China Pakistan Economic Corridor: Challenges and Opportunities

Pak-China relations have been exemplary in the contemporary international politics. Both States have been maintaining strong ties in terms of diplomatic and military cooperation. However, the close economic cooperation has added a new dimension in the Pak-China all weather partnership. Over the years, China and Pakistan strategic cooperation has evolved at unprecedented level. In the year 2013, the Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed the construction of One Belt One Road (OBOR) that aims to connect China with West Asia, Central Asia, South Asia and Middle East. It is a bitter fact that, since 9/11 Pakistan has suffered in socio-political and especially in economic dimension. The regional security environment and rise of extremism and terrorism has resulted into the hampering economic development. Therefore, the CPEC project will prove to be game changer and when completed it will have deep impact on economic development of Pakistan in future. The CPEC provides an opportunity for Pakistan to stabilize its society and reshape its positive image at international level from fragile State to emerging economy in the South Asian region. The rise of China in economic sphere has been jealously seen by other developed countries while for Pakistan it has been a blessing factor. Thus, Pak- China strategic partnership entered into the new phase of economic cooperation that will certainly change the dynamics of the regional politics. This paper aims to discuss the multiple dimensions of CPEC its importance for Pakistan and China along with its internal and external challenges. Moreover, economic and security perspectives will be focused in detail. To fully understand the role of CPEC as driving force of economic prosperity, this paper discusses its potential as a game changer for both China and Pakistan. ___________

Interference Aware Energy Efficient Topology Control and Routing in Selfish Wireless Ad Hoc Networks

In wireless ad hoc networks, the devices are equipped with constrained energy resources, therefore, efficient utilization of these resources is essential to prolong the operation of the network. In this thesis, we address energy efficiency problem in selfish wireless ad hoc networks and develop multiple algorithms to improve the performance of these networks. The proposed solutions establish energy efficient network topology, minimize route discovery overhead, and reduce interference in the network, which are the primary factors that degrade the performance of the wireless ad hoc network. The proposed topology control solution establishes connections among nodes using game theory such that the energy consumption of the nodes is minimized. In order to reduce the energy consumption of the nodes during route search operation, we develop two route discovery algorithms that reduce redundant transmission of route request packets in the network. In addition, we propose an interference aware cooperative routing (IACR) protocol that minimizes the interference in the network by establishing low interference routes between source and the destination using node cooperation. As a result, improvement in network throughput and reduction in energy consumption is achieved. In order to prove the efficiency and improvement of proposed solutions, we perform extensive simulations for various network parameters and compare the results with previously proposed algorithms. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms improve the energy consumption of individual nodes during topology establishment and route discovery phase while the IACR algorithm improves the end-to-end quality of the route. The results show that the proposed solutions are better in terms of reduced energy consumption, low end-to-end delay, higher throughput, and reduced control packet overhead as compared to conventional approaches.