An accurate Markov model for slotted CSMA/CA algorithm in IEEE 802.15.4 networks

In this letter we propose an Markov model for slotted CSMA/CA algorithm working in a non-acknowledgement mode, specified in IEEE 802.15.4 standard. Both saturation throughput and energy consumption are modeled as functions of backoff window size, number of contending devices and frame length. Simulations show that the proposed model can achieve a very high accuracy (less than 1% mismatch) if compared to all existing models (bigger than 10% mismatch).

Performance comparison of OFDM bandwidth request schemes in fixed IEEE 802.16 networks

IEEE 802.16 standard specifies two contention based bandwidth request schemes working with OFDM physical layer specification in point-to-multipoint (PMP) architecture, the mandatory one used in region-full and the optional one used in region-focused. This letter presents a unified analytical model to study the bandwidth efficiency and channel access delay performance of the two schemes. The impacts of access parameters, available bandwidth and subchannelization have been taken into account. The model is validated by simulations. The mandatory scheme is observed to perform closely to the optional one when subchannelization is active for both schemes.

Investigation of uncoordinated coexisting IEEE 802.15.4 networks with sleep mode for machine-to-machine communications

The low-energy consumption of IEEE 802.15.4 networks makes it a strong candidate for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. As multiple M2M applications with 802.15.4 networks may be deployed closely and independently in residential or enterprise areas, supporting reliable and timely M2M communications can be a big challenge especially when potential hidden terminals appear. In this paper, we investigate two scenarios of 802.15.4 network-based M2M communication. An analytic model is proposed to understand the performance of uncoordinated coexisting 802.15.4 networks. Sleep mode operations of the networks are taken into account. Simulations verified the analytic model. It is observed that reducing sleep time and overlap ratio can increase the performance of M2M communications. When the networks are uncoordinated, reducing the overlap ratio can effectively improve the network performance. © 2012 Chao Ma et al.

An adaptive IEEE 802.15.4 data transmission scheme for smart grid applications

IEEE 802.15.4 networks (also known as ZigBee networks) has the features of low data rate and low power consumption. In this paper we propose an adaptive data transmission scheme which is based on CSMA/CA access control scheme, for applications which may have heavy traffic loads such as smart grids. In the proposed scheme, the personal area network (PAN) coordinator will adaptively broadcast a frame length threshold, which is used by the sensors to make decision whether a data frame should be transmitted directly to the target destinations, or follow a short data request frame. If the data frame is long and prone to collision, use of a short data request frame can efficiently reduce the costs of the potential collision on the energy and bandwidth. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme with largely improve bandwidth and power efficiency. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.

A simulation study of service differentiation for the bandwidth request scheme in fixed IEEE 802.16 network

Various flexible mechanisms related to quality of service (QoS) provisioning have been specified for uplink traffic at the medium access control (MAC) layer in the IEEE 802.16 standards. Among the mechanisms, contention based bandwidth request scheme can be used to indicate bandwidth demands to the base station for the non-real-time polling and best-effort services. These two services are used for most applications with unknown traffic characteristics. Due to the diverse QoS requirements of those applications, service differentiation (SD) is anticipated over the contention based bandwidth request scheme. In this paper we investigate the SD with the bandwidth request scheme by means of assigning different channel access parameters and bandwidth allocation priorities at different packets arrival probability. The effectiveness of the differentiation schemes is evaluated by simulations. It is observed that the initial backoff window can be efficient in SD, and if combined with the bandwidth allocation priority, the SD performances will be better.

System design and resource management in the next-generation integrated WLAN and 3G cellular networks

Next-generation integrated wireless local area network (WLAN) and 3G cellular networks aim to take advantage of the roaming ability in a cellular network and the high data rate services of a WLAN. To ensure successful implementation of an integrated network, many issues must be carefully addressed, including network architecture design, resource management, quality-of-service (QoS), call admission control (CAC) and mobility management. ^ This dissertation focuses on QoS provisioning, CAC, and the network architecture design in the integration of WLANs and cellular networks. First, a new scheduling algorithm and a call admission control mechanism in IEEE 802.11 WLAN are presented to support multimedia services with QoS provisioning. The proposed scheduling algorithms make use of the idle system time to reduce the average packet loss of realtime (RT) services. The admission control mechanism provides long-term transmission quality for both RT and NRT services by ensuring the packet loss ratio for RT services and the throughput for non-real-time (NRT) services. ^ A joint CAC scheme is proposed to efficiently balance traffic load in the integrated environment. A channel searching and replacement algorithm (CSR) is developed to relieve traffic congestion in the cellular network by using idle channels in the WLAN. The CSR is optimized to minimize the system cost in terms of the blocking probability in the interworking environment. Specifically, it is proved that there exists an optimal admission probability for passive handoffs that minimizes the total system cost. Also, a method of searching the probability is designed based on linear-programming techniques. ^ Finally, a new integration architecture, Hybrid Coupling with Radio Access System (HCRAS), is proposed for lowering the average cost of intersystem communication (IC) and the vertical handoff latency. An analytical model is presented to evaluate the system performance of the HCRAS in terms of the intersystem communication cost function and the handoff cost function. Based on this model, an algorithm is designed to determine the optimal route for each intersystem communication. Additionally, a fast handoff algorithm is developed to reduce the vertical handoff latency.^

Directionality based preventive link maintenance scheme for mobile ad hoc networks

The purpose of this study was to design a preventive scheme using directional antennas to improve the performance of mobile ad hoc networks. In this dissertation, a novel Directionality based Preventive Link Maintenance (DPLM) Scheme is proposed to characterize the performance gain [JaY06a, JaY06b, JCY06] by extending the life of link. In order to maintain the link and take preventive action, signal strength of data packets is measured. Moreover, location information or angle of arrival information is collected during communication and saved in the table. When measured signal strength is below orientation threshold , an orientation warning is generated towards the previous hop node. Once orientation warning is received by previous hop (adjacent) node, it verifies the correctness of orientation warning with few hello pings and initiates high quality directional link (a link above the threshold) and immediately switches to it, avoiding a link break altogether. The location information is utilized to create a directional link by orienting neighboring nodes antennas towards each other. We call this operation an orientation handoff, which is similar to soft-handoff in cellular networks. ^ Signal strength is the indicating factor, which represents the health of the link and helps to predict the link failure. In other words, link breakage happens due to node movement and subsequently reducing signal strength of receiving packets. DPLM scheme helps ad hoc networks to avoid or postpone costly operation of route rediscovery in on-demand routing protocols by taking above-mentioned preventive action. ^ This dissertation advocates close but simple collaboration between the routing, medium access control and physical layers. In order to extend the link, the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) and IEEE 802.11 MAC protocols were modified to use the ability of directional antennas to transmit over longer distance. A directional antenna module is implemented in OPNET simulator with two separate modes of operations: omnidirectional and directional. The antenna module has been incorporated in wireless node model and simulations are performed to characterize the performance improvement of mobile ad hoc networks. Extensive simulations have shown that without affecting the behavior of the routing protocol noticeably, aggregate throughput, packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay (latency), routing overhead, number of data packets dropped, and number of path breaks are improved considerably. We have done the analysis of the results in different scenarios to evaluate that the use of directional antennas with proposed DPLM scheme has been found promising to improve the performance of mobile ad hoc networks. ^

Estratégias distribuídas para a coexistência de redes de banda larga sem fio em bandas não-licensiadas

The increasing demand for Internet data traffic in wireless broadband access networks requires both the development of efficient, novel wireless broadband access technologies and the allocation of new spectrum bands for that purpose. The introduction of a great number of small cells in cellular networks allied to the complimentary adoption of Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) technologies in unlicensed spectrum is one of the most promising concepts to attend this demand. One alternative is the aggregation of Industrial, Science and Medical (ISM) unlicensed spectrum to licensed bands, using wireless networks defined by Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). While IEEE 802.11 (Wi-Fi) networks are aggregated to Long Term Evolution (LTE) small cells via LTE / WLAN Aggregation (LWA), in proposals like Unlicensed LTE (LTE-U) and LWA the LTE air interface itself is used for transmission on the unlicensed band. Wi-Fi technology is widespread and operates in the same 5 GHz ISM spectrum bands as the LTE proposals, which may bring performance decrease due to the coexistence of both technologies in the same spectrum bands. Besides, there is the need to improve Wi-Fi operation to support scenarios with a large number of neighbor Overlapping Basic Subscriber Set (OBSS) networks, with a large number of Wi-Fi nodes (i.e. dense deployments). It is long known that the overall Wi-Fi performance falls sharply with the increase of Wi-Fi nodes sharing the channel, therefore there is the need for introducing mechanisms to increase its spectral efficiency. This work is dedicated to the study of coexistence between different wireless broadband access systems operating in the same unlicensed spectrum bands, and how to solve the coexistence problems via distributed coordination mechanisms. The problem of coexistence between different networks (i.e. LTE and Wi-Fi) and the problem of coexistence between different networks of the same technology (i.e. multiple Wi-Fi OBSSs) is analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively via system-level simulations, and the main issues to be faced are identified from these results. From that, distributed coordination mechanisms are proposed and evaluated via system-level simulations, both for the inter-technology coexistence problem and intra-technology coexistence problem. Results indicate that the proposed solutions provide significant gains when compare to the situation without distributed coordination.

Análisis de los efectos del problema del nodo oculto en las redes IEEE 802.15.7. Propuesta de solución

Programa de doctorado: Tecnologías de la Información y sus Aplicaciones. La fecha de publicación es la fecha de lectura

Análise de desempenho sobre redes IEEE 802.3/PM-AH: protoclo multicilos para automação hospitalar

Com a incorporação de conceitos da automação em ambientes hospitalares surge uma série de novos requisitos pertinentes a área médica. Dentre esses requisitos, um que merece destaque é a necessidade do estabelecimento de uma rede de comunicação segura e eficiente entre os elementos do ambiente hospitalar, visto que, os mesmos encontram-se de maneira distribuída. Nesse sentido, existe uma série de protocolos que podem ser utilizados no estabelecimento dessa rede, dentre os quais, um que merece destaque é o PM-AH (Protocolo Multiciclos para Automação Hospitalar) justamente por ser voltado a automatização de ambientes hospitalares tanto no que diz respeito ao cumprimento dos requisitos impostos nesse tipo de ambiente, como pelo fato de ser projetado para funcionar sobre a tecnologia Ethernet, padrão esse que é comumente utilizado pela rede de dados dos hospitais. Em decorrência disso, o presente trabalho aborda uma análise de desempenho comparativa entre redes PM-AH e puramente Ethernet visando atestar a eficiência do primeiro no que diz respeito ao cumprimento dos requisitos impostos pela automação hospitalar

Análise de desempenho sobre redes IEEE 802.3/PM-AH: protoclo multicilos para automação hospitalar

Com a incorporação de conceitos da automação em ambientes hospitalares surge uma série de novos requisitos pertinentes a área médica. Dentre esses requisitos, um que merece destaque é a necessidade do estabelecimento de uma rede de comunicação segura e eficiente entre os elementos do ambiente hospitalar, visto que, os mesmos encontram-se de maneira distribuída. Nesse sentido, existe uma série de protocolos que podem ser utilizados no estabelecimento dessa rede, dentre os quais, um que merece destaque é o PM-AH (Protocolo Multiciclos para Automação Hospitalar) justamente por ser voltado a automatização de ambientes hospitalares tanto no que diz respeito ao cumprimento dos requisitos impostos nesse tipo de ambiente, como pelo fato de ser projetado para funcionar sobre a tecnologia Ethernet, padrão esse que é comumente utilizado pela rede de dados dos hospitais. Em decorrência disso, o presente trabalho aborda uma análise de desempenho comparativa entre redes PM-AH e puramente Ethernet visando atestar a eficiência do primeiro no que diz respeito ao cumprimento dos requisitos impostos pela automação hospitalar

Esquemas de controlo de acesso ao meio para sistemas CSMA/CA p-persistente

Dissertação apresentada para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores, pela Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia

Desenvolvimento de uma infra-estrutura de software para suportar conceitos de eficiência energética usando sistemas móveis pró-activos

Dissertação para obtenção do Grau de Mestre em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores

An Enhanced WLAN Security System With FPGA Implementation for Multimedia Applications

Maintaining a high level of data security with a low impact on system performance is more challenging in wireless multimedia applications. Protocols that are used for wireless local area network (WLAN) security are known to significantly degrade performance. In this paper, we propose an enhanced security system for a WLAN. Our new design aims to decrease the processing delay and increase both the speed and throughput of the system, thereby making it more efficient for multimedia applications. Our design is based on the idea of offloading computationally intensive encryption and authentication services to the end systems’ CPUs. The security operations are performed by the hosts’ central processor (which is usually a powerful processor) before delivering the data to a wireless card (which usually has a low-performance processor). By adopting this design, we show that both the delay and the jitter are significantly reduced. At the access point, we improve the performance of network processing hardware for real-time cryptographic processing by using a specialized processor implemented with field-programmable gate array technology. Furthermore, we use enhanced techniques to implement the Counter (CTR) Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code Protocol (CCMP) and the CTR protocol. Our experiments show that it requires timing in the range of 20–40 μs to perform data encryption and authentication on different end-host CPUs (e.g., Intel Core i5, i7, and AMD 6-Core) as compared with 10–50 ms when performed using the wireless card. Furthermore, when compared with the standard WiFi protected access II (WPA2), results show that our proposed security system improved the speed to up to 3.7 times.

Langattomat Ethernet-teknologiat ja niiden verkkoturva

Tässä opinnäytetyössä tutustutaan IEEE 802.11 -standardien perheeseen. Työssä esitellään WLAN-yhteyksien evoluutio nykypäivään asti ja niiden suojaus. Lisäksi esitellään kaksi muuta langattoman yhteyden standardia, IEEE 802.16 ja IEEE 802.16, jotka on suunniteltu kattamaan kaupunkialueita. Työ on tehty täysin kirjallisuustutkielmana. Lähteinä on käytetty sekä painettua kirjallisuutta että Internet-lähteitä. WLAN-yhteys tuo mukanaan lähes kaapelittoman verkon, mutta samalla se tarjoaa mahdollisuuden hyväksikäyttää yhteyttä. Tukiasemat ovat oletuksena suojaamattomia ja harva kotikäyttäjä ymmärtää edes mitä langattoman verkon suojaaminen tarkoittaa. Yrityksissä WLAN-suojaus tulisi ottaa edellistä vakavammin, yrityksen liikesalaisuuksien vuotaminen WLAN-yhteyden kautta tulisi olla mahdotonta. Pääpaino työssä on suojaustapojen käsittelyssä mahdollisimman laajasti. Lisäksi annetaan ehdotus kuinka suojata langaton lähiverkko niin kotona kuin yrityksessä. Työtä voidaan käyttää apuna suunnitellessa WLAN-verkon suojaamista.