Networks: Emerging Topics in Computer Science

Networks - Emerging Topics in Computer Science is suitable for advanced undergraduate students and postgraduate students who are searching for research topics related to networks or requiring some brainstormings against network applications. It discusses various aspects related to networks, from larget-scale/geo-scale networks to micro-scale networks such as network-on-chip (NoC). The contents of this book is designed in the way such that it tries to make a good balance among different major topics in networks (e.g., network models, network theories, network infrastructures and network applications), so that it suits people from different backgorunds, especially those who are strong in one area but are not familiar with other areas. This book is an invaluable companion for students from their first encounter with the subject to more advanced studies, while the high quality artworks are designed to present the key concepts with simplicity, clarity and consistency.

There are totally 12 chapters in this book. Chapter 1 studies how to perform sink selection and route selection jointly in order to improve the performance of a wireless sensor network.

Chapter 2 attempts to provide an optimal handover point between multi-rate WLAN by employing two kinds of information: (1) the most frequently used data rate (MFDR) for assessing the stable communication performance of a multi-rate WLAN, and (2) the frame retransmission ratio (FRR) for assessing its exact communication performance.

Chapter 3 proposes a probabilistic cost model for estimating costs for wireless network projects. By using the Poisson process at a desired level of confidence, the proposed probabilistic cost model provides an alternative method for cost planning with adequate contingency costs. In

Chapter 4, the authors point out the importance of packet generation according to population, decentralized routing strategy without global information, and link hierarchy at spatially fine-coarse-grained levels. Moreover, the authors propose a naturally embedded network structure by a self-organization that is better than the optimal search of Levy flights.

Chapter 5 introduces an algorithm for multi-agent localization and target tracking from relative measurements in a dynamic system. The algorithm is shown to converge swiftly under communication and computation constraints and is shown to approach optimal as such constraints ebb.

Chapter 6 investigates the performances of land mobile satellite systems over shadowed-Rice fading channels and proposed some important performance metrics.

Chapter 7 discusses a step-by-step method to design source routing for Network on Chip, especially for platforms with small sizes and regular topologies like mesh.

Chapter 8 presents a routing approach called cognitive routing for the design of NoC. The approach can select optimized routes based on a routing cost function and it can integrate a large number of IP cores which are mutually communicating.

In Chapter 9, the authors proposes a systematic approach to reduce an infinite set of inequalities that describe the multiple multicast capacity of an arbitrary network into a finite set of inequalities. The authors first extend the Japanese theorem from multiple unicase networks to multiple multicast networks, then discuss the consequence of the reduction method on characterizing the multiple multicast capacity of ring networks.

Chapter 10 proposes a truly concurrent variant of pi-calculus, which admits parallel performance of atomic actions.

In Chapter 11, the authors introduced a cross-layer design approach for differentiated quality of service enforcement between competing real-time flows.

Finally, Chapter 12 presents a case study of mobile commerce in rural economy countries, which is an area highly related to the application of mobile network.