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On 15 May, Mohammad Tariq Meeran from Tallinn University School of Digital Technologies defended his doctoral thesis, which aimed to introduce approaches for improving the quality of voice communication in wireless mesh networks.
“Voice over IP (VoIP) applications have become quite common among many services provided by computer networks. However, VoIP services are negatively affected in wireless mesh networks (WMN), which is a special type of computer network, by several factors due this type of network’s unique characteristics. These characteristics are mainly summarized as dynamic topology, self-formation, multi-hop nature, nodes availability, nodes’ mobility profiles, distance among the nodes, etc. Scholars have been proposing approaches for improving VoIP quality in such networks, but still more focused research efforts are required to solve this problem.” he added.
“There are lots of efforts for introducing technologies that can allow the end users to form communication networks in emergency scenarios when the fixed wired and wireless infrastructures are damaged. These small or large scale self-formed temporary communication networks will allow the users (victims) to be able to use their smart phones to form such a network and to communicate with each other, to receive first aid, to locate people and to save lives. WMN possess all the necessary features to help in such cases. Usually, in emergency scenarios the victims prefer to call their family members, friends and first responders. But voice communication in such networks need special care, otherwise, it will result in poor voice communication services which will negatively affect the victims.”, the author added.
“In my work, I explored the approaches proposed by other scholars and how they had addressed this problem and to what extend this problem has been solved. Then I identified some of the common scenarios where VoIP applications could be deployed in WMNs. I categorized all those common scenarios, then I designed them and conducted experiments on each identified scenario. Important data was collected and finally analysed. As a result, I was able to identify new approaches using which voice quality could be improved in such scenarios. My proposed approaches are suggesting: a) combination of specific standards and protocols to achieve a better voice quality and b) adding a supportive mesh nodes to the WMN for offloading the VoIP-traffic routing and switching process. To the best of my knowledge, the newly introduced approaches for improving VoIP quality in these types of scenarios have not been investigated by any other scholar in this domain.”, the author highlighted.
“These proposed approaches could be used by the end user equipment manufacturers and VoIP application developers in Wi-Fi enabled devices to allow the end users to switch their devices from an infrastructure-based mode of operation to an ad hoc (mesh) mode of operation when the fixed wired or wireless communication infrastructure is not available. Process automation techniques could be used to help the end users in turning-on proposed standard and protocols to improve voice communication in emergency scenarios. This will allow the end users to form their own communication network and use it for voice and other means of communication as long as needed. On the other hand, in remote areas where a wired or wireless communication infrastructure is not available, these approaches could be used to build a local voice communication network,” he added.
The public defence of the doctoral thesis “Approaches for Improving Voice over Internet Protocol Quality of Service In Wireless Mesh Networks” took place on 15th March. The dissertation was supervised by Prof. Yannick Le Moullec and co-supervised by Senior Research Scientist Paul Annus from Tallinn University of Technology. The opponents are Associate Prof. Tatiana Madsen from Aalborg University, Denmark and Prof. Vedat Coskun from Istanbul Isik University, Turkey.
Original post by Tallinn University
