Error correction and error detection techniques for wireless ATM systems

Error correction and error detection techniques are often used in wireless transmission systems. The Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) employs Header Error Control (HEC). Since ATM specifications have been developed for high‐quality optical fiber transmission systems, HEC has single‐bit error correction and multiple‐bit error detection capabilities. When HEC detects multiple‐bit error, the cell is discarded. However, wireless ATM requires a more powerful Forward Error Correction (FEC) scheme to improve the Bit Error Rate (BER) performance resulting in a reduction in the transmission power and antenna size. This concatenation of wireless FEC and HEC of the ATM may effect cell loss performance. This paper proposes error correction and error detection techniques suitable for wireless ATM and analyzes the performance of the proposed schemes. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Forward error control for MPEG-2 video transport in a wireless ATM LAN

The possibility of providing multimedia services to mobile users has led to interest in designing broadband wireless networks that can guarantee quality of service for traffic flows. However, a fundamental problem in these networks is that severe losses may occur due to the random fading characteristics of the wireless channel. Error control algorithms which compensate for these losses are required in order to achieve reasonable loss rates. In this paper, the performance of error control based on forward error correction (FEC) for MPEG-2 video transmission in an indoor wireless ATM LAN is studied. A random bit error model and a multipath fading model are used to investigate the effect of errors on video transport. Combined source and channel coding techniques that employ single-layer and scalable MPEG-2 coding to combat channel errors are compared. Simulation results indicate that FEC-based error control in combination with 2-layer video coding techniques can lead to acceptable quality for indoor wireless ATM video.Work performed while the author was at AT&T Bell Laboratories on a D.O.E. fellowship program.     

一种无线ATM网络的MAC协议

主要研究了无线ATM网络对MAC的需求，并介绍了适用于无线ATM的一种新的MAC方案。该协议支持不同类型信息传输，比如恒定比特率（CBR），可变比特率（VBR），可用比特率（ABR），未指定比特率（UBR）。另外此协议还提供了对宽带ATM主干网的无缝连接。同时也支持与ATM相关的QoS级别。对于该协议关注的各种情况的主要原理进行了讨论。     

Cell discard and TDMA synchronization using FEC in wireless ATMsystems

The asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) employs header-error control (HEC) to protect the ATM cell header from bit error and/or avoid the misforwarding of ATM cells. However, wireless ATM systems require a more powerful forward-error correction (FEC) scheme to offer acceptable bit-error rate (BER) performance. This paper proposes the utilization of FEC, which makes it possible to discard ATM cells more reliably. Time-division multiple-access (TDMA) is very suitable for wireless ATM systems. In the TDMA scheme, synchronization is very important. This paper also proposes to combine FEC with unique word (UW) detection for improving TDMA synchronization characteristics     

无线信元反向复用及动态容量调整技术研究

根据ATM无线链路组网需求,提出了适合无线链路反向复用的编码及动态容量调整技术。该技术适用于利用微波、散射和卫星等传输手段进行ATM/MPLS无线机动组网,编码纠错门限为2×10-3,当通信节点无线传输距离增大或信道传输质量变恶劣时,通过动态容量调整技术自动降低信号速率以提高业务传输质量,该项技术特别适合新一代宽带网络。     

用无线方式实现ATM网络的互联

介绍一种利用无线链路连接ATM网络的方法,在无线传输部分,不但对ATM信元的结构及长度作了修改,还增加了差错控制技术,最后从理论上分析了这种方法的性能.     

WATMnet: a prototype wireless ATM system for multimedia personalcommunication

A prototype microcellular wireless asynchronous transfer mode network (WATMnet) capable of providing integrated multimedia communication services to mobile terminals is described in this paper. The experimental system's hardware consists of laptop computers (NEC Versa-M) with WATMnet interface cards, multiple VME/i960 processor-based WATMnet base stations, and a mobility-enhanced local-area ATM switch. The prototype wireless network interface cards operate at peak bit-rates up to 8 Mb/s, using low-power 2.4 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM)-band modems. Wireless network protocols at the portable terminal and base station interfaces support available bit rate (ABR), variable bit rate (VBR), and constant bit rate (CBR) transport services compatible with ATM using a dynamic time-division multiple-access/time-division duplex (TDMA/TDD) MAC protocol for channel sharing and data link control (DLC) protocol for error recovery. A custom wireless control protocol is also implemented between the portable and base units for support of radio link related functions such as user registration and handoff. All network entities including the portable, base and switch use a mobility-enhanced version of ATM (“Q.2931+”) signaling for switched virtual circuit (SVC) connection control functions, including handoff. In the first stage of the prototype, the application-level API is TCP/UP over ATM ABR service class using AAL5. Early experiments with the WATMnet prototype have been conducted to validate major protocol and software aspects, including DLC, wireless control, and mobility signaling for handoff, Selected network-based multimedia/video applications requiring moderate bit-rates (~0.5-1 Mb/s) in the ABR mode have been successfully demonstrated on the laptop PC     

Dynamic reservation TDMA protocol for wireless ATM networks

A dynamic reservation time division multiple access (DR-TDMA) control protocol that extends the capabilities of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks over the wireless channel is proposed in this paper. DR-TDMA combines the advantages of distributed access and centralized control for transporting constant bit rate (CBR), variable bit rate (VBR), and available bit rate (ABR) traffic efficiently over a wireless channel. The contention slots access for reservation requests is governed by the framed pseudo-Bayesian priority (FPBP) Aloha protocol that provides different access priorities to the control packets in order to improve the quality-of-service (QoS) offered to time sensitive connections. DR-TDMA also features a novel integrated resource allocation algorithm that efficiently schedules terminals' reserved access to the wireless ATM channel by considering their requested bandwidth and QoS. Integration of CBR, voice, VBR, data, and control traffic over the wireless ATM channel using the proposed DR-TDMA protocol is considered in this paper. Simulation results are presented to show that the protocol respects the required QoS of each traffic category while providing a highly efficient utilization of approximately 96% for the wireless ATM channel     

Adaptive link layer strategies for energy efficient wireless networking

Low power consumption is a key design metric for portable wireless network devices where battery energy is a limited resource. The resultant energy efficient design problem can be addressed at various levels of system design, and indeed much research has been done for hardware power optimization and power management within a wireless device. However, with the increasing trend towards thin client type wireless devices that rely more and more on network based services, a high fraction of power consumption is being accounted for by the transport of packet data over wireless links [28]. This offers an opportunity to optimize for low power in higher layer network protocols responsible for data communication among multiple wireless devices. Consider the data link protocols that transport bits across the wireless link. While traditionally designed around the conventional metrics of throughput and latency, a proper design offers many opportunities for optimizing the metric most relevant to battery operated devices: the amount of battery energy consumed per useful user level bit transmitted across the wireless link. This includes energy spent in the physical radio transmission process, as well as in computation such as signal processing and error coding. This paper describes how energy efficiency in the wireless data link can be enhanced via adaptive frame length control in concert with adaptive error control based on hybrid FEC (forward error correction) and ARQ (automatic repeat request). Key to this approach is a high degree of adaptivity. The length and error coding of the atomic data unit (frame) going over the air, and the retransmission protocol are (a) selected for each application stream (ATM virtual circuit or IP/RSVP flow) based on quality of service (QoS) requirements, and (b) continually adapted as a function of varying radio channel conditions due to fading and other impairments. We present analysis and simulation results on the battery energy efficiency achieved for user traffic of different QoS requirements, and describe hardware and software implementations.     

An OFDM-based wireless ATM transmission system assisted by acyclically extended PN sequence for future broad-band mobile multimediacommunications

An orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based wireless asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) transmission system is described that is suitable for the future broad-band mobile multimedia communications. In the proposed system, guard symbols, which are cyclically extended by repeating the information symbols, are inserted before and after serial-to-parallel converted wireless ATM data symbols for OFDM transmission. These symbols are used for both wireless ATM frame synchronization and deciding the discrete Fourier transformation (DFT) start point at the receiver. A cyclically extended pseudorandom noise (PN) sequence is inserted into some of the OFDM transmission subchannels at fixed intervals and used to estimate the phase rotation, frequency offset, and delay characteristics. The proposed system does not use "symbol-by-symbol" guard-interval insertion or removal circuits, as do conventional OFDM systems. With this system, it is easy to estimate the phase rotation, frequency offset, and delay characteristics and to synchronize wireless ATM cells. Computer simulation showed that the bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed system is better than that of a conventional "symbol-by-symbol" OFDM system     

A new ATM adaptation layer for TCP/IP over wireless ATM networks

This paper describes the design and performance of a new ATM adaptation layer protocol (AAL‐T) for improving TCP performance over wireless ATM networks. The wireless links are characterized by higher error rates and burstier error patterns in comparison with the fiber links for which ATM was introduced in the beginning. Since the low performance of TCP over wireless ATM networks is mainly due to the fact that TCP always responds to all packet losses by congestion control, the key idea in the design is to push the error control portion of TCP to the AAL layer so that TCP is only responsible for congestion control. The AAL‐T is based on a novel and reliable ARQ mechanism to support quality‐critical TCP traffic over wireless ATM networks. The proposed AAL protocol has been validated using the OPNET tool with the simulated wireless ATM network. The simulation results show that the AAL‐T provides higher throughput for TCP over wireless ATM networks compared to the existing approach of TCP with AAL 5. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A Time Reuse Capture Access (TRCA) Protocol for PCS and Wireless ATM Applications

The Time Reuse Capture Access (TRCA) protocol isa medium access control protocol appropriate forpersonal communications and wireless AsynchronousTransfer Mode (ATM) applications. It is based on time reuse rather than frequency reuse. Frequencychannels are reused in every cell (frequency reuse one).Each FDMA channel has a TDMA frame structure. The numberof slots in the frame is equal to the time reuse factor and each slot is assigned to aspecific cell in the reuse cluster. Each mobile usertransmits in its assigned frequency channel and TDMAtime slot which corresponds to the cell it currently belongs. The protocol also exploits the powercapture phenomenon in which simultaneous transmissionsof users in adjacent cells may be successfully received.Two possible applications of the proposed TRCA protocol are considered in this paper. In thefirst application, TRCA is used for random packet accessin wireless personal communication. Users transmit theirpackets using the assigned and non-assigned time slots to take advantage of the effect ofcapture and non-uniform traffic loads. The portion oftransmissions that takes place in each time slot iscontrolled so that the overall throughput is maximized. In the second application, TRCA is used forreliable transmission of ATM cell over a wirelesschannel. The proposed protocol allows the transmissionof continuous bit rate (CBR) ATM cells over a wireless link so that bit error rate (BER) and delayrequirements are met. Transmissions take place in theassigned time slots but the non-assigned time slots canbe used for re-transmission if the previous transmission was unsuccessful.     

A novel delineation mechanism for the ATM adaptation layer 2 over wireless ATM networks

The ATM adaptation layer 2 (AAL2) has been standardized by the ITU‐T for the support of low data rate and delay‐sensitive applications, such as voice, over ATM networks. One of the main characteristics of the AAL2 standard is the support for multiplexing information at the expense of introducing a new frame structure inside the payload of the ATM cells. The AAL2 standard introduces a mechanism for the delineation of the AAL2 packets and it has been found that the delineation mechanism reduces the performance of AAL2 in the presence of channels with high bit error rates. In this paper, a novel delineation mechanism is proposed for AAL2 to be used over highly error‐prone channels, such as wireless links. The proposed mechanism improves the performance (i.e. reduces packet loss) of the AAL2 standard in the presence of bit errors and in some cases reduces the overhead required for the delineation of the AAL2 packets. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design and Implementation of a QoS Oriented Data-Link Control Protocol for CBR Traffic in Wireless ATM Networks

This paper presents a QoS oriented Data Link Control (DLC) framework for transporting Constant Bit Rate (CBR) traffic over wireless ATM links. Data link control is usually omitted in fixed ATM networks because cell corruption due to channel error is extremely rare for reliable media like copper wire and optical fiber. However, for wireless, higher bit error rates are quite common due to shadowing and other fading effects. The purpose of DLC in wireless is to provide error-free transport to the higher layers by recovering corrupted cells at the link layer. A selective reject (SREJ) automatic repeat request (ARQ) based DLC protocol is used for CBR error recovery. For an ARQ based scheme, higher recovery rates can be achieved with larger cell transfer delay, caused by cell retransmissions. Since cell transfer delay and DLC recovery rate both translate to user-perceivable Quality-of-Service (QoS), it is important for the DLC to strike a balance between these two, depending on the application's requirements. To achieve this in our protocol, the retransmission procedure for a CBR cell is constrained to complete within a recovery time interval which is specified by the application at call-setup time. Also, a novel jitter removal scheme that reduces the cell delay variation caused by cell loss and retransmissions, is incorporated as a part of the DLC protocol. The proposed protocol is implemented on NEC's WATMnet prototype system. The implementation and its experimental results are reported for illustrating the performance and feasibility of the presented CBR DLC protocol. The experimental results show that the DLC protocol can be successfully applied for QoS-constrained error recovery of CBR traffic on a per-connection basis. These also indicate that the DLC can be programmed to attain a desirable tradeoff between cell transfer delay and cell recovery rate.     

Multiservices MAC‐protocol for wireless ATM

ATM is the future networking technology in the area of broadband networks. Using fiber optical cabling offers high bandwidth and low error rates. It is supposed to support different kinds of services, e.g., file transfer, videoconferencing, and speech transmissions. To support seamless end-to-end quality of service in a mobile environment a suitable extension to the fixed network part is necessary. In a wireless ATM environment the medium access protocol takes a prominent position. It is responsible for an efficient and fair media access on the shared radio resource. Due to the limited available bandwidth and the much higher error rates on the radio link special provisions must be provided. The compliance of traffic contracts for connections with different quality of services is the aim of our proposed protocol. This is the base of true end-to-end services with quality of service assurance in wireless ATM. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Modeling TCP SACK performance over wireless channels with semi-reliable ARQ/FEC

Providing reliable data communications over wireless channels is a challenging task because time-varying wireless channel characteristics often lead to bit errors. These errors result in loss of IP packets and, consequently, TCP segments encapsulated into these packets. Since TCP cannot distinguish packet losses due to bit corruption from those due to network congestion, any packet loss caused by wireless channel impairments leads to unnecessary execution of the TCP congestion control algorithms and, hence, sub-optimal performance. Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) and Forward Error Correction (FEC) try to improve communication reliability and reduce packet losses by detecting and recovering corrupted bits. Most analytical models that studied the effect of ARQ and FEC on TCP performance assumed that the ARQ scheme is perfectly persistent (i.e., completely reliable), thus a frame is always successfully transmitted irrespective of the number of transmission attempts it takes. In this paper, we develop an analytical cross-layer model for a TCP connection running over a wireless channel with a semi-reliable ARQ scheme, where the amount of transmission attempts is limited by some number. The model allows to evaluate the joint effect of stochastic properties of the wireless channel characteristics and various implementation-specific parameters on TCP performance, which makes it suitable for performance optimization studies. The input parameters include the bit error rate, the value of the normalized autocorrelation function of bit error observations at lag 1, the strength of the FEC code, the persistency of ARQ, the size of protocol data units at different layers, the raw data rate of the wireless channel, and the bottleneck link buffer size.     

Design of error detection scheme for class C service in ATM

Presents a logical approach to designing an effective and efficient error detection scheme for ATM. The authors specifically look at providing error protection for the class C service of ATM, which is a connection oriented, variable bit rate service, with no required timing between source and destination. The resulting scheme is similar to the scheme proposed by the CCITT in AAL 5. The authors propose to add a 34 bit CRC to each frame. Their proposal also includes a modification of the mechanism for preventing misdirected cells that is used at the ATM layer     

An integrated FEC coding scheme for ATM transmission over regenerative satellite networks

The application of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) on both wireless and satellite networks requires system adaptation. This adaptation has to improve the overall system's performance, and achieve high quality‐of‐service classes approaching that for fibre‐optic communications. In this paper, a new integrated forward‐error‐correction (FEC) coding scheme is introduced for ATM transmission over regenerative satellite networks. The proposed FEC scheme is a concatenation of two Reed–Solomon codes tailored for the header and payload parts of the ATM cell. This integrated coding scheme is shown to significantly improve the cell loss ratio as compared to the standard CRC code used in the ATM cell header. We obtain both upper and lower performance bounds for the concatenated code and check their accuracy when compared to exact system's performance. Both analytical and simulation results show that a cell loss ratio and bit‐error rate (BER) of 10^?25 and 10^?7 can be, respectively, achieved with minimum delay requirements on the SATCOM link. Finally, an approximation for the system's throughout is obtained. It is shown that using a hybrid selective‐repeat automatic‐repeat‐request (SR‐ARQ) with the RS code, a large throughput of approximately 0.843 can be achieved at BERs lower than 10^?7 for data services. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A New Transport Protocol for Broadcasting/Multicasting MPEG-2 Video Over Wireless ATM Access Networks

Because of the telecommunications de-regulation act and progress in wireless technologies, we will see the co-existence of heterogeneous broadband access infrastructures in the broadband video service industry in the near future. In this paper, we addressed the error control issue when transmitting MPEG-2 video streams over wireless access networks for broadband video broadcast or multicast services. An end-to-end transport protocol based on ATM and wireless ATM technologies is proposed. For video services, the underlying transport network should be transparent and quality should be maintained uniformly over all the segments whether wireline or wireless links. For network resources to be used efficiently, error control should be applied locally on the wireless segments so as to avoid the excessive overhead over the reliable wireline portions. Because a broadband video broadcast or multicast service is a one-to-multiple point service, FEC is the most prevalent error control mechanism. Due to the important role of MPEG-2 control information in the decoding process, priority MPEG-2 control information has to be differentiated from MPEG-2 data information, and excess error protection has to be allocated to it in order to achieve satisfactory QoS. Therefore, a header redundancy FEC (HRFEC) scheme for error control is applied at the local distribution centers before the MPEG-2 encoded video streams are transmitted over the wireless channels. HRFEC is an FEC-based selective protection scheme, which allocates extra error protection to important control information. Simulation results show that the quality of the reconstructed video sequence is vastly improved by using HRFEC, when the channel condition is poor.     

A Model for the Performance Evaluation of Packet Transmissions Using Type-II Hybrid ARQ over a Correlated Error Channel

Type-II Hybrid-ARQ (Type-II HARQ) has been shown, under certain circumstances, to increase the efficiency and reduce loss of data transmissions over a wireless channel. However, it is difficult to predict how it will perform when transmission symbol errors are correlated. We present a computationally efficient approach to the performance evaluation of packet transmissions over a wireless link employing Type-II HARQ error mitigation when the physical channel is subject to correlated transmission symbol errors. This provides a tool for static or online optimization of system parameters. We present numerical results for a wide range of channel statistics, illustrating the effect of bit error correlation, bit error rate, and block size on packet latency and loss rate.