Elsevier

Computer Communications

Volume 116, January 2018, Pages 132-146
Computer Communications

VRSense: Validity region sensitive query processing strategies for static and mobile point-of-interests in MANETs

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.comcom.2017.11.017Get rights and content

Abstract

Querying any point-of-interest (POI) in anywhere is a major part of location-based services (LBS) and has been applied to diverse wireless and/or mobile networks for realizing seamless services and mobile and ubiquitous computing. In particular, designing an efficient query processing scheme is admittedly challenging in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) because of the lack of centralized coordination, limited computing and communication capabilities, and time-varying network topologies. Unlike traditional stationary POIs, it also becomes challenging to consider mobile POIs that can invalidate prior query result. To address these challenges, we propose a set of query processing strategies based on a validity region to efficiently update the freshness of the queried POI and reduce the query traffic in MANETs. We first present and analyze time- and location-sensitive query types in the presence of static and mobile POIs and identify their corresponding query processing operations and implications. A time-sensitive query targets a POI containing a time-varying information while a location-sensitive query retrieves a location information. In this paper, we focus on location-sensitive query for both static and mobile POIs. Unlike a static POI, which is stationary and never changes its location, a mobile POI refers to a moving object and its location information is time varying. Then we propose basic rectangle and convex hull based validity regions and their corresponding query processing operations, and extend them by combining both techniques and considering an opportunistic overhearing. We also propose two more techniques in forming validity region for mobile POIs and their corresponding query processing operations to flexibly approximate the validity region. We conduct extensive simulation experiments using the OMNeT++ for performance evaluation and analysis, in which an infrastructure-based query processing approach is modified to work in MANETs for performance comparison. The simulation results indicate that the validity region based query processing strategies can reduce the number of queries and increase the time staying in the validity region.

Introduction

With increasingly popular in recent wireless, mobile, and location-aware devices, users are able to query any point-of-interest (POI) as a major part of location-based services (LBS) supported by ubiquitous communication infrastructure. For example, a user walking in a street queries a coffee shop, or a driver in a vehicle equipped with an on-board global positioning system (GPS) queries the nearest gas-station. They are all supported by 3G/4G or roadside unit (RSU) (e.g., an access point, an infostation [1], or a message relaybox [2]) located along the road that acts as a gateway to an infrastructure-based network, where a centralized server searches the queried POI and answers a set of query results back. A good deal of effort has been devoted into the designing of query processing strategies [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], [13], [14], [15] applied to diverse wireless and/or mobile networks to realize seamless services and mobile and pervasive computing.

Although 3G/4G high speed wireless networks are increasingly popular, many areas are still remained uncovered, such as an urban or remotely isolated area. The current infrastructure could even be collapsed and unavailable due to the disasters including recent hurricanes and earthquakes. For example, emergency communications and queries among rescue people can be conducted through single- and multi-hop relays without the help of infrastructure [3], [4], [5], [9]. In this paper, we investigate query processing strategies in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) facing with two key challenges. First, due to the lack of centralized coordination, limited computing and communication capabilities, and time-varying network topologies, it is admittedly challenging to design an efficient query processing scheme in MANETs. In query processing, when a user (later node) broadcasts a query to collect an object information what it is interested (e.g., POI), it may receive more than one query reply as a query result if multiple nodes can answer the query. Unlike an infrastructure-based network, where the query can directly be sent to and responded from a centralized server, the query is often flooded to the rest of nodes through multi-hop relays in the network. Thus, a blind query broadcast operation followed by a series of unconditional query forwarding operations is inefficient and even harmful because of redundant query retransmissions, causing query contentions and collisions [16].This could consume a significant amount of battery energy because wireless communication could be responsible for more than half of the total energy consumption [17]. In addition, when a node intends to reply a query result by unicasting it back to the query sender, unlike a wired network, all one hop neighbor nodes can still overhear the query result, as if it is a broadcast packet [16]. Thus, it is critical to reduce the number of broadcasted queries without degrading the validity of query result. Second, unlike traditional stationary POIs, it is also challenging to consider mobile POIs in designing query processing schemes in MANETs. This is because the mobility of POIs may invalidate prior query result. The query generating node in fact even does not aware whether the query result becomes obsolete. Thus, how to efficiently update the freshness of query results and when to judiciously re-generate a new query also become critical.

To address these challenges, we propose a set of query processing strategies based on a validity region, called VRSense, to efficiently update the freshness of queried data and reduce the query traffic in the presence of static and mobile POIs in MANETs. A validity region is defined as a virtual area where a query result remains the same as long as a query issuing node is located within the area. Several validity regions and variants based querying techniques [15], [18], [19], [20] have been proposed to improve query performance and reduce query traffic. However, most approaches still rely on an infrastructure-based network with a centralized server in forming a validity region. They may not directly be applied to an infrastructure-less network, where each node is required to build its region in a distributed manner. Our contributions are briefly summarized in three-fold:

  • We first present both time- and location-sensitive query types in the presence of static and mobile POIs without deploying a validity region based approach in MANETs. Then we provide a set of query scenarios, identify its corresponding query processing operations, and analyze its query processing implications.

  • Second, we investigate a validity region based query processing approach and propose basic rectangle (Rect) and convex hull (Conv) based validity regions and their corresponding query processing operations. We also extend them by adaptively combining both techniques (Adapt) and considering an opportunistic overhearing (Adapt:Ovhr). In addition, we modify the safe exit algorithm [20], deployed in an infrastructure-based query processing scheme (Greedy), to work in MANETs for the purpose of performance comparison.

  • Third, we observe the mobility of POIs and its impact on the validity region in MANETs. Then we propose both reduced (Reduced) and probabilistic (Prob) techniques and their corresponding query processing operations (Reduced – Rect/Conv/Adapt/Adapt:Ovhr and Prob – Rect/Conv/Adapt/Adapt:Ovhr) to flexibly approximate the validity region in the presence of mobile POIs.

We conduct extensive simulation experiments using the OMNeT++ [21] for performance comparison and analysis in terms of the number of queries and the time spent in the validity region. The simulation results indicate that the convex hull based approaches, Adapt and Adapt:Ovhr, can reduce the number of queries and increase the time spent in the validity region during the query processing operations. The Reduced and Prob applied to the proposed query processing strategies can further improve the query performance with mobile POIs. Note that this paper is significantly extended1 based on our initial work [22].

The rest of paper is organized as follows. Prior query processing approaches are comprehensively reviewed and analyzed in Section 2.The basic query operation and time- and location-sensitive query operations are presented in Section 3. A set of validity region-based query processing strategies with static and mobile POIs is presented in Sections 4 and 5, respectively. Section 6 is devoted to performance evaluation and analysis. Finally, we further discuss the potential issues of query processing in MANETs followed by conclusion in Sections 7 and 8, respectively.

Section snippets

Related work

In this section, we comprehensively review prior non-region based querying approaches in terms of top-k query and k nearest neighbor (kNN) query, and then analyze region based querying approaches in diverse wireless and/or mobile networks.

Top-k query: Top-k query retrieves the k number of data items, ordered by the score based on a target attribute, from adjacent nodes in the network. A query issuing node floods a query to the rest of nodes in the network. When a node receives the query, it

Query operations

In this section, we first briefly present a basic query operation and then analyze time- and location-sensitive query operations in MANETs.

Validity region sensitive query

In the VRSense, we first propose four validity region-based query processing schemes with static POIs in MANETs.We also enhance and vary one of our proposed schemes for performance comparison.

Validity region sensitive query with mobile point of interests

In the VRSense, we also extend the proposed query processing strategies for mobile POIs. We first observe the mobility of POIs and its impact on the validity region and then present two techniques to reset the validity region accordingly.

Performance evaluation

We evaluate and compare the performance of proposed query processing strategies with both static and mobile POIs by changing key simulation parameters in MANETs.

Discussion

In this section, we further identify two major issues in order to see the full potential of the proposed query processing strategies. We also summarize the cons and pros of the proposed query processing strategies, present other related issues, and compare them with prior region-based query processing strategies proposed under different environments [15], [19], [20], [26].

Concluding remarks

In this paper, we investigated validity region sensitive query processing strategies to efficiently reduce the number of queries and update the freshness of queried data in MANETs. We first proposed basic rectangle and convex hull based validity regions and their corresponding query processing operations for static POIs.Then we extended them by combining rectangle and convex hull techniques and considering an opportunistic overhearing. In addition, we approximated the validity region and

Acknowledgment

This research was supported in part by International Cooperative Research Grant from Incheon National University (Incheon, Korea) in 2015.

References (28)

  • T.Y. Fu et al.

    Parallelizing itinerary-based KNN query processing in wireless sensor networks

    IEEE Trans. on Knowl. Data Eng.

    (2010)
  • Y. Komai et al.

    kNN Query processing methods in mobile ad hoc networks

    IEEE Trans. Mobile Comput.

    (2014)
  • Y. Han et al.

    Distance-Constraint k-Nearest neighbor searching in mobile sensor networks

    Sensors

    (2015)
  • J. Zhang et al.

    Location-based Spatial Queries

    Proc. ACM SIGMOD

    (2003)
  • View full text