alive node than other existing models, wherein GWO and ATEER attain 91.67% and 75%, the other WOA, PSO, and AWOA ATEER attain 83.33% of alive nodes respectively.

Cross-Layer MAC/Routing Protocol for Reliable Communication in Internet of Health Things

Internet of Health Things (IoHT) involves intelligent, low-powered, and miniaturized sensors nodes that measure physiological signals and report them to sink nodes over wireless links. IoHTs have a myriad of applications in e-health and personal health monitoring. Because of the data’s sensitivity measured by the nodes and power-constraints of the sensor nodes, reliability and energy-efficiency play a critical role in communication in IoHT. Reliability is degraded by the increase in packets’ loss due to inefficient MAC, routing protocols, environmental interference, and body shadowing. Simultaneously, inefficient node selection for routing may cause the depletion of critical nodes’ energy resources. Recent advancements in cross-layer protocol optimizations have proven their efficiency for packet-based Internet. In this article, we propose a MAC/Routing-based Cross-layer protocol for reliable communication while preserving the sensor nodes’ energy resource in IoHT. The proposed mechanism employs a timer-based strategy for relay node selection. The timer-based approach incorporates the metrics for residual energy and received signal strength indicator to preserve the vital underlying resources of critical sensors in IoHT. The proposed approach is also extended for multiple sensor networks, where sensor in vicinity are coordinating and cooperating for data forwarding. The performance of the proposed technique is evaluated for metrics like Packet Loss Probability, End-To-End delay, and energy used per data packet. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed technique improves the reliability and energy-efficiency compared to the Simple Opportunistic Routing protocol.

State-of-Art and Open Issues of Cross-Layer Design and QOS Routing in Internet of Vehicles

VANET (Vehicular Ad Hoc Network) is a significant term in ITS (intelligent transportation systems). VANETs are also mentioned as ITN (intelligent transportation Networks), which are used to enhance road safety in growing technology. The connectivity of nodes is a challenging one because of its high mobility and the sparse network connectivity must be handled properly during its initial deployment of a VANET for avoiding accidents. Quality of service (QoS) in VANET becomes a significant term because of its increasing dare about unique features, like poor link quality, high mobility, and inadequate transporting distance. Routing is the foremost issue in the wireless ad hoc network, which is used to transmit data packets significantly. This paper provides a crucial review of the classification of existing QoS routing protocols, cross-layer design approach and classification, and various performance parameters used in QoS routing protocols. The corresponding cross-layer protocols are overviewed, followed by the major techniques in cross-layer protocol design. Moreover, VANET is presented with many exclusive networking research challenges in precise areas such as security, QoS, mobility, effective channel utilization, and scalability. Finally, the paper concluded by various comparison discussion, issues, and challenges of several routing protocols for VANET. No. of publications over the period from 2010 to 2019 in various scientific sources also showed in this review. This survey provided the technical direction for researchers on routing protocols for VANET using QoS.

An AUV-Aided Cross-Layer Mobile Data Gathering Protocol for Underwater Sensor Networks.

Underwater sensor networks (UWSNs) have recently attracted much attention due to their ability to discover and monitor the aquatic environment. However, acoustic communication has posed some significant challenges, such as high propagation delay, low available bandwidth, and high bit error rate. Therefore, proposing a cross-layer protocol is of high importance to the field to integrate different communication functionalities (i.e, an interaction between data link layer and network layer) to interact in a more reliable and flexible manner to overcome the consequences of applying acoustic signals. In this paper, a novel Cross-Layer Mobile Data gathering (CLMD) scheme for Underwater Sensor Networks (UWSNs) is presented to improve the performance by providing the interaction between the MAC and routing layers. In CLMD, an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV) is used to periodically visit a group of clusters which are responsible for data collection from members. The communications are managed by using a distributed cross-layer solution to enhance network performance in terms of packet delivery and energy saving. The cluster heads are replaced with other candidate members at the end of each operational phase to prolong the network lifetime. The effectiveness of CLMD is verified through an extensive simulation study which reveals the performance improvement in the energy-saving, network lifetime, and packet delivery ratio with varying number of nodes. The effects of MAC protocols are also studied by studying the network performance under various MAC protocols in terms of packet delivery ratio, goodput, and energy consumption with varying density of nodes.

COLiDeR: A cross-layer protocol for two-path relaying

In this work, we present COLiDeR, the first PHY/MAC cross-layer protocol for practical two-path relaying using off-the-shelf half-duplex radios. It relies on three main contributions. First, based on an off-line performance comparison, COLiDeR selects the best interference management technique for a radio to handle two overlapping signals depending on the measured channel conditions. Then, considering the real decoding capacities of the nodes, COLiDeR introduces a dynamic relaying strategy with the objective of achieving high throughput while reducing decoding failures. This includes a light-weight protocol for the source to evaluate the channel state, a state-machine modeled approach driven by the source for switching between the defined scheduling schemes and an optional power adaptation mechanism for reducing the packet losses. Finally, COLiDeR comes with an adapted scheduling mechanism that aims to integrate two path-relaying in multi-hop wireless networks. Experiments on a 4-USRP testbed show that COLiDeR delivers between 80%–95% of the relaying performance of an ideal full-duplex radio while incurring negligible decoding failures. Just as important, large-scale simulations show that COLiDeR improves network throughput in multihop topologies by over 20% compared to traditional interference-free transmissions.

Towards centralized transmission coordination in WLANs: a cross-layer approach

The world is becoming more dependent on wireless networks for ubiquitous computing. Wireless local area network (WLAN) is one kind of widely-deployed wireless networks used in this context. Its network performance, which is always limited by the severe mutual interference among mobile nodes, directly affects the user experience of ubiquitous computing. In this paper, we present concurrency-based coordination mechanism (CCM), a cross-layer protocol to achieve higher performance in WLANs through making nodes coordinated centrally and effectively to avoid data packet interference, resulting in higher user experience. The design of CCM contains OpenCCM which is based on the architecture of software defined networking to schedule the transmissions in both the uplink and downlink directions centrally to maximize transmission concurrency. It also contains an interference-resistant mechanism in the physical layer that can make the control message transmitted with the data packet simultaneously to eliminate the coordination overhead, while both mutual interfered information can be detected successfully. Experiment results with USRP2 demonstrate the feasibility of the interference-resistant mechanism, and the simulations by ns-2 show that CCM can outperform other protocols significantly.

A Software-Defined Opto-Acoustic Network Architecture for Internet of Underwater Things

In this article, we envision a hybrid opto-acoustic network design for IoUT. The software defined underwater network (SDUN) is presented as an enabler of hybridizing benefits of optic and acoustic systems and adapting IoUT nodes to the challenging and dynamically changing underwater environment. We explain inextricably interwoven relations among functionalities of different SDUN layers and analyze their impacts on key network attributes. The NFV concept is then introduced to realize application-specific cross-layer protocol suites through an NFV management and orchestration system. We finally discuss how SDUN and NFV can slice available network resources as per the diverging service demands of different underwater applications. Such a revolutionary architectural paradigm shift is not only a cure for chronic underwater networking problems but also a way of smoothly integrating IoUT and IoT ecosystems.

RETRACTED ARTICLE: An intelligent cross layer security based fuzzy trust calculation mechanism (CLS-FTCM) for securing wireless sensor network (WSN)

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have a significant number of sensing nodes with computing and communication resources for data transmission. Many essential aspects such as computational power, storage capability, and energy consumption must be taken into account to use WSNs for data transmission. Previous research work developed a cross layer security based intrusion detection system (CLS-IDS) framework that has improved network performance, minimal energy consumption and to prolong network life, meeting QoS requirements. However, this CLS-IDS method cannot detect the faults happening at various places at the same time. So, this research work proposes the cross layer security based fuzzy trust calculation mechanism (CLS-FTCM) and also least overhead monitoring for WSNs by means of memory and energy demands to resolve the above issue. This cross-layer security was designed with the aid of a fuzzy logic-based calculation method for a protocol called cross-layer protocol, uses multiple parameters extracted by the exchange of inter-layer information in order to alleviate the effects of security hazards to the network of wireless sensors. In order to identify malicious nodes on the network, the fault monitoring system is carried out using enhanced convolutional neural network (ECNN) classifier and the confidential value is determined for the trust values. The proposed cross layer security based fuzzy trust mechanism (CLS-FLTCM) is highly efficient technique to ensure optimum safety in wireless sensor environment when compared to the previous techniques. The simulation results conducted using the NS-2 simulator and testing the safety performance of the proposed system demonstrates that this approach is better than the current detection precision techniques.

Web Based Cross Layer Optimization Technique for Energy Efficient WSN

In recent days, wireless sensor networks (WSN) plays a major role in the real time applications like military battlefield surveillance, industrial process monitoring, machine health monitoring and so on. In WSN, selecting the cluster head (CH) is the challenging task. CH selection is done by considering parameters of single layer only. In cross layer protocol more than one layers are considered for inter related parameters such as integration of MAC/physical layer and integration routing/MAC/physical layers. The main drawback of layer-based approach is not considering the effect on improvement of particular layer parameter to other layer parameters. In this paper, new cross layer technique for energy efficient module is designed to address the energy efficiency issues, which is common to all layers and used to optimize the energy from one layer parameter by others. Nowadays everything is possible with the help of Internet, so sharing the information between WSN and TCP through the energy efficient cross layer can be done. It is done with transport layer to enhance the application filed to be reliably connected to the web. In this paper, dynamically adapted sleep scheduling mechanism is used with residual energy of each node. Virtual end-to-end packet rate selection and congestion control feedback mechanism are considered for end to end delay. This reduces the packet loss with the support of data-rate adaptation technique.

PAX-MAC: A Low Latency Anycast Protocol with Advanced Preamble.

Wireless sensor networks employ duty-cycles to save energy, with the cost of enlargement of end-to-end latency. Cross-layer protocols that use anycast medium access control achieve latency reduction in asynchronous duty-cycled wireless sensor networks (WSNs). A series of strobed preambles is sent in order to achieve rendezvous with the next relay, selected from a forwarding candidate set (FCS). This paper proposes PAX-MAC: Pramble Ahead Cross-layer Medium Access Control. It is a novel anycast protocol for low latency packet propagation in duty-cycled WSNs. In PAX-MAC, preambles propagate ahead of data packet, prospecting the route towards sink node, while the message is sent some hops later. Simultaneous propagation of preambles and data packets provides latency reduction. The cardinality of FCS determines the average preamble propagation speed, which is lower bounded by data packet propagation speed. Differently from other approaches, our protocol takes the data packet size into account in order to maintain an optimal distance between preamble and data to minimize latency. For determining this distance, a detailed mathematical model is introduced. The performance of several state-of-the-art asynchronous protocols was appraised and compared with PAX-MAC. Our protocol outperforms in latency all other protocols for the simulated scenarios. Its energy expenditure was compatible with the best result among the other protocols. In the worst case, PAX-MAC spent more energy than the best one for a gain of in latency.

A Cross Layer Protocol for Fast Identification of Blocked Tags in Large-scale RFID Systems

Blocker tag attack is one of the denial-of-service (DoS) attacks that threatens the privacy and security of RFID systems. The attacker interferes with the blocked tag by simulating a fake tag with the same ID, thus causing a collision of message replies. In many practical scenarios, the number of blocked tags may vary, or even be small. For example, the attacker may only block the important customers or high-value items. To avoid the disclosure of privacy and economic losses, it is of great importance to fast pinpoint these blocked ones. However, existing works do not take into account the impact of the number of blocked tags on the execution time and suffer from incomplete identification of blocked tags, long identification time or privacy leakage. To overcome these limits, we propose a cross layer blocked tag identification protocol (CLBI). CLBI consists of multiple rounds, in which it enables multiple unblocked tags to select one time slot and concurrently verify them by using tag estimation in physical layer. Benefiting from the utilization of most collision slots, the execution time can be greatly reduced. Furthermore, for efficient identification of blocked tags under different proportions, we propose a hybrid protocol named adaptive cross layer blocked tag identification protocol (A-CLBI), which estimates the remaining blocked tag in each round and adjusts the identification strategy accordingly. Extensive simulations show that our protocol outperforms state-of-the-art blocked tags identification protocol.

Cross-Layer Protocol Fingerprint for Large-Scale Fine-Grain Devices Identification

Internet-connected Internet of Things (IoT) devices are exploding, which pose a significant threat for their management and security protection. IoT device identification is a prerequisite for discovering, monitoring, and protecting these devices. Although the existing proactive identification methods based on protocol fingerprint can discover and identify large-scale IoT devices, the fingerprint granularity is difficult to meet the requirements of security risk assessment for large-scale IoT devices. Since IoT devices usually support multiple network protocols for specific collection and control tasks, we propose a cross-layer protocol fingerprint to achieve large-scale fine-grained devices identification instead of traditional single protocol fingerprint. We first design a probing scheme for gathering HTTP and TCP cross-layer packets. Then we select the specific field of the HTTP and TCP protocols based on the diversity and consistence of field value. Finally, we utilize convolutional neural network (CNN) and long-term memory network (LSTM) to extract and construct feature fingerprint of these specific fields, and achieve a fine-grain IoT devices identification with high accuracy. The experimental results show that our identification accuracy of devices model reaches 96.6%, the recall rate reaches 97.4%.

Cross-layer Rate Adjusted Congestion Controlled Protocol for Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks

Wireless Multimedia Sensor Networks (WMSNs) consists of set of sensor nodes which can capture multimedia data as well as scalar data from the target region and transmit to the base station. The type and nature of traffic generated in WMSNs leads to congestion and it can cause substantial loss of data packets, reduced throughput and wastage of energy. In order to overcome the challenge, a cross layer protocol which adjusts the rate of transmission is proposed in this paper. As per the information provided by the MAC layer regarding buffer availability and channel traffic condition, the proposed protocol adjusts the channel access along with transmission rate of the nodes. The simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol performs better than the existing protocols with respect to packet loss, throughput and energy.

Beamforming Galvanic Coupling Signals for IoMT Implant-to-Relay Communication

Implants are poised to revolutionize personalized healthcare by monitoring and actuating physiological functions. Such implants operate under challenging constraints of the limited battery energy, heterogeneous tissue-dependent channel conditions, and human-safety regulations. To address these issues, we propose a new cross-layer protocol for galvanic coupled implants, wherein the weak electrical currents are used in place of classical radio frequency links. As the first step, we devise a method that allows multiple implants to communicate individual sensed data to each other through code division multiple access, combined with compressive sensing method to lower the transmission time and save energy, as well as delegates the computational burden of dispreading and decoding only to the on-body surface relays. Then, we devise a distributed beamforming approach that allows coordinated transmissions from the implants to the relays by considering the specific tissue path chosen and tissue heating-related safety constraints. We then proceed to implement distributed beamforming on a phantom of human tissue and prove an increase in received signal strength and a decrease in BER due to constructive interference of the signals of each implant. Our contributions are twofold: First, we devise a collision-free protocol that prevents undue interference at neighboring implants, especially for multiple deployments. Second, this is the first application of near-field distributed beamforming in human tissue. Simulation results reveal significant improvement in the network lifetime for implants of up to 79% compared to the galvanic coupled links without beamforming. In addition, the implementation of phantom tissue proves improved communication metrics when beamforming is used.