Sistemi OFDM: prestazioni di livello fisico

I primi studi su Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) sono stati fatti fin dal 1960, ma negli ultimi anni la modulazione OFDM è emersa come una tecnica di modulazione chiave commerciale per i sistemi di comunicazione ad alta velocità. La ragione principale di questo crescente interesse è dovuto alla sua capacità di fornire dati ad alta velocità impiegando sistemi con complessità bassa e contrastando l'interferenza intersimbolo (ISI) e quella intercanale (ICI). Per questo motivo la modulazione OFDM è stata adottata da diversi sistemi digitali wireline e wireless standard, come Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL), Wireless Local Area Network (IEEE 802.11 a,g,n) oppure per WiMAX e LTE.

Offering 802.11 MAC frame transport over multiband OFDM for consumer devices

A method to map all the variants of the IEEE 802.11 MAC frames into the Multiband OFDM based ECMA-368 Physical standard is proposed, without contravening the standard. The transportation of IEEE 802.11 MAC frames over ECMA-368 allows for the migration current of Wireless LAN applications towards a Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) solution. This system benefits the Consumer Electronics Market as the high data-rate WPAN is capable of transporting broadcast-quality video while the same system can also transport existing applications available today, maintaining existing effort, products and backward-compatibility(1).

Sistema de identificación de huella dactilares para el acceso a lugares restringidos y control de asistencia con protocolo de comunicación IEEE 802.11

El presente trabajo de graduación consta de la implementación de un sistema de identificación de huellas dactilares para el acceso a lugares restringidos con protocolo de comunicación IEEE 802.11, el cual consta de una Raspberry P: 2.0, un Arduino Nano, una USB Wifi, una pantalla táctil 3.5” y un sensor biométrico GT511C3. El sistema muestra en un navegador web como página inicial la introducción de un usuario y contraseña, la cual da paso a la interfaz principal donde se registra y valida huellas y además consultar la base de datos de las huellas existentes en el sistema, las cuales son asociadas a un nombre de usuario

Experiences in Passively Detecting Session Hijacking Attacks in IEEE 802.11 Networks

Current IEEE 802.11 wireless networks are vulnerable to session hijacking attacks as the existing standards fail to address the lack of authentication of management frames and network card addresses, and rely on loosely coupled state machines. Even the new WLAN security standard - IEEE 802.11i does not address these issues. In our previous work, we proposed two new techniques for improving detection of session hijacking attacks that are passive, computationally inexpensive, reliable, and have minimal impact on network performance. These techniques utilise unspoofable characteristics from the MAC protocol and the physical layer to enhance confidence in the intrusion detection process. This paper extends our earlier work and explores usability, robustness and accuracy of these intrusion detection techniques by applying them to eight distinct test scenarios. A correlation engine has also been introduced to maintain the false positives and false negatives at a manageable level. We also explore the process of selecting optimum thresholds for both detection techniques. For the purposes of our experiments, Snort-Wireless open source wireless intrusion detection system was extended to implement these new techniques and the correlation engine. Absence of any false negatives and low number of false positives in all eight test scenarios successfully demonstrated the effectiveness of the correlation engine and the accuracy of the detection techniques.

Securing IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs

As the acceptance and popularity of wireless networking technologies has proliferated, the security of the IEEE 802.11 wireless local area network (WLAN) has advanced in leaps and bounds. From tenuous beginnings, where the only safe way to deploy a WLAN was to assume it was hostile and employ higherlayer information security controls, to the current state of the art, all manner of improvements have been conceived and many implemented. This work investigates some of the remaining issues surrounding IEEE 802.11 WLAN operation. While the inherent issues in WLAN deployments and the problems of the original Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) provisions are well known and widely documented, there still exist a number of unresolved security issues. These include the security of management and control frames and the data link layer protocols themselves. This research introduces a novel proposal to enhance security at the link layer of IEEE 802.11 WLANs and then conducts detailed theoretical and empirical investigation and analysis of the eects of such proposals. This thesis �rst de�nes the state of the art in WLAN technology and deployment, including an overview of the current and emerging standards, the various threats, numerous vulnerabilities and current exploits. The IEEE 802.11i MAC security enhancements are discussed in detail, along with the likely outcomes of the IEEE 802.11 Task Group W1, looking into protected management frames. The problems of the remaining unprotected management frames, the unprotected control frames and the unprotected link layer headers are reviewed and a solution is hypothesised, to encrypt the entire MAC Protocol Data Unit (MPDU), including the MAC headers, not just the MAC Service Data Unit (MSDU) commonly performed by existing protocols. The proposal is not just to encrypt a copy of the headers while still using cleartext addresses to deliver the frame, as used by some existing protocols to support the integrity and authenticity of the headers, but to pass the entire MPDU only as ciphertext to also support the con�dentiality of the frame header information. This necessitates the decryption of every received frame using every available key before a station can determine if it is the intended recipient. As such, this raises serious concerns as to the viability of any such proposal due to the likely impact on throughput and scalability. The bulk of the research investigates the impacts of such proposals on the current WLAN protocols. Some possible variations to the proposal are also provided to enhance both utility and speed. The viability this proposal with respect to the eect on network throughput is then tested using a well known and respected network simulation tool, along with a number of analysis tools developed speci�cally for the data generated here. The simulator's operation is �rst validated against recognised test outputs, before a comprehensive set of control data is established, and then the proposal is tested and and compared against the controls. This detailed analysis of the various simulations should be of bene�t to other researchers who need to validate simulation results. The analysis of these tests indicate areas of immediate improvement and so the protocols are adjusted and a further series of experiments conducted. These �nal results are again analysed in detail and �nal appraisals provided.

Markov modelling of the IEEE 802.11 DCF for real-time applications with periodic traffic

Popular wireless network standards, such as IEEE 802.11/15/16, are increasingly adopted in real-time control systems. However, they are not designed for real-time applications. Therefore, the performance of such wireless networks needs to be carefully evaluated before the systems are implemented and deployed. While efforts have been made to model general wireless networks with completely random traffic generation, there is a lack of theoretical investigations into the modelling of wireless networks with periodic real-time traffic. Considering the widely used IEEE 802.11 standard, with the focus on its distributed coordination function (DCF), for soft-real-time control applications, this paper develops an analytical Markov model to quantitatively evaluate the network quality-of-service (QoS) performance in periodic real-time traffic environments. Performance indices to be evaluated include throughput capacity, transmission delay and packet loss ratio, which are crucial for real-time QoS guarantee in real-time control applications. They are derived under the critical real-time traffic condition, which is formally defined in this paper to characterize the marginal satisfaction of real-time performance constraints.

Performance analysis of IEEE 802.11 DCF based WNCS networks

Wireless network technologies, such as IEEE 802.11 based wireless local area networks (WLANs), have been adopted in wireless networked control systems (WNCS) for real-time applications. Distributed real-time control requires satisfaction of (soft) real-time performance from the underlying networks for delivery of real-time traffic. However, IEEE 802.11 networks are not designed for WNCS applications. They neither inherently provide quality-of-service (QoS) support, nor explicitly consider the characteristics of the real-time traffic on networked control systems (NCS), i.e., periodic round-trip traffic. Therefore, the adoption of 802.11 networks in real-time WNCSs causes challenging problems for network design and performance analysis. Theoretical methodologies are yet to be developed for computing the best achievable WNCS network performance under the constraints of real-time control requirements. Focusing on IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function (DCF) based WNCSs, this paper analyses several important NCS network performance indices, such as throughput capacity, round trip time and packet loss ratio under the periodic round trip traffic pattern, a unique feature of typical NCSs. Considering periodic round trip traffic, an analytical model based on Markov chain theory is developed for deriving these performance indices under a critical real-time traffic condition, at which the real-time performance constraints are marginally satisfied. Case studies are also carried out to validate the theoretical development.

Modelling and performance evaluation of the IEEE 802.11 DCF for real-time control

Popular wireless networks, such as IEEE 802.11/15/16, are not designed for real-time applications. Thus, supporting real-time quality of service (QoS) in wireless real-time control is challenging. This paper adopts the widely used IEEE 802.11, with the focus on its distributed coordination function (DCF), for soft-real-time control systems. The concept of the critical real-time traffic condition is introduced to characterize the marginal satisfaction of real-time requirements. Then, mathematical models are developed to describe the dynamics of DCF based real-time control networks with periodic traffic, a unique feature of control systems. Performance indices such as throughput and packet delay are evaluated using the developed models, particularly under the critical real-time traffic condition. Finally, the proposed modelling is applied to traffic rate control for cross-layer networked control system design.

QoS differentiation in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks for real-time control

IEEE 802.11 based wireless local area networks (WLANs) are being increasingly deployed for soft real-time control applications. However, they do not provide quality-ofservice (QoS) differentiation to meet the requirements of periodic real-time traffic flows, a unique feature of real-time control systems. This problem becomes evident particularly when the network is under congested conditions. Addressing this problem, a media access control (MAC) scheme, QoS-dif, is proposed in this paper to enable QoS differentiation in IEEE 802.11 networks for different types of periodic real-time traffic flows. It extends the IEEE 802.11e Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA) by introducing a QoS differentiation method to deal with different types of periodic traffic that have different QoS requirements for real-time control applications. The effectiveness of the proposed QoS-dif scheme is demonstrated through comparisons with the IEEE 802.11e EDCA mechanism.

Modeling Finite Buffer Effects on TCP Traffic over an IEEE 802.11 Infrastructure WLAN

The network scenario is that of an infrastructure IEEE 802.11 WLAN with a single AP with which several stations (STAs) are associated. The AP has a finite size buffer for storing packets. In this scenario, we consider TCP controlled upload and download file transfers between the STAs and a server on the wireline LAN (e.g., 100 Mbps Ethernet) to which the AP is connected. In such a situation, it is known (see, for example, (3), [9]) that because of packet loss due to finite buffers at the Ap, upload file transfers obtain larger throughputs than download transfers. We provide an analytical model for estimating the upload and download throughputs as a function of the buffer size at the AP. We provide models for the undelayed and delayed ACK cases for a TCP that performs loss recovery only by timeout, and also for TCP Reno.

State Dependent Attempt Rate Modeling of Single Cell IEEE 802.11 WLANs with Homogeneous Nodes and Poisson Arrivals

Analytical models of IEEE 802.11-based WLANs are invariably based on approximations, such as the well-known mean-field approximations proposed by Bianchi for saturated nodes. In this paper, we provide a new approach for modeling the situation when the nodes are not saturated. We study a State Dependent Attempt Rate (SDAR) approximation to model M queues (one queue per node) served by the CSMA/CA protocol as standardized in the IEEE 802.11 DCF. The approximation is that, when n of the M queues are non-empty, the attempt probability of the n non-empty nodes is given by the long-term attempt probability of n saturated nodes as provided by Bianchi's model. This yields a coupled queue system. When packets arrive to the M queues according to independent Poisson processes, we provide an exact model for the coupled queue system with SDAR service. The main contribution of this paper is to provide an analysis of the coupled queue process by studying a lower dimensional process and by introducing a certain conditional independence approximation. We show that the numerical results obtained from our finite buffer analysis are in excellent agreement with the corresponding results obtained from ns-2 simulations. We replace the CSMA/CA protocol as implemented in the ns-2 simulator with the SDAR service model to show that the SDAR approximation provides an accurate model for the CSMA/CA protocol. We also report the simulation speed-ups thus obtained by our model-based simulation.

Experiences With WM: A Centralised Scheduling Approach for Performance Management of IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs

In our earlier work ([1]) we proposed WLAN Manager (or WM) a centralised controller for QoS management of infrastructure WLANs based on the IEEE 802.11 DCF standards. The WM approach is based on queueing and scheduling packets in a device that sits between all traffic flowing between the APs and the wireline LAN, requires no changes to the AP or the STAs, and can be viewed as implementing a "Split-MAC" architecture. The objectives of WM were to manage various TCP performance related issues (such as the throughput "anomaly" when STAs associate with an AP with mixed PHY rates, and upload-download unfairness induced by finite AP buffers), and also to serve as the controller for VoIP admission control and handovers, and for other QoS management measures. In this paper we report our experiences in implementing the proposals in [1]: the insights gained, new control techniques developed, and the effectiveness of the WM approach in managing TCP performance in an infrastructure WLAN. We report results from a hybrid experiment where a physical WM manages actual TCP controlled packet flows between a server and clients, with the WLAN being simulated, and also from a small physical testbed with an actual AP.