QoS support for an all IP system beyond 3G

Mobile radio systems beyond the third generation will evolve into all-IP systems, integrating Internet and mobile system advantages. The BRAIN project is developing a system architecture which combines local coverage broadband radio access systems based on HIPERLAN/2 with several wider-coverage mobile radio systems, enabling full coverage of seamless IP-based services for users in hot spot areas and on the move. End-to-end QoS provision is one of the major challenges in the design of such a system and must be supported by the application, network, and wireless access layers. This article proposes a QoS system architecture, including the terminal architecture, the IP-based access network, and the main characteristics of the enhancements to the air interface based on HIPERLAN/2 focusing on its wireless QoS support     

Evolving Systems Beyond 3G — the IST BRAIN and MIND Projects

Systems beyond 3G — using IP to combine 3G, wireless LANs and other access technologies — will offer users much greater flexibility and choice for mobile communications in the medium term. The IST projects BRAIN and MIND have developed outline solutions for key technical and business barriers to the development of systems beyond 3G. In particular, MIND and BRAIN have designed an all-IP mobile access network, with QoS and mobility support, designed new middleware components and protocols to support seamless hand-over between heterogeneous access technologies and proposed QoS for wireless LANs. The key results of the BRAIN and MIND projects are presented in this paper. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Compact multidimensional broadband wireless: the convergence of wireless mobile and access

Broadband wireless communications have gained increased interest during the last few years. This has been fuelled by a large demand on high-frequency utilization as well as a large number of users requiring simultaneous high-data-rate access for the applications of wireless mobile Internet and e-commerce. The convergence of wireless mobile and access will be the next storm in wireless communications, which will use a new network architecture to deliver broadband services in a more generic configuration to wireless customers, and support value-added services and emerging interactive multimedia communications. Large bandwidth, guaranteed quality of service, and ease of deployment coupled with the great advancements in semiconductor technologies make this converged wireless system a very attractive solution for broadband service delivery.     

IP化基站无线Mesh组网构架

无线网状网（WMN）融合了无线局域网（WLAN）和Ad Hoc网络的性能优势,具有容量大、速率高、覆盖范围广等特点,成为宽带无线接入的一种有效手段,可以灵活地应用于多种无线环境。目前,蜂窝移动通信系统中各基站间的有线连接,使得传统的蜂窝移动通信系统难以满足部署方便、成本低廉、高可扩展性、高可靠性等指标。为适应下一代移动通信网络扁平化、简单化的发展趋势,IP化基站的无线Mesh组网架构是可选方案之一。支持IP化基站自组织的关键技术包括按需的基站自组织技术、联合无线资源调度机制、路由技术、安全技术、网络管理技术等。     

Mobile and Multicast IP Services in PACS: System Architecture, Prototype, and Performance

Traditionally, wireless cellular communication systems have been engineered for voice. With the explosive growth of Internet applications and users, there is an increasing demand on providing Internet services to mobile users based on the voice-oriented cellular networks. However, Internet services add a set of radically different requirements on to the cellular wireless networks, because the nature of communication is very different from voice. It is a challenge to develop an adequate network architecture and necessary systems components to meet those requirements.This paper describes our experience on developing Internet services, in particular, mobile and multicast IP services, in PACS (Personal Access Communication Systems). Our major contributions are five-fold: (i) PACS system architecture that provides wireless Internet and Intranet access by augmenting the voice network with IP routers and backbone links to connect to the Internet; (ii) simplified design of RPCU (Radio Port Controller Unit) for easy service maintenance and migration to future IP standards such as IPv6; (iii) native PACS multicast to efficiently support dynamic IP multicast and MBone connectivity; (iv) optimization and incorporation of Mobile IP into PACS handoff mechanism to efficiently support roaming within a PACS network as well as global mobility between PACS networks and the Internet; (v) successful prototype design of the new architecture and services verified by extensive performance measurements of IP applications. Our design experience and measurement results demonstrate that it is highly feasible to seamlessly integrate the PACS networks into the Internet with global IP mobility and IP multicast services.     

A protocol for partitionable group membership service in mobile Internet

The explosive growth of mobile and wireless communications has attracted interests in the integration of mobile and wireless networks with wired ones and the wired Internet in particular. Such an integrated mobile Internet environment has brought up many new applications and there is an increasing demand for enhanced services to help users do mobile collaborations, which requires the support for mobile group communications. In this paper, based on a multitier proxy‐based mobile Internet architecture, we propose a novel scalable, reliable, and partitionable membership protocol for mobile group communications. The proxies manage local groups of mobile users and are dynamically organized into a ring‐based hierarchy for global membership management. We describe algorithms and mechanisms for membership propagation and topology maintenance in the presence of dynamic membership, dynamic locations of mobile hosts, and dynamic networks. The proposed protocol can tolerate proxy failures, and network failures including network partitions and network merges. Theoretical analysis and simulation studies show that, comparing with existing tree‐based protocols, the proposed protocol has comparable scalability and higher reliability. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

WiMAX应用潜力分析

文章分析了WiMAX在固定宽带无线接入场合和便携、移动通信场合的应用前景.文章认为:在固定宽带无线通信中,WiMAX会广泛应用于家庭用户、IP语音用户、传输承载用户和集团客户,为他们提供宽带无线接入;在便携、移动通信中,IEEE802.16即将集成到笔记本电脑和个人数字助理(PDA)等便携式电子设备中,实现在城域网范围内的可移动的宽带无线数据服务;用户需求加上WiMAX设备的批量上市及终端成本的下降,WiMAX的应用潜力巨大,市场将呈几何级增长.     

Seamless Support for Mobile Internet Protocol Based Cellular Environments

Cellular is the inevitable architecture for the Personal Communication Service system (PCS) in the coming future. Access to the Internet via cellular networks is expected to become an essential portion of future wireless service offerings. Providing seamless support for IP based packet switched services has become an important issue.The Internet Engineering Task Force's (IETF's) mobile IP protocol offers a standard solution for wide-area mobility at the IP layer. However, Mobile IP does not solve all of the problems involved in providing mobile Internet access to cellular users, especially during handoff period. Thus, IPv6 might be a good candidate to solve this problem.IPv6 is a new version of the Internet Protocol that was standardized by the IETF. It supports mobility and is presently being standardized by the IETF Mobile IP Working Group. At the same time, cellular is an inevitable architecture for the Personal Communication Service system (PCS).This paper introduces the current cellular support based on the Mobile Internet Protocol version 6. We will point out the short-falls using Mobile IP and try to emphasize protocols especially for mobile management schemes that can optimize a high speed mobile station moving among small wireless cells. A comparison between those schemes and future work will be presented.     

Using PARLAY APIs Over a SIP System in a Distributed Service Platform for Carrier Grade Multimedia Services

The implementation of new mobile communication technologies developed in the third generation partnership project (3GPP) will allow to access the Internet not only from a PC but also via mobile phones, palmtops and other devices. New applications will emerge, combining several basic services like voice telephony, e-mail, voice over IP, mobility or web-browsing, and thus wiping out the borders between the fixed telephone network, mobile radio and the Internet. Offering those value-added services will be the key factor for success of network and service providers in an increasingly competitive market. In 3GPP's service framework the use of the Parlay APIs is proposed that allow application development by third parties in order to speed up service creation and deployment. 3GPP has also adopted SIP for session control of multimedia communications in an IP network. This article proposes a mapping of SIP functionality to Parlay services and describes a prototype implementation using the SIP Servlet API. Furthermore, an architecture of a Service Platform is presented that offers a framework for the creation, execution and management of carrier grade multimedia services in heterogeneous networks.     

Virtual Private Ad Hoc Networking

The fact that a lot of applications require secure communication to take place only between a dynamic subset of distributed devices sharing a common context, is, from a network point of view, very challenging and demanding. Existing technologies such as VPN, P2P overlays or VLANs can only partially respond to these requirements. This observation is the key factor that has driven the proposal of the virtual private ad hoc network concept. Virtual private ad hoc networks (VPAN) are secure and self-organizing overlay networks on top of existing IP infrastructure that use ad hoc networking techniques to enable network connectivity. The underlying IP infrastructure can be the Internet, cellular networks, ad hoc networks, mesh networks … or combinations thereof. A virtual private ad hoc overlay network creates a transparent, shielded and trusted environment for the applications and services running on the participants' devices. The overlay uses internal addressing and ad hoc routing, thereby forming a virtual network on top of the physical infrastructure. In addition, the overlay must be self-organizing and self-maintaining upon member mobility or membership changes. This paper gives an overview of the potential applications, a high-level network architecture and the network challenges emerging from the novel concept of virtual private ad hoc networking. Jeroen Hoebeke was born in Ghent, Belgium in 1979. In 2002 he received the Masters degree in engineering (Computer Science) from the University of Ghent. In August 2002, he joined the Broadband Communications Networks Group. His PhD research includes the development of adaptive routing protocol techniques for mobile ad hoc networks. His main research interests are in ad hoc wireless communications and, more generally, in broadband wireless communications. Within the European MAGNET project, he is actively involved in the development of a network architecture and demonstrator for Personal Networks, with a prime focus on routing and connectivity. Gerry Holderbeke was born in Zottegem, Belgium in 1982. He graduated in Informatics at the University of Ghent in 2004. In August 2004 he joined the Broadband Communications Networks Group where he is currently working as a project developer. His research currently includes the development of an emulator for mobile ad hoc networks. His main research interests are in ad hoc networks and broadband wireless communications and involve routing, addressing and more generally, communication within mobile ad hoc networks and infrastructured networks. Within the European MAGNET project, he is actively involved in the development of a network architecture for Personal Networks, with a prime focus on the implementation of the routing architecture. Ingrid Moerman was born in Gent, Belgium in 1965. She received the degree in Electro-technical Engineering and the Ph.D degree from the Ghent University, Gent, Belgium in 1987 and 1992, respectively. Since 1987, she has been with the Interuniversity Micro-Electronics Centre (IMEC) at the Department of Information Technology (INTEC) of the Ghent University, where she conducted research in the field of optoelectronics. In 1997, she became a permanent member of the Research Staff at IMEC. Since 2000 she is part-time professor at the Ghent University. Since 2001 she has switched her research domain to broadband communication networks. She is currently involved in the research and education on broadband mobile & wireless communication networks and on multimedia over IP. The main research topics related to mobile & wireless communication networks are: wireless access to vehicles (high bandwidth & driving speed), adaptive QoS routing in wireless ad hoc networks, body area networks, protocol boosting on wireless links, design of fixed access/metro part, traffic engineering and QoS support in the wireless access network. Ingrid Moerman is author or co-author of more than 300 publications in the field of optoelectronics and communication networks. Bart Dhoedt received a degree in Engineering from the Ghent University in 1990. In September 1990, he joined the Department of Information Technology of the Faculty of Applied Sciences, University of Ghent. His research, addressing the use of micro-optics to realize parallel free space optical interconnects, resulted in a PhD degree in 1995. After a 2 year post-doc in opto-electronics, he became professor at the Faculty of Applied Sciences, Department of Information Technology. Since then, he is responsible for several courses on algorithms, programming and software development. His research interests are software engineering and mobile & wireless communications. Bart Dhoedt is author or co-author of approximately 70 papers published in international journals or in the proceedings of international conferences. His current research addresses software technologies for communication networks, peer-to-peer networks, mobile networks and active networks. Piet Demeester received the Masters degree in Electro-technical engineering and the Ph.D degree from the Ghent University, Gent, Belgium in 1984 and 1988, respectively. In 1992 he started a new research activity on broadband communication networks resulting in the IBCN-group (INTEC Broadband communications network research group). Since 1993 he became professor at the Ghent University where he is responsible for the research and education on communication networks. The research activities cover various communication networks (IP, ATM, SDH, WDM, access, active, mobile), including network planning, network and service management, telecom software, internetworking, network protocols for QoS support, etc. Piet Demeester is author of more than 300 publications in the area of network design, optimization and management. He is member of the editorial board of several international journals and has been member of several technical program committees (ECOC, OFC, DRCN, ICCCN, IZS, &).     

无线Internet综述

对实现无线Internet的各种可能途径进行了分析,提出了在网络层实现无线Internet的2种方式:基于IP的方式和基于专用分组数据网络的方式。以移动IP为例,介绍了无线Internet的基本原理和体系结构,并以在蜂窝网中实现无线Internet方案为例,进行了具体分析;并对实现无缝的无线Internet接入过程中需要解决的若干关键问题进行了归纳。基于Internet的无线网络是未来发展的大趋势。     

Broadband fixed wireless access as a key component of the futureintegrated communications environment

It is an exciting time for broadband fixed wireless with key developments in frequency bands from 1 to 60 GHz and a range of new technologies being developed. While working on these new technologies, it is easy to forget that fixed wireless access will form part of an integrated communications environment of the future where users will have one communications device working in the home, at the office, and outdoors. This article predicts the communications environment of the next 20 years and looks at the role of fixed access within that environment. This involves assessing how fixed access systems will interface and integrate with in-home wireless networks, how their architecture will enable multiservice operators to utilize the same core network across a range of different access technologies, and how they will act as a channel to carry mobile traffic originating within the building. Based on the requirements this vision and architecture implies, this article critically assesses the different fixed wireless technologies available to date and compares their capabilities to provide future-proof broadband fixed wireless platforms     

未来中国4G开放移动通信终端和网络接入架构

This paper relates to an advanced open mobile communication system and method of integrating the mobile communications, wireless access systems and wired communications into one common platform architecture for China＇s 4th generation mobile communications, supporting costeffective broadband voice, data and video services in wireless, mobile and wired environment with one single integrated mobile terminal device. The paper includes new architecture in the integrated mobile device and converged network access, and minimum modification in the existing mobile telecommunication infrastructures. This paper introduces the long-term evolution strategy for China＇s TDD system platform towards China＇s future 4G mobile communications.     

Using group mobility and multihomed mobile gateways to connect mobile ad hoc networks to the global IP Internet

Connecting multihop mobile ad hoc wireless networks (MANETs) to the Internet would enable MANET nodes to share wireless Internet access with mobile hosts that are one‐hop away from their foreign networks. The integration of MANETs and the global Internet, however, faces an obstacle due to their network architectural mismatches regarding their infrastructure, topology, and mobility management mechanisms. Solutions to the integration problem should introduce an intermediate facility with hybrid mechanism, enabling it to connect to both networks. The quality of the multihop wireless Internet access service provided to MANET nodes depends on the design quality of this facility in order for MANET nodes to enjoy their Internet connectivity anywhere and anytime without much disconnections. In this paper, we propose hierarchical architecture that uses group mobility and multihomed mobile gateways, and present and analyse different simulations results. A multihomed mobile gateway can simultaneously connect to multiple Mobile IP foreign agents, provided it is located within their overlapping coverage area. It runs updated versions of the destination‐sequenced distance vector (DSDV) and Mobile IP protocols, and is responsible for providing MANET nodes with wireless Internet access though they are multiple wireless hops away from the edge of the Internet. The rationale behind using multihoming is to increase reliability of the Internet access service and enhance performance of the integrated network. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intelligent Handoff for Mobile Wireless Internet

This paper presents an intelligent mobility management scheme for Mobile Wireless InterNet – MWIN. MWIN is a wireless service networks wherein its core network consisting of Internet routers and its access network can be built from any Internet-capable radio network. Two major standards are currently available for MWIN, i.e., the mobile IP and wireless LAN. Mobile IP solves address mobility problem with the Internet protocol while wireless LAN provides a wireless Internet access in the local area. However, both schemes solve problems independently at different layers, thereby some additional problems occur, e.g., delayed handoff, packet loss, and inefficient routing. This paper identifies these new problems and performs analyses and some real measurements on the handoff within MWIN. Then, a new handoff architecture that extends the features of both mobile IP and wireless LAN handoff mechanism was proposed. This new architecture consists of mobile IP extensions and a modified wireless LAN handoff algorithm. The effect of this enhancement provides a linkage between different layers for preventing packet loss and reducing handoff latency. Finally, some optimization issues regarding network planning and routing are addressed.     

A survey of Mobile IP in cellular and Mobile Ad-Hoc Network environments

The Internet has become ubiquitous and there has been tremendous growth in wireless communications in recent years. Many wireless communication techniques are commercially available, such as the Wireless LAN, Bluetooth, GSM, GPRS and CDMA. Because an all-IP network will be a trend, access to the Internet via wireless communication devices has become an important issue.To reduce power consumption and reuse the limited radio spectrum resources, a cellular network was formed. Cell size is one of the factors in the channel reuse rate. Basically, the channel reuse rate in a smaller cell size is higher than the channel reuse rate in a bigger cell size. Micro-mobility is therefore the inevitable direction for future mobile systems. Frequent and fast movements usually characterize micro-mobility. A cellular architecture would then present a challenge to the frequent handover procedures for a smaller cell size would usually induce a higher handoff frequency.In addition to cellular networks, the ad-hoc network is another network architecture for wireless networks. The ad-hoc network is a non-infrastructure architecture; in which nodes can access services from one another regardless where they are. An excellent routing protocol is crucial for an ad-hoc networking to function at high performance. The main difference between a cellular environment and ad-hoc network is that the ad-hoc method has no fixed infrastructure, allowing nodes to communicate with one another at any time and anywhere.We have mentioned that micro-mobility in a cellular environment would introduce a greater number of handoffs than before. The handoff probability drives the mobile IP mechanism due to signal changes. Using the Mobile IP mechanism, handoff breaking would take place within a micro-mobility environment. Therefore, in this paper, some handoff strategies that take the advantage of the ad-hoc mechanism to improve the handoff performance are investigated.     

Extending Global IP Connectivity for Ad Hoc Networks

Ad hoc networks have thus far been regarded as stand-alone networks without assumed connectivity to wired IP networks and the Internet. With wireless broadband communications and portable devices with appropriate CPU, memory and battery performance, ad hoc connectivity will become more feasible and demand for global connectivity through ad hoc networking is likely to rapidly grow. In this paper we propose an algorithm and describe a developed prototype for connectivity between an ad hoc network running the ad hoc on-demand distance-vector protocol and a wired IP network where mobile IP is used for mobility management. Implementation issues and performance metrics are also discussed.     

无线互联网的移动IP技术

文章首先阐述了移动IP的概念,分析了采用移动IP技术的宽带移动通信系统的网络结构,并结合所承担的“863”项目,讨论了无线互联网中的移动性管理问题。     

A Survey of Mobility Management in Hybrid Wireless Mesh Networks

Mobility management is vital for realizing large-scale wireless mesh networks to provide cost-effective broadband Internet access. Although a considerable amount of research on mobility management for cellular, Mobile IP, and mobile ad hoc networks has been proposed, mobility management for IP-based hybrid WMNs, including the mobility support from both the network and link layers, remains largely unexplored. Traditional mobility management mechanisms, when applied to hybrid WMNs, may cause significant performance degradation because of the overlooking of key features of WMNs. Challenges arising from multihop wireless communications require the design of new mobility management techniques in WMNs. In this article, mobility management in IP-based hybrid WMNs is investigated. The motivation for mobility management in WMNs is explained, and the existing work is surveyed. To address the new challenges, various open design issues also are presented.