A radio network is a collection of nodes communicating together through radio devices,
using radio waves to carry the information exchanged (obvious, isn't it ?). It is sometime called a radio Ethernet, by analogy of the wired technology. Most radio devices are a card (IA, !cmcia) to "lug in a !# (or wor$station), and interact directly with the standard networ$ing stac$ on it (no need of !!! or any s"ecific "rotocol stac$). 3.1 The radio modem A radio device is com"osed of two main "arts. %he first is the radio modem. %his is the "art transmitting (modulating) the data onto the fre&uency and receiving other transmissions. It is com"osed of antenna(s), amplificators, frequency synthesisers, filters and other bits of magic. %hese are mainly analog "arts, and a bit of digital (in an AI#, the Baseband). 'sually, you can't see all those analog bits (and the cleverness of the board layout) because all the modem is enca"sulated in a metal shield to "rotect your !# from those high fre&uency radiations. %he modem main characteristics are the frequency band, the signalling rate, the modulation and the transmitted power. !eo"le building modems are also tal$ing a lot of () and d*... 3.2 The MAC controller %he second "art of the radio device is the MAC controller, res"onsible to run the MA# "rotocol. %his is im"lemented mainly in an AI# and+or a microcontroler on the card, but some functionalities of the MA# may be as well in the driver on the !#. %he card also includes some memory for the MA# controller to store incoming and outgoing "ac$ets (buffers) and other data (configuration, statistics). Most of the time the few most time critical "arts are handled in the radio modem AI# (the baseband), the bul$ of the MA# in a microcontroller and only some management functionality in the driver. *ut, the different manufacturers "lace the boundary between the different functionalities differently (cost+"erformance tradeoff), and some have im"lemented driver only MA#s for lower cost. %he main characteristics of the MA# are the packet format (si,e, headers), the channel access mechanisms and the network management features. %he amount of on-board memory is also im"ortant, because the MA# may need a significant number of buffers to com"ensate the !# and interface latencies. Functional diagram of a Wireless device : 3.3 The host interface %he card interface to the !# through one of its buses (!"# $%# $cmcia...) or communication "orts (serial# parallel# &!B or Ethernet). %his interface allows the software (mostly the driver) to communicate with the MA# controller and most of the time directly to the on board memory (the software writes "ac$ets to a s"ecific location of it, then the controller reads them and sends them). %he main characteristic of the interface is mainly the s"eed (i+o, shared memory or .MA) and the ability to "rocess re&uests in "arallel. %he flexibility and functionality of it are usually more a concern for the "erson writing the driver /-) 3.4 The driver 0ith all modern o"erating systems, the end a""lication doesn't access directly the hardware but use a standard A!I. %he o"erating system needs a driver to interface the hardware to the networ$ stac$ ('%$($# )etBeui# $*...). %he main function of the driver is to manage the hardware and to answer its re&uest (to service interru"ts). In most of the 0ireless 1A(s, the driver also im"lements some "arts of the MA# "rotocol. %he main characteristic of the driver is the bugs /-( 3.5 ireless LAN or not 0ireless 1A(s are not the only devices to ma$e use of wireless technology, and it's easy to get confused between the different "roducts (es"ecially that sometimes they call themselves incorrectly wireless networ$s). ome exam"le are wireless bridges, wireless distribution systems and cable replacement, and they are &uite different from local area networ$ing. %here is also wide area wireless networ$ "roducts, which are again &uite different from 1A(s. ireless !rid"es are used to connect two different 1A( segments via radio, for exam"le between two buildings across the street. ireless distri#$tion systems is what are used by I! to connect multi"le inde"endant customers to a base station, li$e houses in a neighbourhood. Ca#le re%lacement is mostly li$e Ir.A (Infrared data lin$) to transfer data between two com"uters without a serial or "arallel cable. ometimes those "roducts use standard 0ireless 1A( modules, and most of the time they are based on the same technologies as 0ireless 1A(s but with restricted functionality (li$e no broadcasting) and only allow a set of "oint to "oint lin$s (so, no native %#!+I! to"ology). %hey interface to the serial "ort (cable re"lacement) or ethernet "ort (wireless bridges, wireless distribution system). In this document we mostly restrict ourselves to true wireless 1A(s, because what doesn't run natively %#!+I! is not 2fun2 /-) 3.& 'rofessional and (ome ireless LANs (ow that 0ireless 1A(s are getting towards lower "rice, 0ireless 1A( manufacturers are no longer targeting mobile commercial users only but also the home mar$et. ome vendors, such as !roxim, offer two distinct line of "roduct based on the same technology (and same "rotocol), the )ange1an3 for "rofessionals and ym"hony for home users. As the business version of those 0ireless 1A(s are more ex"ensive than the home "roducts, one might wonder what 4ustify the "rice difference a"art from the "ac$aging, the mar$eting and software bundle. %he radio modems may "resent different %erformances. %he modem is usually the most ex"ensive "art of the device, and re"lacing analog "arts by less "erformant ones may reduce the "rice. %he result may be a lower sensitivity, or less filtering of the ad4acent bands or channels, which may reduce range and "erformance, es"ecially for high number of nodes or collocated networ$s (which matter most for business environment). %he host interface may be different. %he business line may offer more o"tions, such as 5thernet, erial and !#I, whereas home version may offer '*. %he home line may also lac$ security (through encry"tion) or "ower management. *ut in most cases, the hardware between the two lines is exactly the same. In fact, most of the differences usually reside in the Access 'oints. %his is why 1ucent offer 6 different Access !oints de"ending on usage and targeted at different $ind of users, but only one ty"e of card for all ty"es of users. Access !oints for home users are mostly designed to interface with a "hone line (or I.(, .1 or cable modem) and "rovide a "roxy or mas&uerading feature, allowing the user to share its I! access between the nodes of the networ$. 7n the other hand, Access !oints for businesses connect directly to the 1A( via 5thernet or act as wireless re"eaters, with o"timised bridge functionality, higher "erformance, offer a wide range of management features (diagnostic, statistics, access control...) roaming and out of range forwarding (see chapter +,-,.). o, before investing your money, you have to as$ yourself what networ$ configuration you are really after and which features you really do need... 3.) *i"ital radios and chan"in" the %rotocol 7ne &uestion "o""ing u" in my mailbox is the ability of doing "rotocol 89' (%.MA, 0ireless A%M) with device 8:' (a well $nown 0ireless 1A(). A variant of this &uestion is "eo"le trying to im"lement a s"ecific scheme or o"timisation in the ;<3.== "rotocol. %his is usually not "ossible. As we have seen above, most of the MA# "rotocol is actually embedded in the device and only a few non "erformance critical functions are handled by the driver on the host. 'sually, manufacturers don't tell you how to re"rogram the firmware of their devices, but even if it was "ossible, it would not be enough. %he very low "art of the MA# "rotocol, which is time critical, is im"lemented in the baseband AI#, so &uite a challenge to change. >or exam"le the carrier sense and MA# ac$nowledgement need reaction in the order of a do,en microseconds, so are "rime candidate for the AI#. 'nfortunately, these are "recisely the functions that those "eo"le want to change. In fact, many "eo"le have been thin$ing of universal radios, which can be sim"ly re"rogrammed to receive (and transmit) any radio standard. %he main idea is having a big bloc$ of re"rogrammable logic on the card and to download a new configuration for each "rotocol that the system wants to use, ma$ing it a fully di"ital radio. %o achieve that goal, we need to go one ste" further down, and be able to ada"t to any modulation and bit rate. Most im"lementations of common 0ireless 1A(s use fixed analog com"onents in the modem, so are not suitable. o, a digital radio needs to digitise (with a fast Ato.) the whole bandwidth and to feed that the a fast su"er .! or 5!1. (5lectric !rogramable 1ogic .evice, li$e a 9ilinx or Altera) and to wor$ entirely in the digital domain to demodulate (and modulate) the signal. 'nfortunately this is not really cost effective and doesn't wor$ that well at the fre&uency we are tal$ing about (?@,). 4 The radio modem +%hysical layer, %his section of the document deals with all the issues related to the "hysical layer (bottom of the "ile, 7I wise /-), or in our case the radio modem. 4.1 -.M fre/$ency #ands +011 M(2 3 2.4 4(2, In every country, the use of the radio s"ectrum is re"$lated by some organisations. %his is the F%% for (orth America and the E'! for 5uro"e. %hese regulators define the allocation of each radio fre&uency bandwidth / for %A and radio broadcasting, for the telecommunication o"erators, for the army... 'sually, to use a fre&uency band, you must negotiate with these bodies, register your architecture and buy the right to use the fre&uency. %hese organisations, aware of the "ros"ects of local radio communications for individual users, have allocated some s"ecific fre&uency bands to be used in a more flexible way. %he oldest and most commonly used ones are located at B<< M@, and 3.6 ?@, and called the -.M #ands (ndustrial# !cientific and /edical). %he main characteristic of these bands is that they are $nlicensed, this means that the user is free to use them without having to register or to "ay anything (a"art from the radio hardware). 7f course, to avoid abuses, these organisations have im"osed a set of rules for these fre&uency bands and only the "roducts certified to conform to those rules are allowed to emit in the bands. %hese rules s"ecify at least the maximum "ower transmitted in the band and the out of band emissions (to not "ollute ad4acent bands). %he IM bands rules s"ecify as well that .%read .%ectr$m has to be used (either 0irect !equence or Frequency 1opping, see chapter 2,-), and how the channels are defined, to allow the "eaceful cohabitation of different systems (that's the theory). %he "read "ectrum rules mandate 0irect !equence systems must s"read their signal at least == times, and that Frequency 1opping systems stay on a channel a maximum of <.6 s and use CD channels at minimum in each E< s "eriod. *ut, don't trust me, chec$ the exact wording of the rules... %hese rules may vary de"ending on the country / the >## allocates both the B<< M@, and 3.6 ?@, band with = 0 maximum "ower, whereas the 5%I allocates only the 3.6 ?@, band with =<< m0 maximum "ower (B<< M@, is used for ?M cell "hones in 5uro"e). %he 3.6 ?@, band is available worldwide and the regulations are mostly com"atible between the different authorities (usually ;< M@, of bandwidth between 3.6 ?@, and 3.6; ?@,). %he main exce"tion is Fa"an which has some additional constraints. %he "read "ectrum rules originally allowed around 3 Mb+s maximum bit rate (both >@ and .), but the .irect e&uence "eo"le managed to find a loo"hole and now offer == Mb+s systems (see chapter 2,3,-). *ecause these bands are 2free2, they may be heavily %oll$ted by other unlicensed systems. %he 3.6 ?@, band also suffers from the microwave oven radiations (this ex"lains why it was given for free). !lease note that the regulation for unlicensed bands is &uite different from the bands reserved for radio amateurs (@AM). @AM "eo"le are not ha""y because their regulations are much more strict (they have to "ass an examination including morse code and follow stricter eti&uette) and the bandwidth available to them much more scarce. 4.2 5 4(2 fre/$ency #ands +(i%erLan and 5N-- #and, %he D ?@, unlicensed bands are another very com"licated story. 5%I was the first to o"en the D ?@, band, and so far, the D.3 ?@, band is dedicated to (i%erLan (see chapter 4,-), and the D.6 ?@, band reserved for (i%erLan -- (alias *)A(, see chapter 4,2). As they have done for 5!/ and 0E%', only systems that fully conform to those standards (!hy and MA#) may o"erate in the band. In the tates, the >## has allocated the band between D.3 and D.; ?@, (5N-- #and) with some very liberal rules (no s"read "ectrum mandated, no channels allocated). %o limit systems, they have introduced com"licated "ower rules, ma$ing the use of around 3< M@, bandwidth o"timal (system using less bandwidth can transmit less "ower, system using more bandwidth don't get more "ower), and divided the band in E chun$s, for low "ower systems (D.3 ?@,), medium "ower (D.6 ?@,) and high "ower (D.G ?@,). ome "eo"le have tried to come u" with some 2eti&uette2 for the '(II band (stricter set of rules) but they couldn't accommodate the conflicting re&uirement of all "arties. In the D ?@, band, because of the availability of more bandwidth, higher s"eed are "ossible (=< to 6< Mb+s). *ut, o"erating in a higher fre&uency band increases the noise level, obstacles and walls are more o"a&ue to transmissions (see chapter 2,6,2), and a higher bit rate re&uire more () (ignal (oise )atio - see chapter 2,4,2), which means a reduced range com"ared to 3.6 ?@H "roducts, which is bad news. In summary, in 5uro"e it's @i"er1an or nothing. In the 'A, the low "ower chun$ of the '(II band (D.3 ?@,) is li$ely to be used by ;<3.== at D ?@, (see chapter 4,.) and @i"er1an, and "eo"le are unli$ely to "ro"ose yet another standard. %he high "ower chun$ will be used by wireless distribution systems, and both ty"e of system will fight for the medium "ower chun$... 4.3 .%read .%ectr$m techni/$es .%read s%ectr$m is a techni&ue (mainly "ioneered by the army) trading bandwidth for reliability. %he goal is to use more bandwidth than the system really needs for transmission to reduce the im"act of localised interferences (bad fre&uencies) on the system. "read s"ectrum, as it "revents one system to use the full bandwidth ca"acity, also force inde"endant systems to share the bandwidth (in a mostly fair way). In the 3.6 ?@, band, the regulation s"ecifies that systems have to use one of the two main s"read s"ectrum techni&ue / 0irect !equence or Frequency 1opping. 0hich one is better ? %his is the main technical war between the radio 1A( vendors. 5verybody, of course, argue that its own technology is better. >or now, no one has come with some decisive arguments about the com"arative "erformance and robustness of these two technologies (estimating "erformance of radio systems is a tric$y 4ob). 7f course, com"aring "roducts doesn't ma$e sense because the "erformance of a system de"end on many other com"onents (the MA# "rotocol, the signalling rate), the o"timisation chosen ("erformance versus reliability versus cost) and the actual im"lementation (hum, hum...). 4.3.1 *irect .e/$ence %he "rinci"le of *irect .e/$ence is to spread the signal on a larger band by multi"lexing it with a signature (the code), to minimise localised interference and bac$ground noise. %he system wor$s over a fixed large channel. %o s"read the signal, each bit of the "ac$et to transmit is sur-modulated by a code (a fast re"etitive "attern). In the receiver, the original signal is recovered by receiving the whole s"read channel (averaging effect) and demodulating by the same code ("rocessing gain). >or a 3 Mb+s signalling rate modulated by a == chi"s code (li$e the 0avelan), the result is a signal s"read over 33 M@, of bandwidth. Any narrowband interferer, because it uses only a small "art of the total bandwidth used by the system, will a""ear much wea$er to the .irect e&uence system (I thin$ it will be much clearer if you loo$ at the "icture below). Moreover, the demodulator use the same code as the transmitter to match the received signal, which decrease further signals not modulated by the code (this is called the "rocessing gain of the code, == chi"s as used in ;<3.== gives in theory a =< d* "rocessing gain). 0irect !equence : 7riginal signal !pread signal 0ecoded signal .irect e&uence is also the "rinci"le used by %0/" (#ode .ivision Multi"le Access - one of the cellular "hone techni&ue), but in #.MA each individual "hone channel is given a different code on the same fre&uency. *y having each channel having a orthogonal code and the same received "ower (so, using "ower control), it is "ossible to recover every #.MA channel using its code. %he only limit of the scheme is that the noise is "ro"ortional of the number of channels (so the degradation with increased ca"acity is graceful). %he configuration also needs to be a star to"ology (to use "ower control), which doesn't suit well 0ireless 1A(. %he s"reading with the code "roduces a faster modulation, therefore a . modem is &uite com"licated (it usually re&uire faster circuits and a .! or e&uivalent logic for the s"reading). 7ne the other hand, the fact of having one single fixed channel (as o""osed to >re&uency @o""ing) eases the tas$ of the higher layers (MA#). *ecause it uses a large channel, a .irect e&uence system has only a few channels available in the bandwidth (E for the Wavelan - on different fre&uencies). %hose channels are totally se"arate (they don't generate interferences on each other). .irect e&uence also offers the "ossibility to use "artially overla""ing channels for systems in ad4acent areas, increasing slightly the number of channels. *ut this last solution tends to increase the noise and decrease the "erformance of the system, because all those systems usually o"erate with the same code (and not one code "er fre&uency). 4.3.2 6re/$ency (o%%in" 6re/$ency (o%%in" uses a set of narrow channels and wal$ through all of them in se&uence. >or exam"le, the 3.6 ?@, IM band is divided in CB channels of = M@,. !eriodically (every 3< to 6<< ms usually), the system hop to a new channel, following a "redetermined cyclic hopping pattern. %he system avoids interferences by never staying on the same channel / if a channel is bad, the system might not be able to use it and 4ust waits for the next good channel. As the "attern ma$es the whole networ$ ho" through all the bandwidth available, the system average the effect of bad channels over the time. %his is where >re&uency @o""ing has a slight advantage over .irect e&uence / in the very s"ecific case of strong narrow-band interferer "resent in the band, >re&uency @o""ing loose some ho"s but will manage to get some ho"s on good fre&uencies. 7n the other hand, if the noise is stronger than the received signal, there is not much that the .irect e&uence node can do. *ut, for most interferers at common "ower levels, it's not totally clear which will give the highest "erformance (it de"ends). Frequency 1opping : 7n the other hand, >re&uency @o""ing introduces more com"lications at the MA# level / scanning to find the networ$ at the initialisation (a moving target), $ee"ing the synchronisation of the nodes, managing the ho"s. %his com"lexity of the MA# has a "rice in term of "erformance, and the >re&uency @o""ing mechanism has some overhead. %here is management overhead to manage the synchronisation, and there is some dead time in the transmission when the system ho". In theory, this can be $e"t to a minimum. Also, the >re&uency @o""ing system have to include a "rocess called whitening, to conform to radio transmission constraints, inserting some regular stuff bits in each "ac$ets (to avoid long strings of < or =), adding more overhead (on the other a .irect e&uence signal is withened by the .irect e&uence "rocess). %he >re&uency @o""ing techni&ue can accommodate many more inde"endent systems collocated in the same area than the .irect e&uence techni&ue by using different ho""ing "attern (u" to =D for the 8ange9an.). 7n the other hand, the different ho""ing "atterns of >re&uency @o""ing will 2collide2 on the same (or ad4acent) fre&uency from time to time. %he collisions of the >re&uency @o""ing "atterns may reduce the through"ut significantly / the systems 2colliding2 on the same (or an ad4acent) fre&uency will have to share the bandwidth between them (see discussions on aggregate through"ut in chapter +,2,4). 4.3.3 Com%arison... In term of com"lexity, the .irect e&uence modem is more com"licated than the >re&uency @o""ing one, and the .irect e&uence has a sim"ler MA# "rotocol. 0ith the increasing integration of digital hardware, it doesn't cost much more to im"lement the s"ecific MA# functionalities re&uired for the >re&uency @o""ing system, and as the "rice of the modem is a big "ortion of a radio 1A( and doesn't follow the same cost reduction trends, >re&uency @o""ing systems will tend to be chea"er. In term of bandwidth sharing, the two technologies "erform really differently. %he same is true in term of resistance to interferences (it de"end on the strength and "attern of the interferer). .irect e&uence systems tend also to have a lower overhead on the air. In summary, most vendors are going to >re&uency @o""ing because of the lower cost and try to convince "eo"le that it is better, and vendors having heavily invested in .irect e&uence try to "ush their raw "erformance advantage (es"ecially now with ;<3.== @), see chapter 4,.), so it is still a $ind of religion war. 4.4 *iversity *iversity is a generic conce"t of introducing redundancy in the system to overcome noise and to increase the reliability of the system. >or exam"le, spread spectrum is a ty"e of fre&uency diversity, using more bandwidth than necessary to avoid bad "arts of the s"ectrum. 8etransmission is a very usual tem"oral diversity. FE% (>orward 5rror #orrection) is another $ind of tem"oral diversity. Aery often, 2diversity2 is associated with antenna diversity only. Antenna diversity is only one form of diversity (a s"acial diversity). Antenna diversity means that the radio device has two (or more) antennas. %he transmission conditions on the channel vary a lot over the time. %he channel tends to fade in and fade out (see chapter 2,6,:), so the device has moment of good rece"tion and moment of bad rece"tion. *ut, these conditions are also de"endant on the s"acial "osition. *y having two antennas, even &uite close (a few cm), the condition at each antenna is very often totally different. 7ne antenna may give a "oor signal and the other a good one, and a few ms later it might be the reverse. o, before receiving each "ac$et, the receiver chooses the best antenna of the two by com"aring the signal strengths, and so can avoid most of the fade out "eriods. 4.5 *irectional antennas Most wireless 1A(s use omnidirectional antennas, but may offer directional antennas in o"tion. Instead of receiving in every directions, the directional antenna favour rece"tion in a more or less narrow angle. %he narrower the angle is, the higher the gain is (and the range), because you get rid of more unwanted emissions and bac$ground noise in the other directions. 0ith directional antennas, it is &uite common to have a few $ilometres of range in line of sight with "roducts in the IM band. %he first "roblem is that you must of course "oint each antenna towards the node you intend to communicate with (de"ending on the angle this needs to be more or less "recise). %he second "roblem is that very directional antennas tend to be &uite big. %his is why directional antennas are only suited for fixed "oint to "oint lin$s ("roducts li$e ireless !rid"es). >or most networ$s where nodes need to tal$ to different other nodes in different directions and might need to move, omnidirectional antennas are much more "ractical. .ectored antennas are very similar to directional antennas, and heavily used in cellular "hone base stations. A set of wide angle directional antenna are assembled on a vertical "ole, each one covering one "ortion of the hori,on (a sector, for exam"le E antennas =3< degrees wide). 0hen tal$ing to a s"ecific node, the base station 4ust select the sector of the sectored antenna that cover this node, giving the benefit of directionality without sacrificing the coverage. !eo"le are also investigating #eam formin" antennas. %his is an ada"tive directional antenna, using a set of unidirectional antennas and interferometry to enhance the signal. *asically, by adding all the signal of the different antennas with s"ecific offset (to com"ensate "ro"agation delay), it is "ossible to aim the system towards a s"ecific direction and have the same benefit as directional antenna. As this system is ada"tive and dynamic, it could be used for 0ireless 1A(s 4.& 7an"e iss$es %he %ro%a"ation of radio transmissions is influenced by many factors. 0alls and floors tend to decrease and reflect the signal, and bac$ground noise ma$es it more difficult to demodulate. In a ty"ical environment, all the shadows due to obstacles and reflections on the walls create a very un"redictable &uality of transmission for each s"ecific location. %he channel &uality also vary &uite a lot over the time (fading, see chapter 2,6,:) because the environment is not static. *ecause of the way radio transmissions are affected by the environment in such a com"lex way, it is &uite difficult to "redict the com"ortment of the system and to define a ran"e. :ou will have some good, fair and bad area+"eriod, the closer the two devices are the more li$ely they are to be in a good one. Most vendors attem"t to define a range for their "roducts, which is the average maximum distance in usual o"erating conditions between two nodes (diameter of a cell - radio neighbourhood). ome even give different ranges for different ty"ical environments. >or exam"le / o"en environment (no obstacles), semi-o"en (cubicles) and closed (real walls). *ut there is no standard and common o"erating "rocedure to measure a range (exce"t in free s"ace, but this is useless), so we can't really com"are the different "roducts from the ranges as indicated in their data-sheets, and you must ta$e these values with a bit of caution. If you want to com"are "roducts in term of range "erformance, you must loo$ closely at the transmitted power and sensitivity values. %hese are some measurable characteristics of the hardware which indicate the "erformance of the "roduct in that res"ect. In fact, I would also recommend to do some benchmar$ of different "roducts in your own environment to get a better idea of what coverage you can ex"ect. 4.&.1 Transmitted %ower %he transmitted %ower is the strength of the emissions measured in 0atts (or milli0atts). 0e have already seen that the regulations limit this "ower (see chapter 2,:). !roducts having a high transmit "ower will also be li$ely to drain the batteries faster. *ut, having a high transmit "ower will hel" to emit signals stronger than the interferers in the band (and other systems). @aving a strong transmitted "ower has some drawbac$ for frequency reuse. %his means that if you want to "ut many different networ$s in areas close to each other, they will tend to "ollute each other. 0ith less transmitted "ower you can ma$e smaller cells. %his is why some "roduct may allow to select different transmitted "owers. 4.&.2 .ensitivity %he sensitivity is the measure of the wea$est signal that may be reliably heard on the channel by the receiver (it is able to read the bits from the antenna with a low error "robability). %his indicates the "erformance of the receiver, and the lower the value the better the hardware (higher in absolute value). %he figure is given in d*m, the magic formula to transform "ower in 0atts to d*m is / $ dBm ; -< = :<,log($ W). 'sual values are around -;< d*m (the lowest, the better, for exam"le -B< d*m is better). 7ne "roblem is that all manufacturer and standards use the same reference to define sensitivity. ;<3.== s"ecify the sensitivity as the "oint when the system suffer from E I of "ac$ets losses (for "ac$ets of 6<< *ytes in a ?aussian channel). ome "roducts use D< I "ac$et losses as the definition of sensitivity, which of course gives a better number. %he use of a ?aussian channel also gives better numbers (the use of a )ayleigh >ading channel with antenna diversity would give results a""roximately C d* worse). 4.&.3 Atten$ation Jnowing those two values, you may calculate the maximum "ossible atten$ation of the "ac$ets (this is the difference between the two values, in d*). %he larger the maximum "ossible attenuation, the larger the range. >or a =<< m0 system with a -;< d*m sensitivity, we have =<< d* maximum attenuation. %he attenuation is the decrease of signal strength between the transmitter and the receiver. In the air, the attenuation is sim"ly "ro"ortional to the s&uare of the distance. If you $now exactly the com"osition of the signal "aths between the two nodes (distance in the air, ty"e of obstacles, reflections...), you may calculate the attenuation. *ut usually it is &uite tric$y to determine the attenuation as a function of the distance, es"ecially that the signal may be the com"osite from different "ro"agation "aths (see chapter 2,6,2). Moreover, the variation in the environment ma$e the attenuation change over the time (see chapter 2,6,:). *ecause of this non straightforward relationshi", $nowing the maximum "ossible attenuation won't give you the maximum range, but 4ust a feeling. %he only safe thing is that "roducts with a greater maximum "ossible attenuation are very li$ely to have a larger range. $ropagation and 8ange : 4.&.4 .i"nal to noise ratio +.N7, In the case of multirate systems, I've been tal$ing of .i"nal to Noise ratio (()). %he sensitivity is in fact closely lin$ed to the minimum () of the modem. %he () defines the difference of "ower in the receiver between a valid signal and a noise. %o be able to decode successfully the received signal, the receiver needs a minimum () (i.e. the signal not too much "olluted by the noise). %his minimum () de"ends on the &uality of the receiver hardware and the modulation chosen (see chapter 2,3,: on multi rate systems). o, the lin$ between sensitivity and minimum () is &uite obvious. If you add the minimum () to the bac$ground noise in the receiver (hardware noise and bac$ground noise on the channel), you will find the sensitivity. o, having a low sensitivity means also a low minimum (), so the ability to receive reliably "ac$ets with "otentially higher interference strength, which ex"lain why the sensitivity is such an im"ortant "erformance characteristic. 4.) Mod$lations %he main 4ob of the radio modem is to transform bits into modulations of the radio waves, but there is many way to do that. Most systems use a carrier (a base fre&uency) and modulate it. %he sim"lest way is to modulate the strength of the signal (Am"litude Modulation), but as the attenuation of the channel is usually not constant (see chapter 2,4,-), this lead to "oor "erformance. Most modern systems modulate either the fre&uency of the signal or the "hase of the signal (fre&uency offset), which gives much greater "erformance. 4.).1 M$lti8rate systems If you want a better through"ut, the most sim"le way is to use more bandwidth. %he "roblem is that the IM s"read s"ectrum regulations limits the amount of bandwidth usable (= M@, channels for >re&uency @o""ing). Also, in most hardware the filters used to recover the signal are fixed, so the channel width is fixed. %his limit the rate of symbols that you can use (= Mbauds for >re&uency @o""ing). o, how could some >re&uency @o""ing systems offer E Mb+s in = M@, channels ? %he use of more com%le9 mod$lation schemes allows to overcome this limitation. >or exam"le, the standard 3>J allows to "ut = bit "er symbol, whereas 6>J allows 3 bits "er symbols, doubling the signalling rate. 7f course, there is a drawbac$ / a more com"lex modulation scheme is less robust and will re&uire a higher received ignal to (oise )atio to wor$ (() - see chapter 2,4,2). 0hen going from 3>J to 6>J, each time the receiver reads a symbol, instead of having to distinguish two fairly se"arated values, now it has to distinguish 6 closer to each other (see chapter 2,3,.). More com"lex modulations stuff even more values in the same s"ace, but then the slightest "erturbation of the signal (noises) will ma$e the receiver reads the wrong value for the symbol. o, we have the choice between a high s"eed modulation which re&uires strong received signal and a slower modulation which wor$s even on wea$ signals. In other words, the higher the signalling rate, the shorter the range. *ecause users want both range and s"eed, some vendors have build some systems using multi"le levels of modulations, changing automatically from the fast modulation to the robust one de"ending on the channel conditions (when a "ac$et fail, the rate is automatically reduced). %his introduces a bit of overhead and com"lexity, but the system offer a much better "erformance characteristic (range or s"eed). 4.).2 26.: and 46.: 26.: (>re&uency hift Jeying) is the sim"lest form of fre&uency modulation. *asically, the system use two different fre&uencies for the values < and = of each bit. >or exam"le, if B is the base fre&uency (the carrier) and d the carrier deviation, each time the system want to transmit a < it creates a waveform of fre&uency B>d (a symbol), and each time it want to transmit a = it creates a waveform of fre&uency B=d. %he receiver 4ust need to measure the deviation of the signal to the reference fre&uency B to $now which value of the bit was transmitted. Frequency /odulation (.F!?) : Measuring this deviation is not easy, because each symbol is very short in time / the transmitter change it for every bit to transmit at the s"eed given by the baudrate. %he receiver needs of course to $now when the bits are transmitted, which re&uire timing synchronisation on the received signal. %he carrier deviation has to be chosen carefully to enable enough differentiation between the two symbols but to have the signal generated fitting in the band allocated to it (usually around one hundred $@, for a = M@, channel at 3.6 ?@,). As mentioned above, it is "ossible to "ut more than one bit "er symbol (see chapter 2,3,:), li$e using 46.:. 6>J use 6 different symbols having 6 different carrier deviation, B=:(.d# B>:(.d# B=-(.d and B>-(.d, each symbol is ma""ed to a combination of two bits (<<, <=, =<, ==). (ote that the difference in fre&uency between each symbol for 6>J is smaller than for 3>J, to allow the signal to fit in roughly the same channel width. *etween each symbol, the difference is only d for 3>J, instead of .d for 6>J, which ex"lains why 6>J is more sensitive and re&uires a better () (see chapter 2,4,2). 4.).3 ;12.11 (7 +11 M#<s, 0hen ;<3.== was eventually released, = and 3 Mb+s was no longer considered as decent s"eed for 0ireless 1A( and "eo"le were already tal$ing of using the D ?@, band for higher through"ut (@i"er1an and ;<3.== at D ?@,). @owever, the migration from 3.6 ?@, to D ?@, re&uires to change all nodes and doesn't "rovide bac$ward com"atibility (it's mot the same fre&uency band, so a new modem is necessary). %herefore, "eo"le "roducing 3.6 ?@, "roducts tried to find way to extend the life of their technology (mostly @arris and 1ucent). %hey cheated with the "read "ectrum rules, and got away with it, enabling them to offer D and == Mb+s systems. *asically, a . system generate signal which occu"y around 33 M@, of bandwidth. %hey designed their == Mb+s system to generate signal similar to a standard . system. %hen, they went to the ># and claimed that as their new system was generating the same ty"e of signal as a . system, it's im"act on other systems in the band was the same, so it should be authorised as well. After a bit of negociation, the >## did acce"t this extension of the rule. (ote that some >@ vendors also tried to get D M@, >@ channels in the 3.6 ?@, band but failed to obtain it. 9ucent came u" with the sim"lest solution, !!M (!ulse !osition Modulation), which is included in their 2%urbo2 line of "roducts, offering D and =< Mb+s. !!M sim"ly shift the code used in the . modem, each "osition can encode some more bits. !!M is sim"le, chea", but low "erformance. 1arris tried M*7J (M-ary *i-7rthogonal Jeying), offering D.D Mb+s and == Mb+s, which is a more com"lex modulation than !!M, so more ex"ensive and more robust. %he signal "roduced by the transmitter is also less similar to a . signal. %hey both went bac$ to the ;<3.== grou", but neither wanted to ado"t the system of the other. o, they settled down on yet another modulation, CC: (#om"lementary #ode Jeying), which eventually got ado"ted for the ;<3.== @) standard and a""roved by the >##. ##J is the most com"lex of the E modulations, offering better "erformance, but higher cost, and signals even less similar to the original . signals. ;12.11 (7 offer == and D.D Mb+s rate (using the ##J modulation) and is bac$ward com"atible with original ;<3.== . systems. @owever, the higher bit rate re&uire a higher (), which reduce the range significantly. (ote as well that because of bac$ward com"atibility most of the underlying "rotocol is still designed for the = Mb+s standard (headers and management frames are = Mb+s, contention window si,e is still based on = Mb+s systems), which mean that at higher rate the overhead of the system is much higher. 4.).4 =6*M !eo"le building high s"eed system li$e 1iper9an were com"laining that adding to their "roducts an 5&ualiser necessary to combat delay s"read (see chapter 2,6,2) was a ma4or cost. o, they invented a new techni&ue to get similar or better "erformance at lower cost, called =6*M (7rthogonal >re&uency .ivision Multi"lex). 'sing e&ualisation is a "ost-"rocessing techni&ue, which tries to overcome delay s"read by brute force. 7>.M is a "re-"rocessing techni&ue, where the signal transmitted on the band is "re"ared in such a way that the im"act of delay s"read is reduced. .elay s"read is damaging because the symbol time is very short, so 7>.M will only use large symbol time. @owever, by increasing the symbol time we reduce the bit-rate. %o overcome this constraint, 7>.M transmit the symbols no longer serially but in "arallel K %his way, we have very high bit rate with large symbol time. 7>.M use a set of subcarrier fre&uencies, the fre&uencies being orthogonal. 5ach subcarrier is modulated individually, the bit rate and signal strength of each subcarrier can be ada"ted to get maximum "erformance of the system (we "ut more bits on the good subcarriers and less on the bad ones). %hen, the system s"lits the bits to transmit between the subcarriers, each subcarrier is modulated and then combined to "roduce the transmitted signal (using a >ast >ourrier %ransform). %he main drawbac$ of 7>.M is that it re&uire a greater fre&uency accuracy (we traded timing accuracy to fre&uency accuracy). As the 7>.M signal contains many subcarrier very close to each other in fre&uency, the system must be very accurate to match all of them. %he first use of 7>.M was in the @i"er1an II standard (see chapter 4,2), but since ;<3.== at D ?@, has ada"ted a very similar modulation (see chapter 4,.). 4.; -nterferences and noises In the "revious section we have examined what does affect the range "erformance of a system. 'nfortunately, other "henomenon on the radio waves affect the "erformance of a system (even if they may not reduce the range), and all $ind of interferences and bac$ground radio noises will im"act the system. 4.;.1 6adin" 6adin" defines all the tem"oral variations of the signal attenuation due to its "ro"agation in a real environment li$e an office or a house. %he radio signal interact in various way with the environment (see chapter 2,4 and chapter 2,6,2), so vary a lot with the environment configuration. Moving a few centimetres can ma$e a big different in signal &uality (see chapter 2,2). Moreover, the environment is not static, humans are moving, things are moving, and the nodes may be moving themselves. All these small movements may "roduce im"ortant variations in time in the attenuation of the signal. >or exam"le the "ro"agation between two nodes may alternate from "oor to good on a "ac$et basis. !eo"le usually describe the "attern of attenuation with a 8ayleigh fading model (case where there is no line of sight) or a 8icean model (line of sight L additional "aths). %he main conse&uence is that transmission errors on the channel tend to be clustered and are anything but following a ?aussian distribution. >ading cause transmissions errors that need to be overcome by the system. 7f course, recovering from these error will add overhead. %he greater the range the greater will be the im"act of the fading and the system will degrade with higher range until it loose communication. %he most efficient techni&ue to overcome the effect of fading is antenna diversity (see chapter 2,2). 4.;.2 Microwave oven and other interferers As we have mentioned earlier, 0ireless 1A(s tend to be im"lemented in the unlicensed bands, which adds more constraints. %he vast ma4ority of the 0ireless systems (cellular "hone, telecoms, aviation, military...) are designed for dedicated radio bands, so benefit from an absence of interferers in the band they are using. %his is not the case for 0ireless 1A(s, they have to co"e with the emissions of other systems. %he de"loyment of unlicensed systems is totally uncoordinated. o, other radio systems o"erating in the area do create interferences. %his includes other 0ireless 1A(s, cordless "hones (B<< M@, and now 3.6 ?@,) and other communication systems. %he 3.6 ?@, band is also the fre&uency where water molecules resonate, so is used for microwave oven. .omestic microwave oven (the one used to heat food in the $itchen) generates a limited amount of interferences, the various regulations limit the "ower of the radiation they can lea$ to less than =0, they emit "eriodic short bursts and "ollute only a limited "ortion of the 3.6 ?@, band. #ommercial microwave ovens (for exam"le a huge dryer in a "a"er factory) generate much more interferences. %he result of interferences is that "ac$ets collide with interference signal and can be received corru"ted. If the () between the "ac$et and the interferer is high enough (see chapter 2,4,2), the receiver can 2ca"ture2 the "ac$et, otherwise it is corru"ted. Most 0ireless 1A(s co"e very well with interferers, in fact usually much better than cordless "hones, but interferences do reduce "erformance. 4.;.3 6>C +6orward >rror Correction, %he most obvious way to overcome transmission errors is to use 6>C. >5# goes further than #)# which 4ust detects errors, >5# adds in every transmission some additional redundancy bits. .e"ending on the number of bits added and the >5# code used (the strength of the code), this allows to re"air a certain number of errors in the transmission. >5# has been used with success in many systems, and the T$r#o Codes are "robably the most efficient one / they are very close to the hannon limit in a ?aussian channel. In other world, if the error follow ?aussian distribution (and the "arameters are $nown), there is a turbo code nearly o"timal giving the highest through"ut in this channel. 'nfortunately for us, errors on a radio channel (for 0ireless 1A() follow a fading model and are clustered. %his means that most of the time the signal is strong, so the "ac$et is error free, but when the signal is wea$ the "ac$et contains lots of error. Interferences has roughly the same effect as fading, either the "ac$et is collision free so intact, or when a collision occur most of the "ac$et is corru"ted. %o correct all those errors in corru"ted "ac$ets, it would re&uire a very strong >5# code. 'nfortunately, this code would add lots of redundancy bits, so lots of overhead. A normal >5# code would add less overhead, but be useless with the correct "ac$ets and inefficient with the highly corru"ted "ac$ets. o, for 0ireless 1A(s, using >5# tends to be ineffective against fading and interferers, and no 0ireless 1A( do im"lement >5#. A much better solution is to use retransmissions (4ust retransmit the original "ac$et in case of errors - some form of "ac$et scheduling and retransmission has been "roven to be nearly o"timal in )ayleigh fading channels). %his is usually im"lemented at the MA# level (see chapter +,.,:). @owever, in a few case >5# might be needed in 0ireless 1A(s. ome receivers, either due to "oor im"lementation or s"ecific design (li$e having an 5&ualiser), generate random (?aussian) errors, and might benefit from >5#. 4.;.4 M$lti%ath and delay s%read )adio waves reflect or diffract on obstacles, and are attenuated differently by different materials. %his is exactly li$e light, which goes through glass, is reflected by mirrors and sto" by most obstacles, exce"t that much more materials are trans"arent or reflector to radio than to light. In a real environment li$e an office or a house, there is a lot of surface reflecting radio (walls, ceilings, metal), being semi-trans"arent to radio (walls, ceilings, humans) or o"a&ue to radio (metal). %his gives trouble estimating the range of the system (see chapter 2,4). %his also mean that the signal received at a node may come from different directions (de"ending on reflections on the environment) with different strength (de"ending on attenuations), and the receiver sees only the combinations of all these reflections. %his "henomenon is called m$lti%ath. Most of the time, multi"ath is good, because the addition of all the reflections of the signal increase its strength. %he main effect of multi"ath is that range is very difficult to evaluate (see chapter 2,4,-) and the receiver ex"eriences fading (see chapter 2,6,:). *ut, the main "roblem of multi"ath is that it creates delay s%read. .e"ending on the number of reflections and the "ro"agation s"eed in different signals, all these signals don't arrive exactly at the same time at the receiver. It's li$e the 2echo2 you may hear in the mountains, the signal going directly will be faster than one reflecting twice on the walls. 7f course, as radio "ro"agate at the s"eed of light, those difference are very small (below the microsecond). *ut, when the bitrate of the system increases, those time differences becomes significant with regards to the symbol time (see chapter 2,3,.), to the "oint of creating destructive interferences (the current symbol will be corru"ted by the echo of the "revious symbols). *it rate lower than = Mb+s are relatively immune to delay s"read "roblems (the symbol time is = Ms and higher), but as the bit rate increase above = Mb+s the effect of delay s"read increases. It is considered that systems faster than D M+s should have some techni&ue to overcome delay s"read. /ultipath and 0elay !pread : %he main techni&ue to overcome delay s"read is using an >/$aliser. An e&ualiser is a big digital circuit that try to estimate the different com"onents of the signals. %he e&ualiser need to be trained ("ac$ets includes a s"ecific well $nown training se&uence) to determine what are the different "ath, their relative timings and strength. %hen, the e&ualiser se"arate the different com"onents of the signal and recalculate the signal removing the delay s"read. %he main disadvantage of 5&ualiser is that they are ex"ensive. )ecently, some standards are starting to use =6*M (see chapter 2,3,2), which is a clever modulation techni&ue minimising the im"act of delay s"read. 5 The MAC level +link layer, %his section of the document focus on the next layer u", the lin$ layer. %his mostly com"rise the MAC (Medium Access #ontrol) "rotocol. .ifferent MA# "rotocols and techni&ues are "resented. 5.1 Main channel access mechanisms %he main 4ob of the MA# "rotocol is to regulate the usage of the medium, and this is done through a channel access mechanism. A channel access mechanism is a way to divide the main resource between nodes, the radio channel, by regulating the use of it. It tells each node when it can transmit and when it is ex"ected to receive data. %he channel access mechanism is the core of the /"% protocol. In this section, we describe '0/"# %!/" and polling which are the E main classes of channel access mechanisms for radio. 5.1.1 T*MA In this cha"ter, we discuss %.MA as a channel access mechanism and not its a""lications and "rotocols based on it. T*MA (%ime .ivision Multi"lex Access) is very sim"le. A s"ecific node, the #ase station, has the res"onsibility to coordinate the nodes of the networ$. %he time on the channel is divided into time slots, which are generally of fixed si,e. 5ach node of the networ$ is allocated a certain number of slots where it can transmit. lots are usually organised in a frame, which is re"eated on a regular basis. %he base station s"ecify in the beacon (a management frame) the organisation of the frame. 5ach node 4ust needs to follow blindly the instruction of the base station. Aery often, the frame is organised as downlin$ (base station to node) and u"lin$ (node to base station) slots, and all the communications goes through the base station. A service slot allows a node to re&uest the allocation of a connection, by sending a connection re&uest message in it (see chapter +,.,2). In some standards, u"lin$ and downlin$ frames are one different fre&uencies, and the service slots might also be a se"arate channel. '0/" channel access mechanism : %.MA suits very well "hone a""lications, because those a""lication have very "redictable needs (fixed and identical bit rate). 5ach handset is allocated a downlin$ and a u"lin$ slot of a fixed si,e (the si,e of the voice data for the duration of the frame). %his is no sur"rise why %.MA is used into all cellular "hone standards (?M in 5uro"e, %.MA and !# in the 'A) and cordless "hone standards (.5#% in 5uro"e). %.MA is also very good to achieve low latency and guarantee of bandwidth (where #MA+#A is &uite bad). %.MA is not well suited for data networ$ing a""lications, because it is very strict and inflexible. I! is connectionless and generates bursty traffic which is very un"redictable by nature, while %.MA is connection oriented (so it has to suffer the overhead of creating connections for single I! "ac$ets). %.MA use fixed si,e "ac$ets and usually symmetrical lin$, which doesn't suit I! that well (variable si,e "ac$ets). %.MA is very much de"endant of the &uality of the fre&uency band. In a dedicated clean band, as it is the case for cellular "hone standard, %.MA is fine. *ut, because of it's inflexibility, and because it doesn't really ta$e care of what's ha""ening on the channel, %.MA can't co"e and ada"t to the bursty interference sources found in the unlicensed bands (unless a retry mechanism is "ut on to" of it). 5.1.2 C.MA<CA C.MA<CA (#arrier ense Multi"le Access+#ollision Avoidance) is the channel access mechanism used by most wireless 1A(s in the IM bands. A channel access mechanism is the "art of the protocol which s"ecifies how the node uses the medium / when to listen, when to transmit... %he basic "rinci"les of #MA+#A are listen before talk and contention. %his is an asynchronous message "assing mechanism (connectionless), delivering a best effort service, but no bandwidth and latency guarantee (you are still following ?). It's main advantages are that it is suited for networ$ "rotocols such as %#!+I!, ada"ts &uite well with the variable condition of traffic and is &uite robust against interferences. #MA+#A is fundamentally different from the channel access mechanism used by cellular "hone systems (see '0/" in chapter +,:,:). #MA+#A is derived from #MA+#. (#ollision .etection), which is the base of Ethernet. %he main difference is the collision avoidance / on a wire, the transceiver has the ability to listen while transmitting and so to detect collisions (with a wire all transmissions have a""roximately the same strength). *ut, even if a radio node could listen on the channel while transmitting, the strength of its own transmissions would mas$ all other signals on the air. o, the "rotocol can't directly detect collisions li$e with Ethernet and only tries to avoid them. %!/"(%" channel "ccess /echanisms : %he "rotocol starts by listening on the channel (this is called carrier sense), and if it is found to be idle, it sends the first "ac$et in the transmit &ueue. If it is busy (either another node transmission or interference), the node waits the end of the current transmission and then starts the contention (wait a random amount of time). 0hen its contention timer ex"ires, if the channel is still idle, the node sends the "ac$et. %he node having chosen the shortest contention delay wins and transmits its "ac$et. %he other nodes 4ust wait for the next contention (at the end of this "ac$et). *ecause the contention is a random number and done for every "ac$ets, each node is given an e&ual chance to access the channel (on average - it is statistic). As we have mentioned, we can't detect collisions on the radio, and because the radio needs time to switch from receive to transmit, this contention is usually slotted (a transmission may start only at the beginning of a slot / D< Ms in ;<3.== >@ and 3< Ms in ;<3.== .). %his ma$es the average contention delay larger, but reduces significantly the collisions (we can't totally avoid them). 5.1.3 'ollin" MAC 'ollin" is the third ma4or channel access mechanism, after '0/" and %!/"(%" (see chapter +,:,: and chapter +,:,. res"ectively - %here exist also %o$en )ing, but I guess that nobody would be cra,y enough to im"lement it on a radio lin$). %he most successful networ$ing standard using "olling is =<<vg (I555 ;<3.=3), but some wireless standard are also using it. >or exam"le, 6<.,:: offers a "olling channel access mechanism (!oint #oordination >unction) in addition to the #MA+#A one. !olling is in fact in between %.MA and #MA+#A. %he base station retains total control over the channel, but the frame content is no more fixed, allowing variable si,e "ac$ets to be sent. %he base station sends a s"ecific "ac$et (a "oll "ac$et) to trigger the transmission by the node. %he node 4ust wait to receive a "oll "ac$et, and u"on rece"tion sends what it has to transmit. !olling can be im"lemented as a connection oriented service (very much li$e %.MA, but with higher flexibility in "ac$et si,e) or connection less-service (asynchronous "ac$et based). %he base station can either "oll "ermanently all the nodes of the networ$ 4ust to chec$ if they have something to send (that is wor$able only with a very limited number of nodes), or the "rotocol use reservation slots (see chapter +,.,2) where each node can re&uest a connection or to transmit a "ac$et (de"ending is the MA# "rotocol is connection oriented or not). $olling channel "ccess /echanisms : In the case of =<<vg, the "olling mechanism doesn't use any bandwidth (it's done out of band through tones), leading to a very efficient use of the channel (over BG I user through"ut). >or ;<3.== and wireless 1A(, all the "olling "ac$ets have to be transmitted over the air, generating much more overhead. More recent system use reservation slots, which is more flexible but still re&uire significant overhead. As #MA+#A offers ad-hoc networ$ing (no need of a base station) and similar "erformance, it is usually "referred in most wireless 1A(s. >or exam"le, most ;<3.== vendors "refer to use the distributed mode (#MA+#A) over the coordinated mode ("olling). 5.1.4 7eservation %rotocols and ATM %he most interesting feature of "rotocols based on %.MA or !olling mechanism is that the *ase tation has absolute control of the traffic and can guarantee bandwidth and latency for a""lications that re&uire it. ce"tics might wonder what can be guaranteed anyway in an environment o"en to interferers and without de"loyment control (see chapter 2,:), but that's another to"ic of discussions. %he guarantee of bandwidth is essential for "eo"le de"loying 0ireless .istributions ystems (also called 1ast Mile .elivery ystems), li$e re"lacing the cable between your house and your I! with wireless. %hose "eo"le want to be able to restrict and segregate users and guarantee fairness. tandards such as @i"er1an II (*roadband )adio Access (etwor$ "ro4ect - see chapter 4,2) is aiming at those usages. %he basic idea is to "ut A%M (Asynchronous %ransfer Mode) over radio, as A%M im"lement all the Nuality 7f ervice features that they are dreaming off. %he networ$ is centrally managed (so uses %.MA or !olling mechanism with reservation slots), the base station im"lement a call admission control (acce"t or re4ect new A%M circuits) and scheduler ("rioritise and send A%M cells) to guarantee the &uality of service re&uested. 7n to" of the MA#, all the usual A%M layers are needed (virtual circuits, segmentation+reassembly, I! ada"tation...), as well as some s"ecific mobile features (to manage roaming). 'nfortunately, radio transmission has a lot of overhead (li$e large synchronisation field and headers) which is somewhat incom"atible with the small A%M cells. %he main benefit of A%M small cells is to allow very efficient switching, but this is not needed over radio. At the end of the day, 0A%M doesn't resemble at all to A%M O A%M uses individual channel for each node and is asynchronous, whereas 0A%M uses a shared medium and is totally synchronous. 5.2 MAC techni/$es 0e have described the main "rinci"le of #MA+#A (see chapter +,:,.), but most MA# "rotocols use additional techni&ues to im"rove the "erformance of #MA+#A. 5.2.1 MAC retransmissions As we have seen in the "revious cha"ter, the main "roblem of the %!/"(%" protocol is that the transmitter can't detect collisions on the medium. %here is also a higher error rate on the air than on a wire (see chapter 2,6), so a higher chance of "ac$ets being corru"ted. %#! doesn't li$e very much "ac$et losses at the /"% layer (see %#! and "ac$et losses "roblem - chapter +,2,+). *ecause of that, most MA# "rotocols also im"lement %ositive acknowled"ement and MAC level retransmissions to avoid losing "ac$ets on the air. %he "rinci"le is &uite sim"le / each time a node receives a "ac$et, it sends bac$ immediately a short message (an ac$) to the transmitter to indicate that it has successfully received the "ac$et without errors. If after sending a "ac$et the transmitter doesn't receive an ac$, it $nows that the "ac$et was lost, so it will retransmit the "ac$et (after contending again for the medium, li$e in 5thernet). Most MA# "rotocols use a sto" and go mechanism, they transmit the next "ac$et of the &ueue only if the current "ac$et has been "ro"erly ac$nowledged (no sliding window mechanism li$e in %#!). %he rationale is that it ma$es the "rotocol sim"ler, minimise latency and avoid desen&uencing "ac$ets (something that %#! doesn't li$e as well). /"% retransmissions in %!/"(%" : %he ac$s are 2embedded2 in the MA# "rotocol, so they are guaranteed not to collide (the contention starts after the ac$ - see figure). %hese ac$s are very different from the %#! ac$s, which wor$ at a different level (and on a different time frame). 7f course, broadcast and multicast "ac$ets are not ac$nowledged, so they are more li$ely to fail... If all modern 0ireless 1A( "rotocols im"lement this essential feature, some old "roducts may lac$ it. 0ireless 0A( "rotocols (li$e satellite lin$s) don't im"lement that either, because the round tri" delay in their case is so long that by the time they would receive the ac$ they could have sent another "ac$et. If your 0ireless 1A( doesn't im"lement MA# level retransmissions, all is not lost / students of *er$eley have created a "rotocol called snoop (see at ft"/++daedalus.cs.ber$eley.edu+"ub+snoo"+) which filters the %#! ac$s and retransmits the lost "ac$ets before %#! even notices that they are lost (this is still a lin$ level retransmission, but done 4ust over the MA#). 5.2.2 6ra"mentation %he radio medium has a higher error rate than a wire. 0e have ex"lained in the "revious cha"ter that it was why most "roducts were including MA# level retransmissions to avoid losing "ac$ets. MA# level retransmissions solve this "roblem, but is not really "erformant. If the "ac$et to transmit is long and contains only one error, the node needs to retransmit it entirely. If the error rate is significantly high, we could come to some situation were the "robability of error in large "ac$et is dangerously close to = (we can't fit a "ac$et between the bursts of errors due to fading or interferers), so we can't get "ac$et through. %his is why some "roducts use fra"mentation. >ragmentation is sending the big "ac$ets in small "ieces over the medium. 7f course, this adds some overhead, because it du"licates "ac$et headers in every fragments. 5ach fragment is individually chec$ed and retransmitted if necessary. %he first advantage is that in case of error, the node needs only to retransmit one small fragment, so it is faster. %he second advantage is that if the medium is very noisy, a small "ac$et has a higher "robability to get through without errors, so the node increases its chance of success in bad conditions. 5.2.3 7T.<CT. In the cha"ter about range (chapter 2,4), we have seen that the main effect of transmission on radio waves is the attenuation of the signal. *ecause of this attenuation, we have very commonly a "roblem of hidden nodes. %he hidden node "roblem comes from the fact that all nodes may not hear each other because the attenuation is too strong between them. *ecause transmissions are based on the carrier sense mechanism, those nodes ignore each other and may transmit at the same time. 'sually, this is a good thing because it allows frequency reuse (they are effectively in different cells). *ut, for a node "laced in between, these simultaneous transmissions have a com"arable strength and so collide (in its receiver). %his node could be im"ossible to reach because of these collisions. %he fundamental "roblem with carrier sense only is that the transmitter tries to estimate if the channel is free at the receiver with only local information. %he situation might be &uite different between those two locations. An sim"le and elegant solution to this "roblem ("ro"osed by !hil Jarn in his MA#A "rotocol for A9.3D) is to use 7T.<CT. ()e&uest %o end+#lear %o end). )%+#% is a handshaking / before sending a "ac$et, the transmitter sends a )% and wait for a #% from the receiver (see figure below). %he rece"tion of a #% indicates that the receiver is able to receive the )%, so the "ac$et (the channel is clear in its area). At the same time, every node in the range of the receiver hears the #% (even if it doesn't hear the )%), so understands that a transmission is going on. %he nodes hearing the #% are the nodes that could "otentially create collisions in the receiver (assuming a symmetric channel). *ecause these nodes may not hear the data transmission, the )% and #% messages contain the si,e of the ex"ected transmission (to $now how long the transmission will last). %his is the collision avoidance feature of the )%+#% mechanism (also called virtual carrier sense) / all nodes avoid accessing the channel after hearing the #% even if their carrier sense indicate that the medium is free. 8'!(%'! and hidden nodes in %!/"(%" : )%+#% has another advantage / it lowers the overhead of a collision on the medium (collisions are much shorter in time). If two nodes attem"t to transmit in the same slot of the contention window, their )% collide and they don't receive any #%, so they loose only a )%, whereas in the normal scenario they would have lost a whole "ac$et. *ecause the )%+#% handsha$ing adds a significant overhead, usually it is not used for small "ac$ets or lightly loaded networ$s. 5.2.4 7eservation and service slots 7ne of the main "roblem of %.MA and !olling "rotocol is for the base station to $now when the nodes want to transmit. In #MA+#A, each node sim"ly waits to win a contention, so this "roblem doesn't exist. @owever, %.MA and !olling usually re&uire a service slot or reservation slot mechanism. %he idea is to offer a "eriod of time where nodes can contend (com"ete) and send to the base station some information about their traffic re&uirements (a reservation re&uest "ac$et), this "eriod of time coming at regular interval (the remaining of the time, nodes 4ust obey the base station normally). %he base station feeds the reservation re&uests to its scheduling algorithm and decides the main frame structure (when each node will transmit). %his "eriod of time for sending reservation re&uests is either called service slot (if it is use for more "ur"ose li$e cell location and roaming) or reservation slot (if it is use only to re&uest a transmission or connection). If the MA# is connection oriented, the rate of new connection is low, so usually a single service slot is enough (see figure in chapter +,:,:). If the MA# is "ac$et oriented, the rate of re&uests is higher, so usually the "rotocol offer many reservation slots together (see chapter +,:,-). (odes use a sim"le "loha protocol in the slots / they transmit, and if it fail (collision with other re&uests or medium errors) they bac$off a random number of slots before retrying. !rotocols which use many different channels, such as cellular "hone, can even have a dedicated service channel se"arate from other transmissions, instead of multi"lexing service re&uests with the data traffic. 5.3 Network to%olo"y %he to"ology of 0ireless 1A( is very different from traditional 1A(s. %he connectivity is limited by the range, so we usually don't have com"lete coverage (some node may not see each other). %his brea$s some assum"tions of higher layers. %o overcome this, either the networ$ is divided in cells managed by an "ccess $oint, or the networ$ use /"% level forwarding. 5.3.1 Ad8hoc network Ad-hoc networ$ is the sim"lest form of 0ireless 1A( is a networ$ com"osed of a few nodes without any bridging or forwarding ca"ability. All nodes are e&ual and may 4oin or leave at any time, and have e&ual right to the medium. In fact, it's very much li$e an 5thernet, where you may add or remove node at discretion. %his is the $ind of radio networ$s de"loyed in homes of small offices. 7f course, for this to wor$ all nodes must be able to see all the other nodes of the networ$, to be able to establish communication with them. 0hen a nodes goes out of range, he 4ust loose connection with the rest of the ad-hoc networ$. 5ffectively, this is a single cell networ$. 7ne of the node of the ad-hoc networ$ may "rovide routing or "roxying to communicate to the rest of the wor$, but nodes are still confined to the area within that cell. 5.3.2 Access 'oints and 7oamin" 0ireless networ$s are sometime isolated networ$s (called ad-hoc), but most of the time they need to be connected to the rest of the world (and the Internet /-). %his is usually done through Access 'oints. In fact, an Access !oint is sim"ly a #rid"e, connected on one side to the radio networ$ and on the other side to Ethernet (usually), forwarding "ac$ets between the two networ$s. A bridge wor$s at the MA# level, 4ust loo$ing through the MA# headers to ma$e its decisions (filtering) and changing MA# headers according to the MA# "rotocol used. %his means that )etBeui and $* wor$ across the access "oint, and that the nodes connected to the radio must use the same '%$($ subnet as the 5thernet segment the access "oint is connected to. *ecause of the interactions with MA# level ac$nowledgement, most of the time bridging on 0ireless 1A( is not as sim"le and trans"arent as on 5thernet, and a s"ecific scheme is designed in the MA# "rotocol. 0hen a node sends a "ac$et, the source address must be his to "ro"erly receive the MA# level ac$ coming bac$ (and vice versa). In theory, if the MA# and the driver are carefully im"lemented it could be "ossible to su""ort trans"arently 5thernet bridges (li$e in a 1inux box), but most manufacturers don't bother (es"ecially that they want you to buy an Access !oint). 'sing Access !oints allows to divide the networ$ in cells. 5ach Access !oint is at the centre of a cell and is given a different channel (fre&uency, ho""ing "attern... - the goal is for each cell to interferer the least with the others). *y careful de"loyment of those Access !oint, it is "ossible to give networ$ access in all "arts of large areas. In fact, most radio access "oints "rovide more than this sim"le bridging functionality. Most of them "rovide access control (to "revent any unwanted radio node to access the networ$), roaming and out of range forwarding. %he use of the last two features re&uires that all the access "oints that are used to cover the desired area are connected on the same wired segment (I! subnet). 5ach node needs to register to one of the access "oint (to avoid confusion between the A!s), the nearest one, usually (in fact, more li$ely the one having the strongest signal, which might not be the nearest). If the node moves, it will automatically switch from one access "oint to another to retain its access to the wired networ$ (that is roamin"). If a node wants to communicate with a node which is not in its reach, its access "oint forwards the "ac$ets through the wired networ$ and via the access "oint where the destination is registered (that is o$t of ran"e forwardin"). A few systems use as well the access "oint as a networ$ central coordinator of the channel access mechanism (%.MA and "olling mode). %his is a bad idea, because it decreases the overall reliability and flexibility of the system / every node must be able to communicate at any time the access "oint in order to wor$, even if it wants to communicate with a close neighbour. "ccess $oints# roaming and radio /"% forwarding : 8oaming @ "ccess $oints 8adio /"% forwarding 5.3.3 7adio MAC forwardin" %he forwarding mechanism designed around "ccess $oints (see chapter +,-,.) re&uires a fixed wired infrastructure to lin$ the Access !oint. %his might be satisfactory for most usages, but is not ade&uate for ad-hoc networ$s. ome MA# "rotocol (such as @i"er1an - see chapter 4,-) "rovide a MAC level forwardin", where every node of the networ$ can be used to relay the message on the air to the destination. %he "rotocol doesn't rely any more on a fixed infrastructure, but on all the wireless nodes on the "ath. o, how do we found the o"timal "ath through the nodes to the correct destination ? %his forwarding mechanism use management message to "ro"agate networ$ changes and to"ology information, and from those messages nodes can com"ute the o"timal forwarding tables. (odes must im"lement the forwarding ca"ability and "ro"agate message based on those routing tables. In fact, each node of the networ$ acts as a ad-hoc wireless bridge. *roadcast and multicast messages are a bit of a "roblem (they have always been on bridging technologies) / all nodes 4ust re"eat them and the strategy is to flood the networ$ with them (that's the only way to ma$e sure they reach all "ossible destinations). ome access points also offer the "ossibility to be configured as ireless 7e%eaters, which "rovide the same $ind of radio forwarding but in a managed way. )adio MA# forwarding is elegant and interesting, but all the forwarding consume some more radio bandwidth, which is already limited to start with. 5.4 .ome thro$"h%$t considerations If the "hysical layer "eo"le are mostly tal$ing range and d*, MA# layer "eo"le are (or should be) concerned about the through"ut of the system. 5.4.1 !it8rate vers$s ma9im$m $ser thro$"h%$t 1i$e for wired "roducts, most radio 1A( vendors indicate only the #it8rate of their "roducts (also called signalling rate). >or exam"le, Ethernet is =< Mb+s, =<< Mb+s or = ?b+s, and most radio 1A( "roducts between <.D and E Mb+s (higher rate li$e =< Mb+s are slowly coming to the mar$et). %he signalling rate is the s"eed at which bits are transmitted over the medium, but, because of the many overheads of the "rotocols used to communicate, the user through"ut is usually less (note also that they use decimal multi"licators, so for them = Mb+s is =< G b+s K). %he 0ireless 1A(s "rotocols have usually a hi"her overhead than their wired counter"art (such as 5thernet). %his is due to different factors / %he first is the radio technology / radio receivers re&uire large synchronisation fields (receiver training, antenna selection...) O the radio itself is slow to react (switch from receive to transmit), so needs large slots in the contention window and between "ac$ets. %he second is the addition of the features necessary for the radio "rotocol which ma$es the "ac$et MA# headers larger (fields for networ$ id, encry"tion "arameters...) or introduces new management "ac$ets (synchronisation, authentication, access "oint registration). %he third is that some trade>offs are made to im"rove the reliability. >or exam"le, we might s"lit big "ac$ets into small inde"endent fragments to decrease the error "robability (see chapter +,.,. on fragmentation). Ac$s and )%+#% add also some overhead. @aving a slotted contention decreases the collisions but ma$es the average contention delay larger as well. 0hen you add all this, it starts to ma$e a significant difference. If in the case of 5thernet you may ho"e to reach ;<-BD I of the signalling rate, for most radio "roducts, des"ite being slower, the user through"ut is usually between D< and C< I of the signalling rate (or even less...). 5.4.2 M$ltirate system considerations Most vendors offer multirate systems (see chapter 2,3,:), the lower rate allowing a greater coverage and the higher rate allowing greater through"ut at lower range, and offer a mechanism for each node to ada"t the bit-rate de"ending on channel conditions. *asically, when "ac$ets start to fail, the node reduce the rate. 7f course, "eo"le are li$ely to benchmar$ nodes in relatively close "roximity (two nodes on the table), when the system will use the highest rate, but the real advantage of 0ireless 1A(s is usually given at higher range (in the garden, moving around), and in this case the system is li$ely to select the lower rate (and maybe suffer from "ac$et losses and retransmission due to range), so the "erformance will be less. @owever, those rate ada"tation schemes are not always the most clever. 0hen there is an interferer in the band, reducing the rate may increase marginally chances of "ac$ets to get through, but most of the time having longer transmission time 4ust increase the "robability of collision. In cases where there is lot's of contention (lot's of nodes with lot's of traffic), some "roducts do reduce the rate which doesn't hel" to reduce to congestion (I've seen that "ersonally). In those "articular cases, you may want to fix the rate yourself to the highest and disable the rate reduction feature. @aving a multi-rate system also im"act the overhead of the system, es"ecially at high rates. All the basic "art of the "rotocol (headers, management messages, contention) is designed for the slowest rate, so when going to higher rate their relative si,e increase (their duration remain the same while the "ayload duration decreases). >or exam"le, when sending the same =D<< * "ac$et at 6>J instead of 3>J with ;<3.==, the overhead of the contention window double, the overhead of the MA# level ac$nowledgement and )%+#% double and the overhead of the header increases by 3; I. I've heard that the overhead for ;<3.== @) at == Mb+s was significantly noticeable com"ared to = and 3 Mb+s s"eeds, and 1ucent claims that increasing the bit rate from 3 to =< Mb+s (1ucent turbo !!M . modulation), the effective through"ut (user level) is increased only by a factor E. 5.4.3 .hared thro$"h%$t vers$s individ$al thro$"h%$t In the "revious cha"ter, we have examined the overhead added by the "rotocol and tal$ed about the maximum user through"ut usable by the 0ireless 1A(. *ut, sometimes, even in a clear channel, the maximum node to node thro$"h%$t may be even less than that. %his is usually caused by im"lementation "roblems. %he most obvious is for exam"le a slow interface between the !# and the 0ireless device. A serial or "arallel interface is slower than an IA or !cmcia bus and may be a bottlenec$. %he second exam"le is devices im"lementing only one transmit buffer. %his saves some cost (memory, com"lexity), but, as the buffer may be either written by the driver or transmitted over the air but not both at the same time, this creates dead time over the air while the driver refills the buffer and reduces the available through"ut. %his was one of the "erformance gain between the first and the second generation of 5thernet cards in the old days. %he "rotocol might also "erforms better when many node are active than when only one of them transmits. >or exam"le, the contention window in #MA+#A (number of contention slots) im"act the "erformance O a larger contention window will decreases the collisions but when there is a few nodes, those will wait on average longer to access the channel (the common ;<3.== "arameters gives better "erformance for 3 active nodes than for =). A "olling "rotocol which uses a round robin scheduling mechanism (as$s each node in turn if it has a "ac$et to transmit) "erforms better is every node has something to send than only one node (in this case, between each "ac$et of this node the "rotocol has to "ool all the other nodes of the networ$ for nothing). 1astly, in the case of MA#s being connection oriented (%.MA and some im"lementation of "ooling), an individual node may not be able to use the full lin$ ca"acity, limiting its "erformance. >or exam"le, if a %.MA system has =< slots "er frame, some "hysical layer or MA# layer constraints may "revent a node to use more than one slot in each frame, even if the B other slots of the frame are free. If the node im"lementation can only manage one slot, the node individual through"ut is only =+=<th of the shared through"ut. >or the individual through"ut to be the maximum through"ut, the node must be able to manage multi"le slots and multi"lex data between these slots. 5.4.4 Contention and con"estion In the "revious cha"ter we examine why the shared through"ut could be higher than the individual through"ut. *ut, the reverse can also be true (and is actually more li$ely for #MA+#A systems). 0hen there is many nodes sending "ac$ets on the networ$, the "robability of having two nodes choosing the same slot in the contention window increases. 0hen two nodes choose the same slot (and they are first), their "ac$ets collide and are lost. %his mean that when the level of contention increases, the number of retry increases as well, so the "erformance of the networ$ dro" u" to the "oint of congestion. In fact, ;<3.== has a relatively short contention window (=G slots but with a memory effect), and is very sensitive to contention. 'nfortunately, it's very easy for any $ind of device to generate enough traffic to saturate the wireless lin$, es"ecially those which assume being on an 5thernet. I have "ersonally seen a nodes com"osed of E nodes and = access "oint (;<3.==) where the number of retransmissions was higher than the number of "ac$ets sent (each "ac$et transmitted on average more than twice). A solution to this "roblem is to use )%+#% (see chapter +,.,-), because )%+#% ma$es each collision much shorter. In fact, with )%+#% enabled, ;<3.== can su""ort more than a do,en active nodes without significant reduction in "erformance due to contention (a"art that those nodes have to share the bandwidth). As the )%+#% handsha$e is usually done at the basic rates, its benefit tends to decrease for the highest transmission rates. 5.4.5 TC' and %acket losses %ro#lem %#! has been develo"ed for wired 1A(s, where "ac$et losses are minimal. If a "ac$et is lost, %#! assumes that it is dro""ed in a router or a bridge because of con"estion. %o try to reduce the congestion, %#! slows down drastically. 7n the radio medium, collisions can't be detected and the error rate is higher, so there is more "ac$et losses (if we don't do anything about it). %#! sees that as congestion and reduces its through"ut, and so doesn't use all the available bandwidth. In modern 0ireless 1A(, MAC level retransmissions (see chapter +,:,-) solve totally this "roblem by detecting and eliminating "ac$et losses due to errors and collisions (and also avoid dese&uencing "ac$ets), so %#! sees a reliable channel and has no reason to slow down (exce"t if MA# level retransmissions are "oorly im"lemented). 5.4.& A""re"ate thro$"h%$t It's &uite common "ractice for vendors to advertise for their "roducts something called a""re"ate thro$"h%$t. %his figure indicates the maximum through"ut that it is "ossible to transmit in the full bandwidth by having different ad4acent and inde"endent networ$s on different fre&uencies or ho""ing "atterns. 7f course, the user of the 0ireless 1A( will never see such a through"ut, and it is a bit li$e advocating that by having =< Ethernet :<base' cables you are able to have a =<< Mb+s through"ut... *ut, it gives an indication of how well overla""ing cells will share the bandwidth. >or exam"le, with a >re&uency @o""ing system having =.G Mb+s user through"ut, by "utting =D networ$s, each on a different ho""ing "attern, we should have in theory a 36 Mb+s aggregate through"ut. In fact, because the different >re&uency @o""ing "atterns 2collide2 on the same fre&uency (and also suffer from co-channel interference) from time to time, the actual aggregate through"ut is less, and is in this exam"le only =D Mb+s. These collisions of the ho%%in" %atterns is why 6re/$ency (o%%in" can?t offer $% to )0 networks on the )0 channels +#$t only $% to 15 in this case,... & .ome ireless LAN standards A short gallery of the most famous 0ireless 1A( standard (but unfortunately not necessarily the most wides"read...). &.1 ->>> ;12.11 %he main "roblem of radio networ$s acce"tance in the mar$et "lace is that there is not one $ni/$e standard li$e 5thernet with a guaranteed com"atibility between all devices, but many "ro"rietary standards "ushed by each inde"endent vendor and incom"atible between themselves. *ecause cor"orate customers re&uire an established uni&ue standard, most of the vendors have 4oined the I555 in a effort to create a standard for radio 1A(s. %his is ->>> ;12.11 (li$e Ethernet is EEE 6<.,-, 'oken 8ing is EEE 6<.,+ and :<<vg is EEE 6<.,:.). 7f course, once in the ;<3.== committee, each vendor has "ushed its own technologies and s"ecificities in the standard to try to ma$e the standard closer to its "roduct. %he result is a standard which too$ far too much time to com"lete, which is overcom"licated and bloated with features, and might be obsoleted before "roducts come to mar$et by newer technologies. *ut it is a standard based on ex"erience, versatile and well designed and including all of the o"timisations and clever techni&ues develo"ed by the different vendors. %he ;<3.== standard s"ecifies one MA# "rotocol and E "hysical layers / >re&uency @o""ing = Mb+s (only), .irect e&uence = and 3 Mb+s and diffuse infrared (can we really call it a 2standard2 when in includes E incom"atible "hysical layers ?). ince then, it has been extended to su""ort 3 Mb+s for >re&uency @o""ing and D.D and == Mb+s for .irect e&uence (;<3.==b). %he MA# has two main standards of o"eration, a distributed mode (#MA+#A), and a coordinated mode ("olling mode - not much used in "ractice). ;<3.== of course uses MA# level retransmissions, and also )%+#% and fragmentation. %he o"tional "ower management features are &uite com"lex. %he ;<3.== MA# "rotocol also includes o"tional authentication and encry"tion (using the 05!, 0ired 5&uivalent !rivacy, which is )#6 6< bits - some vendors do offer =3; bits )#6 as well). 7n the other hand, ;<3.== lac$s to defines some area (multirate, roaming, inter A! communication...), that might be covered by future develo"ments of the standard or com"lementary standards. ome ;<3.== "roducts also im"lement "ro"rietary extensions (bit-rate ada"tation, additional modulation schemes, stronger encry"tion...), those extensions may or may not be added to the standard over time. 0hen ;<3.== was finalised (se"tember BC), most vendors were slow to im"lement ;<3.== "roducts because of the com"lexity of the standard and the number of mandatory features (and in some cases they also need to "rovide bac$ward com"atibility with their own "revious line of "roducts). ome of the o"tional features (encry"tion and "ower saving) did only a""ear months after the initial release of the "roduct. *ut things seem to be sorted out and we now have fully featured "roducts on the mar$et. %he com"lexity of the s"ecification, the tightness of the re&uirements and the level of investment re&uired made ;<3.== "roducts ex"ensive com"ared to the "revious generation of wireless 1A(s, but because of the higher standardisation and higher volumes, "rices are now dro""ing. 5ven if vendors eventually have launched ;<3.== "roducts, the standard doesn't fully guarantee inter-o"erability / the "roducts have to use at least the same "hysical layer, the same bit rate and the same mode of o"eration (and there is so many other little im"ortant details...). %he most coo"erative vendors have been busy lately sorting out intero"erability issues with inde"endent testing labs, but it is still a touchy sub4ect... &.2 ;12.118# and ;12.118a +;12.11 at 5 4(2, After C years of arguing in sub-committees ma$ing ;<3.==, you would thin$ that most "eo"le would had enough of it. In fact no, the ;<3.== committee is now busy "ushing a new standard at D ?@,, and also higher s"eed at 3.6 ?@, (by twea$ing the .irect e&uence "hysical layer). *oth standard ma$es changes only to the "hysical layer, so that the ;<3.== MA# can be reused totally unmodified, saving costs. ;12.118a (;<3.== at D ?@,) was standardised first (s"ring BB), based on 7F0/ (see chapter 2,3,2), and using the '(II band (see chapter 2,. - so it won't be available in 5uro"e and Fa"an). %he 7>.M "hysical layer is a very close co"y of the one used in 1iper9an (so they might be some sort of com"atibility - see chapter 4,2), using D3 subcarriers in a 3< M@, channel, offering G, =3 and 36 Mb+s and o"tional B, =;, EG, 6; and D6 Mb+s bit-rates. (o "roducts are yet on the mar$et. Aery soon after, ;<3.== did standardise ;12.118# (;<3.== @)), based on a modified . "hysical layer (see chapter 2,3,-). %he goal was to extend the life of the 3.6 ?@, band by overcoming the ma4or drawbac$ / low s"eed. 7n to" of the original ;<3.==-. standard, ;<3.==-b offer additional D.D Mb+s and == Mb+s bit rates. It was a""roved by the >## and they are now "roducts on the mar$et (which are &uite "o"ular). &.3 (i%erLan (i%erLan is the total o""osite of 6<.,::. %his standard has been designed by a committee of researcher within the >T.-, without strong vendors influence, and is &uite different from existing "roducts. %he standard is &uite sim"le, uses some advanced features, and has already been ratified a while ago (summer BG - we are now only waiting for the "roducts). %he first main advantage of @i"erlan is that it wor$s in a dedicated bandwidth (D.= to D.E ?@,, allocated only in 5uro"e), and so doesn't have to include s"read s"ectrum. %he signalling rate is 3E.D Mb+s, and D fixed channels are defined. %he "rotocol uses a variant of #MA+#A based on "ac$et time to live and "riority, and MA# level retransmissions. %he "rotocol includes o"tional encry"tion (no algorythm mandated) and "ower saving. %he nicest feature of @i"erlan (a"art from the high s"eed) is the ad-hoc routing / if your destination is out of reach, intermediate nodes will automatically forward it through the o"timal route within the @i"erlan networ$ (the routes are regularly automatically recalculated). @i"erlan is also totally ad-hoc, re&uiring no configuration and no central controller. %he main deficiency of @i"erlan standard is that it doesn't "rovide real isochronous services (but comes &uite close with time to live and "riority), doesn't fully s"ecify the access "oint mechanisms and hasn't really been "roved to wor$ on a large scale in the real world. 7verhead tends also to be &uite large (really big "ac$et headers). @i"er1an suffers from the same disease as ;<3.== / the re&uirements are tight and the "rotocol com"lex, ma$ing it very ex"ensive. &.4 (i%erLan -- (i%erLan -- is the total o""osite of 1iper9an (see above O-). %he first @i"er1an was designed to build ad-hoc networ$s, the second @i"er1an was designed for managed infrastructure and wireless distribution systems. %he only similarities is the @i"er1an II is being s"ecified by the 5%I (*roadband )adio Access (etwor$ grou"), o"erate at D ?@, (D.6 to D.C ?@,) and the band is dedicated in euro"e. @i"er1an II was the first standard to be based on =6*M modulation (see chapter 2,3,2). 5ach sub-carrier may be modulated by different modulations (and use different convolutional code, a sort of >5#), which allow to offer multi"le bit-rates (G, B, =3, =;, 3C and EG Mb+s, with o"tional D6 Mb+s), with li$ely "erformance around 3D Mb+s bit- rate. %he channel width is 3< M@, and includes 6; 7>.M carriers used to carry data and 6 additional are used as references ("ilot carriers - total is D3 carriers, E=3.D $@, s"acing). @i"er1an II is a ireless ATM system (see chapter +,:,2), and the MA# "rotocol is a %.MA scheme centrally coordinated with reservation slots. 5ach slot has a D6 * "ayload, and the MA# "rovide A) (segmentation and reassembly - fragment large "ac$ets into D6 * cells, see chapter +,.,.) and A)N (Automatic )e&uest - MA# retransmissions, see chapter +,.,:). %he scheduler (in the central coordinator) is flexible and ada"tive, with a call admission control, and the content of the %.MA frame change on a frame basis to accommodate traffic needs. @i"er1an II also defines "ower saving and security features. @i"er1an II is designed to carry A%M cells, but also I! "ac$ets, >irewire "ac$ets (I555 =EB6) and digital voice (from cellular "hones). %he main advantage of @i"er1an II is that it can offer better &uality of service (low latency) and differentiated &uality of service (guarantee of bandwidth), which is what "eo"le de"loying wireless distribution system want. 7n the other hand, I'm worried about the "rotocol overhead, es"ecially for I! traffic. &.5 =%enAir 7"enAir is the "ro"rietary "rotocol from 'ro9im. As !roxim is one of the largest 0ireless 1A( manufacturer (if not the largest, but it de"ends which numbers you are loo$ing at), they are trying to "ush 7"enAir as an alternative to ;<3.== through the L-6 (0ireless 1A( Intero"erability >orum). !roxim is the only one having all the detailed informations on 7"enAir, and strangely enough all the 7"enAir "roducts are based on !roxim's module. 7"enAir is a "re-;<3.== "rotocol, using >re&uency @o""ing and <.; and =.G Mb+s bit rate (3>J and 6>J). %he radio turnaround (si,e of contention slots and between "ac$ets) is much larger than in ;<3.==, which allow a chea"er im"lementation but reduces "erformance. %he 7"enAir MA# "rotocol is #MA+#A with MA# retransmissions, and heavily based on )%+#%, each contention slot contains a full )%+#% exchange, which offer good robustness but some overhead. A nice feature of the "rotocol is that the access "oint can send all its traffic contention free at the beginning of each dwell and then switch the channel bac$ to contention access mode. 7"enAir doesn't im"lement any encry"tion at the MA# layer, but generates (etwor$ I. based on a "assword (ecurity I.). %his "rovide some security only because !roxim controls the way all the im"lementation behave (they don't "rovide a way to synchronise to any networ$ as ;<3.== manufacturers do). 7"enAir also "rovide coarse "ower saving. &.& (ome76 3 .A' )7'E : this chapter was written when was finishing writing the !W"$ :,< specification in 0ecember A6, "fter left the 1ome8F# a lot of big political game did happen# which triggered some critical changes to the specification (!W"$ :,:), donBt really know how much of it is still accurate# but believe that the standard is no longer as open and vendor neutral as it was and that performance has been dramatically reduced, %he (ome76 is a grou" of big com"anies from different bac$ground formed to "ush the usage of 0ireless 1A( in the home and the small office. %his grou" is develo"ing and "romoting a new )adio 1an standard / .A'. %he @ome is a good mar$et for 0ireless 1A( because very few houses are nowadays cabled with 5thernet wire between the different rooms, and because mobility in the home is desired (browse the web on the sofa). %he use of the 3.6 ?@, band allows a free worldwide de"loyment of the system. %he @ome)> has decided to tac$le the main obstacle "reventing the de"loyment of 0ireless 1A( / the cost. Most users 4ust can't afford to s"end the money re&uired to buy a cou"le of )adio 1A( cards to connect their !#s (without tal$ing of the access "oint). %he main cost of a radio 1A( is the modem. As this is analog and high "ower electronics, it doesn't follows /ooreBs law (the mar$et trend that allow you to buy a %ray at the "rice of a calculator after a few years) and modems tend to be fairly stable in "rice. Frequency 1opping modems tend to be less ex"ensive, but the 6<.,:: s"ecification im"ose tight constraints on the modem (timing and filtering), ma$ing it high cost. %he .A' s"ecification, by releasing slightly those constraints, allows for a much chea"er im"lementation, but still $ee"s a good "erformance. %he MA# "rotocol is im"lemented in software and digital, so doesn't contribute that much to the final cost of the "roduct (exce"t in term of develo"ment cost). )eleasing some hardware constraints "revented the use of the ;<3.==, which anyway was much too com"lex and including too many features not necessary for the tas$. %he main $iller a""lication that the @ome)> grou" envisages is the integration of digital cordless tele"hony and the com"uting word, allowing the !# to reroute the "hone calls in the home or to offer voice services to the users. A new MA# "rotocol has been designed, much sim"ler, combining the best feature of .5#% (an 5%I digital cordless "hone standard) and I555 ;<3.== / a digital cordless "hone and ad-hoc data networ$, integrated together. %he voice service is carried over a classical '0/" "rotocol (with interference "rotection, as the band is unlicensed) and reuse the standard .5#% architecture and voice codec. %he data "art use a %!/"(%" access mechanism similar to ;<3.== (with MA# level retransmission, fragmentation...) to offer a service very similar to 5thernet. %he = Mb+s >re&uency @o""ing "hysical layer (with o"tional 3 Mb+s using 6>J) allows G voice connections and enough data through"ut for most users in the @ome. %he voice &uality should be e&uivalent to .5#% in 5uro"e and much better than any current digital "hone in the '. .ata "erformance should be slightly lower than ;<3.==. %he MA# "rotocol has also been designed in a very flexible way, allowing to develo" very chea" handset or data terminals and high "erformance multimedia cards for !#s... %he .A' s"ecification is an o"en standard (in fact, more o"en than ;<3.==, because there should be no royalty or "atent issues), &uite sim"le and straightforward. In fact, the combination of voice and data gets already most mar$eting "eo"le drooling K %he only drawbac$ is that you will have to wait a bit before seeing 0A! "roducts in your favourite su"ermar$et... &.) !l$eTooth *lue%ooth should not even be mentioned in this document, but "eo"le $ee" thin$ing that *lue%ooth is a 0ireless 1A(. *lue%ooth is a ca#le re%lacement technology mostly develo"ed and "romoted by >ricsson with the hel" of -ntel, offering "oint to "oint lin$s and no native su""ort for I! (need to use !!!). It may be good for some a""lications, but not for 0ireless 1A(s. I "ersonally read the *lue%ooth s"ecification, and I was not im"ressed, ex"ect by the si,e of the thing (more than =D<< "ages K). My ta$e is that *lue%ooth offers the functionality of a ireless 5.!, and in fact loo$ing into the huge s"ecification we can see some similarities in the design. *lue%ooth offers the "ossibility to create a set of "oint to "oint wireless serial "i"es (8f%omm) between a master and u" to G slaves, with a "rotocol (!0$) to bind those "i"es to a s"ecific a""lication or driver. %he *lue%ooth mindset is very vertical, with various "rofiles defining every details from bit level to a""lication level. %#!+I! is only one "rofile, im"lemented through !!! in a s"ecific "i"e. %here are other "i"es for audio, 7bex... 0ith *lue%ooth, nodes need to be ex"licitely connected, but they remember bindings from one time to another. %his is miles away from the current wireless 1A( a""roach (connectionless broadcast interface, native I! su""ort, cellular de"loyement, hori,ontal "lay), so *lue%ooth doesn't fit %#!+I! and wireless 1A( a""lications too well. 7n the other hand, as a wireless '*, it fulfil a role that regular wireless 1A(s can't, because %#!+I! discovery and binding "rotocols are more heavyweight. #urrently, *lue%ooth is moving very slow (my first reading of the s"ec was autumn BC - then called M#-1in$) due to its com"lexity and the inherent limits due to the "rotocol design ("eo"le are learning how to wor$around 2features2), but eventually some "roducts should reach the mar$et and later on software su""ort should come... In summary, if all you want is to run %#!+I!, you may find it chea"er and more effective to (7% wait for *lue%ooth and live without the hy"e.