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Technical Report
October 2004
Baruch Awerbuch, David Holmer, Herbert Rubens
{baruch, dholmer, herb}@cs.jhu.edu
Johns Hopkins University,
Department of Computer Science,
Baltimore, Maryland 21218 USA
ABSTRACT 1. INTRODUCTION
Modern wireless devices, such as those that implement the Ad hoc wireless networks are self-organizing multi-hop
802.11abg standards, utilize multiple transmission rates in wireless networks where all nodes take part in the process
order to accommodate a wide range of channel conditions. of forwarding packets. One of the current trends in wireless
The use of multiple rates presents a significantly more com- communication is to enable devices to operate using multi-
plex challenge to ad hoc routing protocols than the tradi- ple transmission rates. Many existing wireless networking
tional single rate model. The hop count routing metric, standards include this multi-rate capability including IEEE
which is traditionally used in single rate networks, is sub- 802.11abg[1]. The reason for this multi-rate operation stems
optimal in multi-rate networks as it tends to select short directly from some of the fundamental properties of wireless
paths composed of maximum length links. In a multi-rate communication. Due to the physical properties of commu-
network, these long distance links operate at the slowest nication channels, there is a direct relationship between the
available rate, thus achieving low effective throughput and rate of communication and the quality of the channel re-
reduced reliability due to the low signal levels. In this work quired to support that communication reliably. Since dis-
we explore the lower level medium access control and physi- tance is one of the primary factors that determines wireless
cal phenomena that affect routing decisions in multi-rate ad channel quality, there is an inherent trade-off between high
hoc networks. We provide simulation results which illustrate transmission rate and effective transmission range.
the impact of these phenomena on effective throughput and This range speed trade-off is what has driven the addition
show how the traditional minimum hop routing strategy is of multi-rate capability to wireless devices. Consumer de-
inappropriate for multi-rate networks. As an alternative, mands for wireless devices always include both higher speed
we present the Medium Time Metric (MTM) which avoids and longer range. Unfortunately a single rate represents a
using the long range links often selected by shortest path single trade-off point between these two conflicting goals.
routing in favor of shorter, higher throughput, more reliable Since multi-rate devices support several rates, they provide
links. Our experimental results with 802.11g radios show a wide variety of trade-offs available for use. This gives
that the Medium Time Metric achieves significantly higher them a great deal of flexibility to meet the demands of con-
throughput then alternative metrics. We observed up to 17 sumers. This added flexibility is the primary driving force
times more end-to-end TCP throughput than when the Min behind the adoption of multi-rate capability. It is also rea-
Hop or ETX metrics were used. sonable to assume that this type of capability will also be
present in future wireless networking standards.
While multi-rate devices provide increased flexibility, they
Keywords cannot change the inherent trade-off between speed and
multi-rate, ad hoc, wireless, routing, routing metric, cross range. Both high speed and long range cannot be achieved
layer interaction. simultaneously. Long range communication still must oc-
cur at low rates, and high-rate communication must occur
at short range. This multi-rate capability merely provides
a number of different trade-off points. Multi-rate devices
must have protocols that select the appropriate rate for a
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for given situation.
personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are In infrastructure based networks, all communication takes
not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies place between nodes and access points. In this case, an ad-
bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. To copy otherwise, to ditional protocol required to support multi-rate is necessary
republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific only at the medium access control (MAC) layer. Single rate
permission and/or a fee. nodes already have the ability to select the best access point
Copyright 200X ACM X-XXXXX-XX-X/XX/XX ...$5.00.
based on the received signal strength. Thus the only addi- multi-rate networks.
tional task necessary is that of selecting the actual rate used Signal Stability Based Ad Hoc Routing Protocols.
to communicate. Since the distance between the user and In [7] the authors show that the minimum hop path generally
the access point is dictated by the physical geometry of the contains links which exhibit low reliability. In [8] and [9] the
network, the rate selection task must react to the existing authors present various routing protocols which are based on
channel conditions. In other words, the only option avail- signal stability and link reliability rather then just shortest
able to a wireless device is to select the fastest modulation path in order to provide increased path reliability. In our
scheme that works reliably. work, signal information is used not only to increase path
However, this is not the case in ad hoc multi-hop wireless reliability, but also to increase network throughput.
networks. In these networks, the routing protocol must se- Routing Metrics. De Couto et. al. present the Ex-
lect from the set of available links to form a path between pected Transmission Count Metric (ETX)[10] that selects
the source and the destination. While in single-rate net- paths which minimize the expected number of transmissions
works all links are equivalent, in multi-rate networks each required to deliver a packet from the source to the destina-
available link may operate at a different rate. Thus the tion. The authors demonstrate through measurements on an
routing protocol is presented with a much more complex experimental test-bed that links in an ad hoc network expe-
problem. Which set of trade-offs does it choose? Long dis- rience vastly different loss rates and that these loss rates
tance links can cover the distance to the destination in few fluctuate over time even in a static network [11]. Since
hops, but then the links would be forced to operate at a the 802.11 MAC protocol retransmits lost packets, routing
low speed. Short links can operate at high rates, but more across lossy links significantly increases medium consump-
hops are required to reach the destination. In addition, the tion and reduces throughput. The ETX metric attempts to
path selected by the routing protocol will not only affect the measure link reliability and to select paths which minimize
packets moving along that path, but will affect the level of the expected total number of transmissions.
congestion at every node within the interference range of the In [12], Draves et. al. provide a performance comparison
path as well. of four proposed multi-hop routing metrics. Specifically:
Our Contribution. We provide an analysis of the lower Hop Count, Per-hop Round Trip Time[13], Per-hop Packet
level medium access control and physical phenomena that Pair Delay[14], and Expected Transmission Count[10]. The
affect routing decisions in multi-rate ad hoc wireless net- evaluation was performed on a 23 node wireless test-bed
works. Based on this analysis we derive a general theoreti- using 802.11a wireless interfaces. Their results indicate that
cal model of the attainable throughput in multi-rate ad hoc ETX outperforms Hop Count in a static network, but that
wireless networks. The traditional technique used by most Hop Count outperforms ETX under mobility.
existing ad hoc routing protocols is to select minimum hop Draves et. al. present Weighted Cumulative Expected
paths. These paths tend to contain long range links that Transmission Time (WCETT)[15], a routing metric for rout-
have low effective throughput and reduced reliability. We ing in multi-radio multi-hop static wireless networks. The
present the Medium Time Metric (MTM) [2] that selects authors refer to the combination of the Medium Time Met-
higher throughput paths and tends to avoid long unreliable ric (MTM)[2] with the Expected Transmission Count Met-
links. The MTM minimizes the total medium time con- ric (ETX)[10] as the Expected Transmission Time Metric
sumed sending packets from a source to a destination. This (ETT). They propose an additional weighted factor β, which
results in an increase in total network throughput. promotes channel diversity, and refer to the total combina-
The rest of the paper is organized as follows. Section 2 tion as WCETT. The authors indicate that MTM+ETX
summarizes related work. We further define our network provides a 16-55% increase in throughput over ETX alone
model and assumptions in Section 3. In order to fully un- and a 38.6% increase over minimum hop routing in a single
derstand the effects of the physical and MAC layers on net- radio environment. Their results in a multi-radio environ-
work throughput, we present a detailed analysis in Section ment indicate that MTM+ETX achieves a median through-
4. We examine existing route selection techniques in Section put increase of approximately 80% over ETX alone. An ad-
5. The Medium Time Metric is presented in Section 6. In ditional 10% throughput gain over MTM+ETX was achieved
Section 7 we present a theoretical model of throughput in using the authors proposed WCETT channel diversity strat-
multi-rate networks and derive an optimal route selection egy.
heuristic. We examine the effects of node density in Section A more detailed analysis of existing route selection tech-
8 and provide real world experimental results in Section 9. niques is provided in Section 5 and experimental results are
We then conclude in Section 10. available in Section 9.
Rate Selection. The method of rate selection in multi-
2. RELATED WORK rate capable networks has been left unspecified by the 802.11
standards. As a result, several auto rate protocols have
Ad Hoc Routing Protocols. A large number of rout-
been proposed. The most commonly used protocol is Auto
ing protocols have been proposed by the ad hoc wireless
Rate Fallback (ARF). ARF was originally developed for Lu-
networking community. Typically these have adopted one
cent’s WaveLAN II devices [16], and was later enhanced
of two major strategies: on-demand such as in AODV [3]
for 802.11b devices [17]. ARF operates using the link level
and DSR [4], and proactive such as in DSDV [5] and OLSR
ACK frames specified by the 802.11 standard. Each node in-
[6]. The vast majority of these protocols where originally de-
creases the rate it is using to communicate with its neighbor
signed for single-rate networks, and thus have used a short-
after a number of consecutively received acks, and decreases
est path algorithm with a hop count metric (min hop) to
the rate after a number of consecutively missed acks. The
select paths. While min hop is an excellent criteria in single-
advantage of this technique is that it is easy to implement
rate networks where all links are equivalent, it does not accu-
because it is purely sender based, requires no modifications
rately capture the trade-offs present in the more complicated
to the 802.11 standard.
As an alternative, the Receiver Based Auto Rate (RBAR) Table 1: 802.11b Wireless Card Parameters
Parameter Value
protocol was presented in [18]. RBAR allows the receiving
Frequency 2.437 GHz
node to select the rate. This is accomplished by using the
Transmit Power 15 dBm
SNR of the RTS packet to choose the most appropriate rate
11.0 Mbps Receive Threshold -82 dBm
and communicating that rate to the sender using the CTS
5.5 Mbps Receive Threshold -87 dBm
packet. This allows much faster adaptation to the changing
2.0 Mbps Receive Threshold -91 dBm
channel conditions than ARF, but requires some modifica-
1.0 Mbps Receive Threshold -94 dBm
tions to the 802.11 standard.
Carrier Sense Threshold -108 dBm
The Opportunistic Auto Rate (OAR) protocol, which is
presented in [19], operates using the same receiver based
approach, but allows high-rate multi-packet bursts to take Table 2: 802.11b Ranges
advantage of the coherence times of good channel conditions. Rate (Mbps) Maximum Range
These bursts also dramatically reduce the overhead at high
11.0 26.3 m
rates by amortizing the cost of the contention period and
5.5 35.1 m
RTS CTS frames over several packets. By picking appropri-
2.0 44.2 m
ate sized bursts, OAR also changes the fairness characteris-
1.0 52.5 m
tic from each node sending an equal number of packets to
CS 117.7 m
each node getting an equal allocation of medium time. This
produces a dramatic increase in overall throughput when
links of multiple rates operate together in the same space.
vide an understanding of how this combined behavior affects
OAR also requires modifications to the 802.11 standard.
network throughput, we examine several different phenom-
ena.
3. NETWORK MODEL
The multi-rate network model presented in this paper is
4.1 Medium Access Control
based on the 802.11b standard [20]. The topics discussed Ad hoc wireless networks by nature use a broadcast medium.
here apply to other multi-rate standards, but all examples, This means that any transmission made by a node simulta-
ranges, and rates shown in this work are based on 802.11b. neously propagates to all other nodes in range. The down-
Throughout the remainder of the paper we present the side of this property is that even if a node is sending packets
results of a number of NS2 [21] simulations. In order to to only one of its neighbors, those packets affect every other
simulate multi-rate 802.11b, we started with the ns-2.1b7a node in range. Furthermore, if two nodes transmit simulta-
code base and the multi-rate extensions available from the neously, both transmissions will overlap and become garbled
Rice Networks Group [22] that contain implementations of on the medium causing a receiver to be unable to success-
the RBAR and OAR protocols. The 802.11 MAC and phys- fully receive either packet. As a result, only a single trans-
ical wireless parameters were further modified to match the mission can occur at a time within range of the intended
published specifications of a Lucent ORiNOCO PC Card receiver.
[23], a commonly used 802.11b wireless adapter (see Table The Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol is respon-
1). Since the carrier sense (CS) threshold specification is not sible for providing channel access arbitration and ensuring
published, we provide an estimate of 2.24 times the 1.0 Mbps that nodes defer sending to avoid interfering with a trans-
receive range. This estimate is consistent with both the NS2 mission in progress. The 802.11 MAC protocol uses two
default carrier sense range, and the real world experimental mechanisms for deferral. The first mechanism used is carrier
results published in [24]. sensing, which means that the node listens to the medium
in order to detect when another transmission is in progress.
µ ¶2 If it hears a transmission it defers until the medium is idle.
4πHz Only nodes that are within carrier sense range of a sender
P athLoss(d) = d4 (1)
c will be able to successfully use this method to avoid colli-
Table 2 shows the ranges resulting from these simulation sions. The second mechanism is referred to as virtual carrier
parameters. The path-loss model in Equation 1 uses an sense, and it is provided by a control frame exchange. A
exponent of 4, and was selected since it is representative Request To Send (RTS) control frame is transmitted by the
of an indoor environment[25]. The ranges presented in this sender when it has a data packet to deliver. If the receiver
work are different then those presented in our previously is not already deferring, it responds with a Clear To Send
work. The current ranges more accurately represent real (CTS) control frame. Any node that overhears an RTS or
worlds range, and are exactly proportional to the previously CTS is notified of the packet transmission, and will then
reported distances. The results presented here should be defer for the duration of the transmission. This additional
valid for any set of ranges with similar proportions regardless mechanism is particularly useful in cases where nodes near
of magnitude. the receiver cannot carrier sense the transmission because of
obstacles or other propagation effects. Figure 2 illustrates
the ranges of these two mechanisms according to the speci-
4. MULTI-RATE THROUGHPUT fied communication model.
The total network throughput attainable in multi-rate ad In addition to providing medium reservation, the RTS and
hoc wireless networks is a result of the combined behavior of CTS frames also serve other purposes. The first is fast col-
the medium access control protocol, routing protocol, and lision resolution which is necessary because wireless devices
physical properties of a wireless network. In order to pro- are unable to use collision detection. The second is that the
11.0 Overhead Data
Rate (Mbps)
Carrier Sense Range
5.5
1 Mbps
2 Mbps
5.5 Mbps 2.0
11 Mbps
1.0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Medium Time (milliseconds)
A. 1 Mbps
Sender Receiver
B. 11 Mbps
2.5
Total 1.609 3.983
2
1.5
as the link speed increases. This suggests that even though
high link rate paths must traverse more links to reach the
1
same distance, they still provide more throughput.
0.5
4.4 Temporal Fairness
0
In addition to low path throughput, there are other detri-
0 50 100 150 200 250
mental effects of sending packets at slow transmission speeds.
Distance (m)
The standard 802.11 MAC protocol attempts to provide
fairness to individual senders on a per packet basis. This
Figure 6: Throughput Loss Along a Path means that if there are two senders near each other and
they are continuously trying to send packets, they should
end up sending approximately the same number of packets.
completes. This example shows the broad impact that a In multi-rate networks, there is no guarantee that these two
single transmission has on nodes along the path as well as senders are sending at the same rate. Since the MAC proto-
on other nodes in the immediate vicinity. col is only attempting to be fair with regard to the number
of transmissions, slow senders dominate the medium time.
4.3 Quantitative Evaluation of Path Through- This effect has been demonstrated in [27] through both simu-
put Loss lation and experimentation. One technique for dealing with
An additional example shows a more quantitative evalua- this problem involves redefining the MAC fairness model.
tion of the throughput loss along a path. Figure 6 contains Temporal fairness would provide an equal share of medium
the results of a simulation that was conducted to explore time between senders independently of their transmission
the throughput loss of a single TCP connection along a path rate. There has already been work which explores this op-
where each link operates at the same rate. Simulations were tion.
conducted for each of the four 802.11b link rates. The re- The Opportunistic Auto Rate (OAR) protocol[19] pro-
sults show the throughput across the path vs. the distance vides temporal fairness with regard to medium time by al-
(or length) of the path. As the length of the path increases lowing senders who send at a high-rate to send as many
the number of hops required to traverse the distance also in- packets as required to equal the transmission time of a single
creases. Since the throughput drops as the number of hops packet at a low-rate. Basically, this results in every sender
increases, the throughput drops in steps. The width of each having an equal opportunity to transmit and for each sender
step is equal to the effective transmission range at the given to be able to transmit for the same amount of medium time.
rate. This is a dramatic improvement in efficiency over the exist-
Since high-rate links have a shorter effective range, a greater ing 802.11 fairness model.
number of hops is required to cover the same distance as a A simulation was run in NS2 to illustrate this effect. The
smaller number of lower rate hops. This is indicated in the simulation consisted of two nodes flooding packets to two
graph since the high-rate throughput drops multiple times different destinations. One sender was sending at 1 Mbps
for each decrease in the low-rate throughput. There are a and the other was sending at 11 Mbps. All nodes in the sim-
couple of interesting observations that are evident in this ulation were within range of each other and were contending
graph. The first observation is that the lines intersect. This for access to the medium. The simulation was conducted
means that at certain distances more throughput can be ob- with both the OAR and RBAR protocols and the average
tained using lower speed links then higher speed links. A results are shown in Table 4.
specific example of this occurs at 30m. Notice the through- As seen in the results, the OAR provides almost two and
put obtained by the 5.5 Mbps path is greater than that a half times the total throughput of RBAR. This indicates
of the 11 Mbps path. This occurs because the 11 Mbps that temporal fairness is extremely important for achieving
path needed to traverse 2 hops at this distance, while the high throughput in ad hoc networks. The RBAR results,
5.5 Mbps path still consists of a single hop. This shows which are representative of the current 802.11 MAC, indicate
that traversing high speed links does not always achieve the that even if some of the routes in the network are operating
highest throughput in all cases. Another interesting obser- at high link speeds, the total network throughput will still
vation is that after approximately 175m the speeds seems to be low as a result of low speed links dominating network
plateau. This is due to spatial reuse. As the path becomes medium time. We conclude that in order to achieve high
longer, multiple transmissions can take place simultaneously throughput, not only will the routing protocol need to be
along the path. This allows the throughput to reach a steady selecting high speed links, but the medium access control
state, where additional distance does not cause any signifi- protocol will have to provide temporal fairness to ensure that
cant decrease in throughput. It is also important to notice low speed links do not gain an unfair share of the medium
that at this distance the throughput of the links increases time.
5. ROUTE SELECTION METRICS 5.2 Expected Transmission Count Metric
A number of route selection metrics have been proposed De Couto et. al. present the Expected Transmission
for path selection in multi-hop wireless networks. Most ex- Count Metric (ETX)[10] that selects paths which minimize
isting route selection metrics were designed for single rate the number of transmissions required to deliver a packet
networks. We examine existing metrics and explore their from the source to the destination. In a completely reli-
performance properties in multi-rate networks. able network the ETX and Minimum Hop paths are exactly
the same. However, the authors demonstrate through mea-
5.1 Minimum Hop Route Selection surements on an experimental test-bed that links in an ad
Most existing ad hoc routing protocols have utilized hop hoc network experience vastly different loss rates and that
count as their route selection criteria. This approach min- these loss rates fluctuate over time even in a static network
imizes the total number of transmissions required to send [11]. Since the 802.11 MAC protocol retransmits lost pack-
a packet on the selected path. This metric is appropriate ets, routing across lossy links significantly increases medium
in single-rate wireless networks because every transmission consumption and reduces throughput. The ETX metric at-
consumes the same amount of resources. However, in multi- tempts to measure link reliability and to select paths which
rate networks this technique has a tendency to pick paths minimize the expected total number of transmissions and
with both low reliability and low effective throughput. retransmissions.
Throughput Loss. In multi-rate wireless networks, the Throughput Loss. While it can be argued that the
selection of minimum hop paths typically results in paths ETX metric is ideal in single rate networks (which it was
where the links operate at low rates[7]. This is because the designed for), multi-rate networks present an additional set
shortest path contains the fewest number of nodes between of challenges. In multi-rate networks, the ETX metric is
the source and destination. Fewer intermediate nodes cor- unable to determine the difference between an 11 Mbps and
responds to longer links in order to cover the same distance. a 1 Mbps link which are experiencing the same loss rates.
Since distance is one of the primary factors that determines In addition, since high throughput paths are longer then
channel quality, the long links have low quality, and thus minimum hop paths, the ETX metric will avoid them since
operate at low rates. So given the opportunity, in an ef- they require more transmissions. This results in a loss of
fort to minimize the number of hops, shortest path selection throughput in multi-rate networks since ETX is unable to
protocols will pick paths composed of links close to their properly take advantage of the higher throughput options
maximum range that must operate at the minimum rate. which exist.
Not only do the low link rates produce a low effective path Reliability Loss. The ETX metric provides a consid-
throughput, but as a result of the shared wireless medium, erable improvement in path reliability over minimum hop
this path selection degrades the performance of other flows route selection in single rate networks. However in multi-
in the network. This occurs due to the large amount of rate networks, by minimizing the number of transmissions
medium time required to transmit a packet at a slow link it has a tendency to select routes that utilize the lowest
speed. All nodes within interference range of the transmis- link speed. This leaves the auto rate protocol no flexibil-
sion must defer while it takes place. Thus, slow transmis- ity in dealing with channel quality fluctuations, resulting in
sions reduce the overall network throughput by consuming reduced path reliability.
a large amount of medium time. Mobility. The ETX concept of selecting routes based on
Reliability Loss. Multi-rate wireless devices are inher- reliability is an excellent step forward over previous route se-
ently designed to deal with changes in channel quality due lection techniques. However, ETX is currently implemented
to mobility and interference. The devices provide multiple by actively probing and averaging reliability over a window
link speeds to accommodate fluctuations in link quality. In of time (e.g. 10 seconds). Existing implementations have
802.11b, as two nodes move in opposite directions, the auto been shown to perform poorly under mobility. The authors
rate protocol will gracefully reduce their link speeds from 11 of [12] suggest that ETX was unable to react fast enough to
Mbps down to 1 Mbps before they are finally disconnected. changes in link quality. It should be noted however that the
Minimum hop path route selection has a tendency to choose ETX metric was designed to operate in static fixed wireless
routes that utilize the lowest link speed, leaving the auto networks, not in mobile ad hoc networks.
rate protocol no flexibility in dealing with channel quality
fluctuations. As a result, routes are often established be-
tween nodes that are on the fringe of connectivity. The
authors of [9] refer to this as the Grey Zone. This occurs 6. MEDIUM TIME METRIC
when nodes are able to receive broadcast transmissions, but We propose the Medium Time Metric (MTM) which is
data/ack packets are unable to be successfully delivered. an additive metric designed to allow any shortest path rout-
While routing broadcasts are typically extremely small in ing protocol to select a high throughput path. The MTM
size, data packets typically occupy the full frame size, mak- assigns a weight to each link in the network that is pro-
ing them more susceptible to corruption at high bit error portional to the amount of medium time used by sending a
rates (BER). This tendency is even further exaggerated by packet on that link. Therefore the weight of any given path
the way 802.11 handles broadcast transmissions as opposed is the total medium time consumed when a packet traverses
to unicast transmissions. While broadcasts are sent as a the whole path.
single frame, unicasts require a full RTS-CTS-DATA-ACK More formally we define τ (e, p) as the time required to
exchange for successful delivery, which is more likely to be transmit a packet p over edge e. τ (e, p) should take into
disrupted by a low quality channel. The end result is that account any sources of overhead such as contention, headers,
small broadcasts can often be delivered even when data com- and multiple frame exchanges. Given τ (e, p), the Medium
munication is not possible. Time Metric of a path πij for a packet p is defined as
by the 802.11 standards; the exact strategy is proprietary
X and varies between card manufacturers. Auto-rate selection
M T M (πij , p) = τ (e, p) (2)
and neighbor tracking is generally performed in the wireless
∀e∈πij
card’s firmware or device driver. In order for the auto-rate
As a result, shortest path protocols that use the medium protocol to work efficiently, it must gather as much physi-
time metric find paths that minimize the total transmission cal channel information as possible. This information might
time. The inverse of the medium time of a link is propor- include: loss rate history, signal level, noise level, demodula-
tional to the “real” capacity of that link. Similarly, the tion performance, or channel impulse response (as in MIMO
inverse of the path MTM approximately equals the end-to- systems). More advanced techniques will yield more accu-
end path capacity. Therefore, a protocol using MTM simul- rate channel estimation. While this information is currently
taneously minimizes its usage of the shared medium and only used by the medium access control protocol, exporting
maximizes its end-to-end path capacity. this information to the routing protocol enables accurate
estimation of both link rate and link reliability.
Medium Time Metric characteristics: The most appropriate method for estimating link trans-
mission times is to leverage information which is already be-
• By minimizing medium time consumption, path ca- ing collected by the MAC and Physical layers. An alternate
pacity is maximized. technique used in [10] and [15] is to perform active probing at
• Minimizing medium time consumption, maximizes resid- the Network layer in order to measure loss rates and estimate
ual capacity available to other flows. link speeds. This approach is unable to take advantage of the
more advanced channel quality estimators which are avail-
• Tracks path capacity as opposed to path utilization, able at the lower layers. In addition, active probing tech-
thus is not prone to oscillation. niques introduce additional network overhead proportional
to the accuracy and rate at which they gather information.
• Increases path elasticity under mobility. This makes them less suited for mobile environments. In
6.1 Link Transmission Time this work, we strongly advocate inter-layer communication;
particularly between the MAC and Network layers. In or-
In order to compute the Medium Time Metric we must be
der to enable this, wireless radio manufacturers will need
able to estimate the time required to transmit a packet over a
to provide a standard interface allowing higher layer proto-
link τ (e, p). The Medium Time Metric originally considered
cols access to the neighbor state information which they are
only the effects of link rates [28], however more recent work
already maintaining1 . This information is best maintained
by De Couto et. al. on the ETX metric shows that link reli-
by the lower layers, and attempts to gather it at the net-
ability should also be taken into account [10]. Since wireless
work layer result in additional overhead and less accurate
links are not completely reliable, a packet may need to be
estimations.
transmitted more then once, consuming additional medium
time, in order to be successfully received. 6.3 Path Elasticity
We define overhead(e) as the amortized average per packet
overhead of a link including control frames, contention back- One property of MTM paths is that they prefer high ca-
off, and fixed headers. rate(e) represents the selected trans- pacity links. Since the capacity of a link is directly related to
mission rate, size(p) represents the size of the data payload, the channel quality, high capacity links are able to absorb a
and reliability(e) is the fraction of packets which are suc- channel quality reduction by lowering their rate. In contrast
cessfully received. The link transmission time is if the channel quality of a low capacity link is reduced, it will
result in a link break. Channel quality reductions occur due
to both mobility and environmental changes. For example,
size(p)
overhead(e) + rate(e) as two nodes move apart, the auto rate protocol gradually
τ (e, p) = (3) reduces the link speed. Nodes connected by a high-rate link
reliability(e)
must move a considerable distance before the link breaks.
6.2 Estimating Link Transmission Time This allows routing protocols which utilize the MTM metric
In order to select a path which minimizes medium time to select paths which are more elastic under mobility. This
consumption, techniques must be employed to estimate link is particularly useful for protocols such as TCP or VoIP,
transmission times. The link transmission time is composed since a path break results in a significant disruption to the
of four discrete components: fixed overhead, packet size, link protocol.
rate, and reliability estimation. The link overhead is calcu- Simulations were conducted to evaluate the effects of path
lated according to the specifications in the wireless stan- elasticity. In each simulation, 100 nodes were randomly
dard and specifications of optional manufacturer provided placed in a 210m by 210m area2 . The nodes move accord-
features such as fast framing and packet bursting. It may ing to a random way-point mobility model with a maximum
include RTS, CTS, ACK, preamble, contention time, and speed of 4 m/s. The node ranges are specified in Table 2.
any other sources of fixed overhead. This time will depend No routing protocol was used during these simulations. In-
on both the type of wireless device and its configuration. A stead, static all-to-all shortest path routes were computed at
routing protocol should be able to query its wireless card’s the beginning of each simulation using both minimum hop
configuration parameters programmatically. The packet size
9 1 The authors have already initiated a dialog with radio manu-
should also be readily available to the routing the protocol. facturers and will continue to pursue this direction.
All multi-rate wireless devices provide an auto-rate mech- 9 2 The simulations are approximately equivalent to a 1000m by
anism for selecting a link rate for each of their neighbors. 1000m area with nodes moving at a maximum speed of 20 m/s if
The technique utilized for auto-rate selection is unspecified NS2 default ranges are used.
however, the sum of shares cannot exceed 100%. Our model
MTM Broken Fraction MTM Path Capacity
of the wireless network is defined by a transmission graph
Hop Broken Fraction Hop Path Capacity
and interference graph.
The transmission graph is defined as G(V, E, ρ). V is de-
1 fined as the set of nodes in the network. A transmission
Cumulative Fraction of Broken Paths /
0.9
edge (u, v) ∈ E if node u is capable of transmitting to node
Average Path Capacity (Mbps)
network. Our model is similar to one presented in [29]. In this general case, Linear Programming (LP) methods
are required to achieve an optimal throughput solution. Opportunity-
7.1 General Model of Attainable Throughput cost based approximations are possible in both the off-line
In this work, we do not consider packet scheduling issues case [30] (all connections are known ahead of time) and in
and consider a steady-state flow model. In this model, each the online case [31, 32]. Single path solutions are even harder
network edge may be fractionally shared by several flows;
to achieve as they require integer LP approaches. other sub paths will be at best equivalent to the minimum,
and thus offer no additional flow capacity. Even if a flow
7.2 Optimal Routing Assuming a Complete does not use its maximum available capacity, minimizing
Interference Graph the path transmission time minimizes the flow’s consump-
Consider the special case of the general model where the tion of the common network resource and allows other flows
interference graph is a clique (completely connected graph), to increase. Thus we have shown Theorem 1 to be true.
i.e. each node can carrier sense each other node. In this
special case, the constraint can be simplified since the in- 7.3 Optimality Discussion
terference neighborhood of any edge χ(u, v) is the same and We have shown that the MTM is globally optimal when all
consists of every edge in the transmission graph. In this case of the links in the network interfere with each other. In the
we wish to show the following theorem: general case, modeling the interference graph of an arbitrary
Theorem 1. In the case of a complete interference graph network may be quite difficult due to complex propagation
in the stated multi-rate ad hoc wireless network model, a effects caused by obstacles and reflections. In real networks
routing protocol that chooses a single path that minimizes the the interference graph is primarily determined by the car-
sum of the transmission times optimally minimizes network rier sense range. The interference graph includes “edges”
resource consumption, and optimally maximizes total flow between each possible transmission edge, and all other trans-
capacity. mission edges with an endpoint within carrier sense range of
one of the transmission edge’s endpoints. While the carrier
Given the complete interference condition, we can rewrite sense range is not infinite, in 802.11b networks experimental
the general flow constraint. results show that it is greater that twice the maximum trans-
mission range[24]. This roughly means that a transmission
X X µ φij (x, y) ¶ will interfere with every node within a two hop neighbor-
≤1 (7) hood.
ρ(x, y) Multi-hop Access Point Model. The simplest exam-
(x,y)∈E i,j
ple of a complete interference network would be a group of
We can reverse the order of summation.
nodes associated with an access point. Since all of the nodes
are in transmission range of the access point, they are all
X X µ φij (x, y) ¶ able to carrier sense each other. In this configuration only
≤1 (8)
ρ(x, y) a single transmission can occur at a time. While multi-hop
i,j (x,y)∈E
routing is generally not considered when discussing access
We can also decompose φij (x, y) by moving its magnitude point connectivity, recent work such as [33] and [34] present
out of the inner sum, and changing the inner sum to include systems that provide multi-hop infrastructure access.
only non-zero terms. Access points are currently the most commonly used com-
munication model for wireless networking. The fact that
MTM is optimal for this application further motivates the
X X µ ¶
|φij | · 1 ≤1 metric as well as the significance of our theoretical result.
(9)
ρ(x, y) In this work, we have demonstrated that in multi-rate net-
i,j (x,y)∈πij
works routing across multiple high-rate hops can achieve
Since ρ(x, y) was defined as the real capacity of transmis- higher throughput than across a single low-rate link. Our
sion edge (x, y), we can define the transmission time used by analytical results prove that the Medium Time Metric will
a unit of flow on this edge to be the inverse of this capacity. deliver globally optimal network throughput in a multi-hop
access point system model. The maximum throughput gains
1 achieved by MTM will be the difference between the lowest
τ (x, y) = (10) transmission rate and the fastest possible MTM path achiev-
ρ(x, y)
able at that distance. Applying our results from Section 4,
Thus the final constraint equation becomes the MTM could gain up to 3 times the throughput in 802.11b
networks and up to approximately 10 times the throughput
in 802.11g networks3 . These results strongly motivate the
X X µ ¶
|φij | · τ (x, y) ≤ 1 (11) need for multi-hop routing even for traditional access point
i,j (x,y)∈πij
connectivity.
Pipelining Effect. In larger networks, we can no longer
In other words, the flow over each sub path consumes claim that the MTM is globally optimal because traffic pat-
a certain fraction of the capacity. The sum of these frac- terns and congestion may shift the optimal routes. How-
tions must be less than one. The fraction consumed by each ever, the MTM still exhibits excellent characteristics in these
sub path is equal to the amount of flow on that path times larger networks. This occurs because the sum of the medium
the sum of the transmission times along that path. The times is an accurate predictor of total end-to-end path ca-
magnitude of flow on a sub path, |φij |, will be maximized pacity, until the paths grow long enough to exhibit signifi-
when
P the sum of the transmission times along that path, cant pipelining. This will not occur as long as one link in the
(x,y)∈πij τ (x, y), is minimized. Therefore, a routing pro- path is in interference range of all other links in the path. In
tocol that selects paths that minimize the sum of the trans- the current network model, this occurs with paths of up to
mission times maximizes the flow along those paths. Also, it seven maximum length hops (see Figure 5). Once the paths
is only necessary for each flow to have a single sub path that
minimizes the sum of the transmission times, because any 9 3 Based on Atheros 802.11G specifications.
Average Throughput Increase
250%
are long enough to exhibit significant pipelining, the MTM
begins to underestimate their throughput potential. 200%
The reader should note that this capacity estimation prop-