Abstract

Cross-layer design and optimization is a new technique, which can be used to design and improve the performance in both wireless and wireline networks. The central idea of cross-layer design is to optimize the control and exchange of information over two or more layers to achieve significant performance improvements by exploiting the interactions between various protocol layers.

In this thesis, a cross-layer design and optimization framework was proposed and the concept of using the optimization agent to provide the exchange and control of information between the protocol layers was introduced. The approach for this thesis was to investigate the effects of the wireless channel and the performance of a small scale wireless sensor network (WSN) to develop insights that can be used in the design and development of the optimization agent in the proposed cross-layer framework.

A tap delay line (TDL) model was developed and simulated in MATLAB to investigate the effects of the wireless channel impairments due to mobility and multipath fading. Performance measurements were also conducted to study the effects of interference and transmission range for a group of networked wireless sensors.