Grant: Strategic Projects Supplemental Competition

Wireless local area networks (WLANs) and wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are widely deployed to provideubiquitous wireless access to the Internet. Nowadays, many companies need to spend a significant amount ofresources on network management within their IT (Information Technology) support group. Effectivemonitoring offers significant benefits to network operators, system designers, and researchers. It can providenetwork operators with valuable insight into the state of the network, which can in turn help them understandthe network's topology and usage. Monitoring can also enable operators to perform critical tasks, such as faultdetection/isolation, necessary for the robust operation of the network. In this project, we will develop advancedtechnologies and systems for adaptive, scalable, and pervasive wireless network monitoring. In particular, fivespecific research tasks are identified: (1) Development of threshold-based alarm triggering policies; (2) Designof performance monitoring signaling protocols; (3) Design of load balancing and measurement-basedadmission control algorithms. (4) Develop realistic mobility models; (5) Design of distributed passivemonitoring schemes with wireless sensor nodes. We will address the set of new issues arising from the latestwireless environment, and will focus not only on the implementation and improvement of the individualmodules in network monitoring, but also on their joint optimizations and interactions that present manyadditional challenges and opportunities to service providers, network operators, and end users. Forproof-of-concept and technology transfer, we will implement our proposed schemes in a testbed. The mainbenefit of our work is a reduction of the network deployment and management costs, and an improvement onservice availability. Results are intended to find practical solutions and applications for the benefit of Canadianand the global telecommunication industries.