Evolution of wireless data services: IS-95 to cdma2000

Existing IS-95-based CDMA systems support circuit-mode and packet-mode data services at a data rate limited to 9.6-14.4 kb/s. Fueled by the explosive growth of the Internet, applications and market opportunities are demanding that higher capacity, higher data rates, and advanced multimedia services be supported in the near future. The evolution of the IS-95 CDMA standard to higher data rates and more advanced services occurs in two steps. The first step, IS-95-B, is an enhancement to the IS-95-A standard and offers the highest possible performance without breaking current IS-95-A air interface design characteristics, thereby maintaining strict compatibility with existing base station hardware. The proposed standard will support a high data rate (64 kb/s) in both directions, to and from the mobile device. A new burst mode packet data service is defined to allow better interference management and capacity utilization. The second evolution step, cdma2000, provides next-generation capacity, data rates, and services. The cdma2000 system includes a greatly enhanced air interface supporting CDMA over wider bandwidths for improved capacity and higher data rates while also maintaining backward compatibility with existing IS-95 CDMA end-user devices. The cdma2000 system also includes a sophisticated MAC feature to effectively support very-high-data-rate services (up to 2 Mb/s) and multiple concurrent data and voice services. This article describes the design and performance of the high-data-rate service provided by second- and third-generation CDMA systems     

Bridging wireless protocols

The lingua franca of the Internet is TCP/IP, and wireless devices are learning to speak this language. But what is the “wireless Internet?” There are a number of different answers to this question. The question poses problems for equipment manufacturers, service providers, and users alike. We desire seamless access to the Internet, and in order to have that, all these different modes must operate transparently for users. This article discusses how TIA/EIA standard IS-856 cellular data (1×EV) can be married with IEEE 802.11b wireless data to enable wide-area Internet access for service providers and users. The article outlines the system used at the December 2000 IETF meeting and discusses its implications     

Wireless Access

The next three years will see the introduction of packet data offerings on GSM. There will also be the emergence of new radio coding schemes to bring data rates up to 50 kbit/s. The introduction of 3rd Generation networks bringing the capability to deliver 500 kbit/s to the wide area will also be seen. For higher data rates closer to that of fixed networks (500 kbit/s to 16 Mbit/s), cordless technologies such as Bluetooth, DECT or HIPERLAN are evolving. Applications are currently limited to home or corporate use but with the right development these technologies could become suitable alternatives to the cellular network where very high data rates are needed. Additionally, the market for wireless systems offering a direct replacement to fixed wired access is exploding. Systems offering anything from 64 kbit/s to 50 Mbit/s are available and offer new entrants the potential to rapidly and economically establish direct access to their customers. Will this be the take-up of wireless data at last? This paper explores the scenarios that these technologies bring to the marketplace and how they will be making a difference. Wireless access has finally come of age.     

Digital cellular-its roots and its future

Cellular radio started in the early 1980s by using analog technologies. Research in voice coding, modulation, and channel coding resulted in second-generation cellular radio based on digital technologies, which were introduced in the early 1990s. These were all based on advanced time division multiple access technology, resulting in better capacity and lower cost. Today, these digital technologies-based on the Global System for Mobility, digital Advanced Mobile Phone System, and personal digital cellular-have more than 100 million subscribers worldwide. The next step is to introduce wide-band packet services for wireless Internet up to 2 Mb/s. These so-called third-generation systems (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Services, IMT2000) are planned to be introduced in the early 2000s     

Packet scheduling in 3.5G high-speed downlink packet access networks: breadth and depth

Forecasts for emerging mobile device markets anticipate that bandwidth will be squeezed by demanding applications like multimedia on demand. This will spur the need for data rates beyond what the upcoming 3G wireless cellular systems such as UMTS can offer. To boost the support for such high data rates, HSDPA, labeled as a 3.5G wireless system, has been introduced in Release 5 of UMTS technical specifications. HSDPA is a definite step toward meeting the "anywhere, anytime, and in any form" 4G communication concept. HSDPA promises a peak data rate of up to 10 Mb/s, five times larger than the data rate offered by 3G systems. In order to support such high data rates, HSDPA relies on many new technologies, among which is packet scheduling. In this article we provide breadth and depth related issues of packet scheduling in HSDPA, discuss state-of-the-art HSDPA scheduling algorithms in terms of their objectives, advantages, and limitations, and suggest further research issues that need to be addressed. In addition, we propose a packet scheduling algorithm for data traffic in HSDPA. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm     

Broadband a go-go

In city after city, high-speed wireless access may be the next Internet revolution. The author discusses the use of a Dell laptop outfitted with a prototype card that communicates with a test network set up by broadband wireless start-up MeshNetworks Inc. for exploiting wireless Internet technology. Even at speed-limit speeds, the Mesh network held up, with download data rates of at least 500 kb/s. Mesh, along with Ricochet and other wireless point-to-point networks, are the best hope for a fully mobile future - a world where we can teleconference each other, watch news and entertainment in real time, order from online catalogs, pay our bills, and answer e-mail - anywhere, anytime, on ever smaller and sleeker handheld devices powered by ever more powerful microprocessors and software.     

Cellular packet communications

The future of third-generation wireless networking is discussed. The vision of the third generation is a single set of standards that can meet a wide range of wireless access applications. Third-generation systems, in harmony with broadband integrated services digital networks, will use shared resources to convey many information types. A single network architecture will serve its users efficiently in many environments, including moving vehicles, indoor and outdoor public areas, residences, offices, and factories. A study of a switching architecture, referred to as a cellular packet switch, and a packet transmission technique, referred to as a packet reservation multiple access is discussed. By means of a design example, it is shown how these techniques can work together to meet some of the demands of third-generation systems     

TTL Prediction Schemes and the Effects of Inter-Update Time Distribution on Wireless Data Access

Modern mobile networks, such as GPRS and UMTS, support wireless data applications. One successful example is the ever popular i-Mode in Japan. Wireless data services (wireless Internet) become more important as more and more customers of handheld devices enjoy the convenience of the ubiquitous computing. To improve the effective wireless data access, the time-to-live (TTL) management for data entries becomes important due to its use in effective caching design. In this paper, we study three TTL prediction schemes and investigate the effects of the inter-update time distribution on the wireless data access. Performance analysis is carried out via simulations as well as analytical modeling. We expect our results will be useful for the future wireless data access systems, in which transmission power for mobile devices is more limited.     

Adaptive per hop differentiation for end-to-end delay assurance in multihop wireless networks

As the rapid growth of smart hand-held devices, multihop wireless access networks have a lot of potential applications in a variety of fields in civilian and military environments. Many of these applications, such as realtime audio/video streaming, will require some form of end-to-end QoS assurance. In this paper, we present an adaptive per hop differentiation (APHD) scheme towards achieving end-to-end delay assurance in multihop wireless networks. Our scheme is based on EDCA technique which is proposed in 802.11e draft. In EDCA, data packets of different priorities will use different MAC contention parameter set, which translate into different delays. Our APHD scheme extends the capability of EDCA into multihop environment by taking end-to-end delay requirement into consideration at each intermediate hop. Following a cross-layer design approach, APHD is aimed to be a distributed and localized technique. Individual nodes keep track of the channel state independently without any intercommunication overhead. Data packets carry end-to-end delay requirement along with other important information in the packet header. At an intermediate node, based on data packet’s end-to-end requirement, its accumulative delay so far, and the current node’s channel status, APHD smartly adjusts data packet’s priority level in order to satisfy its end-to-end delay requirement. Simulation results show that APHD scheme can provide excellent end-to-end delay assurance while achieving much higher network utilization, compared to a pure EDCA scheme.     

High data-rate packet communications for cellular networks usingCDMA: algorithms and performance

The advantages of code division multiple access (CDMA) for cellular voice have become well known, and IS-95-based systems have now been widely deployed. Attention is now focused on higher data-rate packet services for cellular systems. Although many packet multiple access schemes have been studied over the years, researchers have often studied single cell performance and ignored reuse. Moreover, direct sequence spread spectrum (DSSS) has been considered unsuitable for high data-rate packet multiple access since spreading limits the permitted data rates, DSSS requires large overhead (preambles) for acquisition and requires closed-loop power control. In this paper, we describe a scheme for high data-rate packet service using CDMA that addresses all of the above problems and has been standardized in Revision B of IS-95. A low rate fundamental code channel is maintained that eliminates the need for long preamble and provides closed-loop power control. Reuse is managed by the infrastructure through a “burst-level” admission control based on load and interference-level measurements at the base stations and mobiles. We report on the feasibility of such a burst-mode packet data service for cellular CDMA networks. The focus is not only on the performance of high data-rate users, but also on the impact on voice users sharing the CDMA band. We propose a multitiered performance analysis methodology consisting of a mix of static simulations, dynamic simulations at different time scales, and analytic methods to address the various feasibility issues: impact on coverage; capacity; power control; and effectiveness of burst admission algorithms. Based on the current study, we can conclude that the proposed approach is well suited for third-generation wideband CDMA systems being considered for standardization throughout the world     

Radio resource allocation in fixed broadband wireless networks

We consider use of fixed broadband wireless networks to provide packet services for telecommuting and Internet access. Each cell is divided into multiple sectors, each of them served by a sector antenna colocated with the base station (BS), and user terminals also use directional antennas mounted on the rooftops of homes or small offices and pointed to their respective BS antennas. To support a target data rate of 10 Mb/s, a bandwidth of several MHz is required. Since radio spectrum is expensive, the bandwidth needs to be reused very aggressively. Thus, efficient strategies for frequency reuse and managing cochannel interference are critically important. We propose several algorithms for dynamic radio-resource allocation in the fixed wireless networks. In particular, a method to be referred to as the staggered resource allocation (SRA) method uses a distributed scheduling algorithm to avoid major sources of interference while allowing concurrent packet transmission and meeting signal-to-interference objectives. The performance of the method is studied by analytic approximations and detailed simulation. Our results show that the combination of directional antennas plus the SRA method is highly effective in controlling cochannel interference. For reasonable system parameters, the SRA method delivers a throughput in excess of 30% per sector while permitting a given frequency band to be reused in every sector of every cell. It also provides satisfactory probability of successful packet transmission. In addition, a simple control mechanism can be applied in the method to improve performance for harsh radio environments     

Wireless Internet Access Using IS-2000 Third Generation System: A Performance and Capacity Study

The Internet has been growing tremendously in the recent years and applications like web browsing are becoming increasingly popular. In a collective effort to provide seamless access to the Internet, wireless equipment manufacturers and service providers are developing 3G wireless systems that efficiently support current and future Internet applications. In this paper, we evaluate the performance and capacity of a 3G wireless data system based on IS-2000 standard. We consider web browsing as the common application for all users and evaluate the system performance for single and parallel web browsing sessions. We perform this study through a detailed simulation of web traffic model described by distributions of number of objects per page, object size, page request size and page reading time. The simulation includes HTTP and TCP/IP protocols, link level recovery, radio resource management, mobility, channel model and, delays in the Internet and the radio access network. We quantify important system attributes like average page download times and system throughput (Kb/s per carrier per sector). We also evaluate normalized object download time, normalized page download time, penalty in performance due to link errors, link layer buffer sizes needed, channel holding time, average power used and distribution of the power used in the system.     

Performance evaluation of a TCP proxy in WCDMA networks

The article addresses the end-to-end performance of TCP in a scenario where WCDMA is used as the access link. In particular, the performance gain that can be achieved by placing a TCP split connection proxy in the WCDMA core network is examined. It is well known that performance enhancing proxies are able to improve the performance of TCP over wireless links that suffer from impairments. However, while previous work on TCP proxies for wireless systems either focused on other wireless systems, like wireless LAN or satellites, or provided a more generic framework, we address in detail the characteristics of a WCDMA access scenario supported by a TCP proxy. The characteristics of WCDMA as perceived by TCP are discussed thoroughly. We argue that the motivation for introducing a proxy is only to overcome problems stemming from a large bandwidth delay product and not to assist local transport layer error recovery at the wireless link. Based on simulations that consider both link layer protocols and TCP, the end-to-end performance for file downloads is investigated. Simulation results show that a proxy can significantly improve performance in the case of high data rates like 384 kb/s. For lower data rates, like 64 and 128 kb/s, it is sufficient to use a well configured TCP implementation.     

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。     

Quality-of-service provisioning and efficient resource utilization in CDMA cellular communications

One of the major challenges in supporting multimedia services over Internet protocol (IP)-based code-division multiple-access (CDMA) wireless networks is the quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning with efficient resource utilization. Compared with the circuit-switched voice service in the second-generation CDMA systems (i.e., IS-95), heterogeneous multimedia applications in future IP-based CDMA networks require more complex QoS provisioning and more sophisticated management of the scarce radio resources. This paper provides an overview of the CDMA-related QoS provisioning techniques in the avenues of packet scheduling, power allocation, and network coordination, summarizes state-of-the-art research results, and identifies further research issues.     

Development of Mobile Communications Systems Beyond Third Generation

Second generation mobile radio systems have been successfully deployed worldwide. These systems are evolved to higher data rates and packet transmission. Third generation mobile radio systems will be initially deployed in 2001 and 2002 in different regions of the world. Advanced multimedia services are under development and first services are already being offered in second generation systems. Due to the megatrend of the rapid growth of Internet type services packet oriented traffic is exceeding circuit switched traffic. Therefore, communication systems will be developed and optimized for packed oriented traffic. This paper presents a vision of a system beyond third generation mobile communications, which comprises a combination of several optimized access systems on a common IP based medium access and core network platform. These different access systems will interwork by horizontal and vertical handover, service negotiation and global roaming. The different access systems are allocated to different mutually complementing cell layers with respect to cell size, coverage and mobility to provide globally optimized seamless services to users.     

Opportunistic channel allocation decision making in cognitive radio communications

The global spread of wireless devices with mobile Internet access and the increasing demand of multimedia‐based applications are fueling the need for wireless broadband networks. IEEE 802.16 and 802.20 are standards for a broadband wireless access with promising cognitive radio features to support mobile Internet access. However, because of the fast changing radio environment and the demand for dynamic spectrum allocation mechanisms, these standards must continuously readjust different radio parameters. The cognitive radio makes decisions based on its built‐in inference engine, which also in time can adapt itself to different situations through the process of learning from experience. In this paper we present an automated opportunistic decision making and learning process for cognitive radio based on uncertainty reasoning algorithms. This novel approach is well suited in fast changing wireless environments with vague, incomplete, and heterogeneous information. Theory and simulations prove that decision making and learning of the cognitive radio based on the proposed approach cope with the changes in the radio environment. In this work we use fuzzy logic for the learning and decision making of the cognitive radio. Simulation also show that our approach provides accurate and precise decisions on allocating spectrum to mobile Internet users even in fast varying radio conditions. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Wireless Andrew [mobile computing for university campus]

At Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, staff and students are using mobile computers for various tasks such as transferring lecture notes, sending e-mails, or surfing the net. This possible due to the installation of a wireless network which will cover all 28 academic and administrative buildings on the 40-hectare campus, and provide service to 10000 people. As long as they are on campus, the university community will be able to take advantage of the network. The high speed wireless infrastructure installed at Carnegie Mellon is called Wireless Andrew. Started as a National Science Foundation-funded research network to support Carnegie Mellon's wireless research initiative, the network originally provided coverage in seven campus buildings. The challenges in building such a large network are far from trivial. They include designing the network so that coverage blankets the entire campus, providing enough capacity to handle the campus-wide traffic load. Further, the network must provide highly reliable service. It builds on the university's wired network infrastructure, which currently provides 10-Mb/s and 100-Mb/s Ethernet service. To supply high-speed wireless service to the campus, Lucent WaveLAN equipment has been installed, which uses direct sequence spread-spectrum radio to provide a raw data rate of 2 Mb/s. For wireless access off campus or otherwise out of the range of the WaveLAN network, cellular digital packet data is used     

Network Layer Access Control for Context-Aware IPv6 Applications

As part of the Lancaster GUIDE II project, we have developed a novel wireless access point protocol designed to support the development of next generation mobile context-aware applications in our local environs. Once deployed, this architecture will allow ordinary citizens secure, accountable and convenient access to a set of tailored applications including location, multimedia and context based services, and the public Internet. Our architecture utilises packet marking and network level packet filtering techniques within a modified Mobile IPv6 protocol stack to perform access control over a range of wireless network technologies. In this paper, we describe the rationale for, and components of, our architecture and contrast our approach with other state-of-the-art systems. The paper also contains details of our current implementation work, including preliminary performance measurements.