A new MAC protocol for broadband wireless communications and its performance evaluation

This paper presents a new Time Division Multiple Access/Frequency Division Duplexing (TDMA/FDD) based Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for broadband wireless networks, supporting Quality of Service (QoS) for real-time multimedia applications. It also gives the Call Blocking Probability (CBP), packet end-to-end delay and utilization analysis of different service classes, as they are most essential performance criterions in broadband wireless network assessment. The Connection Admission Control (CAC) mechanism in the proposed MAC efficiently organizes the bandwidth allocation for different service classes by means of a fairness based scheduling algorithm. In addition, the simulation model of the proposed MAC scheme is realized by using OPNET Modeler network simulator. The results of the analytical calculations for the CBPs are compared to those of the simulation of the proposed MAC, thus validity of the MAC protocol is proved.     

Design and performance evaluation of a MAC protocol for wireless local area networks

We propose and analyze, from a performance viewpoint, a Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs). The protocol, named Prioritized-Access with Centralized-Control (PACC), supports integrated traffics by guaranteeing an almost complete utilization of network resources. The proposed protocol combines random access for signalling, with collision-free access to the transmission channel. The transmission channel is assumed to be slotted, with slots grouped into frames. Access to transmission slots is controlled by a centralized scheduler which manages a multiclass queue containing the users' requests to access the transmission channel. Three classes of users are assumed: voice traffic (voice), data traffic with real-time constraints (high-priority data), and classical data traffic (low-priority data). A priority mechanism ensures that speech users have the highest priority in accessing the idle slots, since speech packets have a more demanding delay constraint. The remaining channel bandwidth is shared fairly among the high-priority data terminals. The low-priority data terminals use the slots left empty by the other classes. Specifically, access to transmission slots is controlled by the centralized scheduler by managing a transmission cycle for each class of terminals. The voice-terminals cycle has a constant length equal to one frame, while the lengths of the data-terminals cycles are random variables which depend on the number of active voice and data terminals. In this paper we show that the proposed scheme can support the same maximum number of voice terminals as an ideal scheduler, while guaranteeing an almost complete utilization of network capacity. In addition, via a performance analysis, we verify that by limiting the number of real-time data terminals in the network this class of traffic can be statistically guaranteed access delays in the order of 200–300 msec. Hence, the QoS the network gives to the real-time data terminals makes this service suitable for real-time applications such as alarms or low bit rate video. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

ATM‐based wireless broadband access in the local loop

Broadband networks using wireless transmission techniques are a quick and flexible means of implementing subscriber access. Unoccupied frequency bands with sufficient bandwidth to allow the transmission of digital signals at very high bit rates are found only in the microwave bands. Because the path loss is fairly high at these frequencies, the diameter of radio cells is limited to a maximum of a few kilometres. This results in a microcellular system, which is best implemented in the form of a point‐to‐multipoint system, where one radio‐base station serves all subscribers registered in that radio cell. An interactive, broadband, ATM‐based radio local loop has undergone successful trials in Munich. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reverse link performance of wireless local loop CDMA networks

We study the effect of directional subscriber antennas on the reverse link performance of a power-controlled code-division multiple access (CDMA) network in wireless local loop deployments. We investigate the capacity gain that is attained in wireless local loop (WLL) CDMA over mobile cellular systems and its variation as a function of the channel statistics. We also determine the overhead that soft handoff and directional subscriber antennas impose on the WLL system capacity     

QoS guarantee and provisioning at the contention-based wireless MAC layer in the IEEE 802.11e wireless LANs

This article investigates and provides novel solutions for a new research avenue to support QoS in contention-based distributed WLANs. Although QoS is easier to manage in centrally controlled and reservation-based MAC protocols, they are hardly implemented in today's products due to several reasons, such as their higher complexity and their inefficiency for normal data transmissions, lack of robustness, and the strong assumption of global synchronizations. Additionally, end users like contention-based protocols because they plug and play. Almost all end-user networks need a MAC layer, and the IEEE 802.11 WLAN and Ethernet have become widely deployed since these contention-based MAC protocols are simple, robust, and allow fast installation with minimal management and maintenance costs. There is a clear need to support QoS guarantees and provisioning at the contention-based MAC layer. QoS guarantee and bandwidth allocation schemes have been well studied for mobile cellular networks, in which bandwidth is deterministic in terms of number of channels by frequency division, time division, or code division. On the other hand, bandwidth allocation in contention-based distributed WLANs is extremely challenging due to the contention constraint, the packet-based network, and, most important, an unknown number of stations competing for access to the only channel available. As a consequence, both guaranteeing QoS and efficiently allocating bandwidth are challenging issues.     

Packet concatenation at the IP level for performance enhancement in wireless local area networks

Wireless local area networks experience performance degradation in presence of small packets. The main reason for that is the large overhead added at the physical and link layers. This paper proposes a concatenation algorithm which groups IP layer packets prior to transmission, called PAC-IP. As a result, the overhead added at the physical and the link layers is shared among the grouped packets. Along with performance improvement, PAC-IP enables packet-based fairness in medium access as well as includes QoS support module handling delay-sensitive traffic demands. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated through both simulations and an experimental WLAN testbed environment covering the single-hop and the widespread infrastructure network scenarios. Obtained results underline significant performance enhancement in different operating scenarios and channel conditions. Dzmitry Kliazovich received his Masters degree in Telecommunication science from Belarusian State University of Informatics and Radioelectronics in 2002. He is currently working towards the Ph.D. degree in University of Trento, Italy. From September 2005 to February 2006 he was a visiting researcher at the Computer Science Department of the University of California at Los Angeles. He is an author of more than 20 research papers published in international books, journals and conference proceedings. His main research interest lies in field of wireless networking with a focus on performance optimization and cross-layer design. Fabrizio Granelli was born in Genoa in 1972. He received the “Laurea” (M.Sc.) degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Genoa, Italy, in 1997, with a thesis on video coding, awarded with the TELECOM Italy prize, and the Ph.D. in Telecommunications from the same university, in 2001. Since 2000 he is carrying on his teaching activity as Assistant Professor in Telecommunications at the Dept. of Information and Communication Technology—University of Trento (Italy). In August 2004, he was visiting professor at the State University of Campinas (Brasil). He is author or co-author of more than 60 papers published in international journals, books and conferences, and he is member of the Technical Committee of the International Conference on Communications (from 2003 to 2007) and Global Telecommunications Conference (GLOBECOM2003 and GLOBECOM2004). Dr. Granelli is guest-editor of ACM Journal on Mobile Networks and Applications, special issues on “WLAN Optimization at the MAC and Network Levels” and “Ultra-Wide Band for Sensor Networks”, and Co-Chair of 10th IEEE Workshop on Computer-Aided Modeling, Analysis, and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD’04). Dr. Granelli is General Vice-Chair of the First International Conference on Wireless Internet (WICON’05) and General Chair of the 11th IEEE Workshop on Computer-Aided Modeling, Analysis, and Design of Communication Links and Networks (CAMAD’06). His main research activities are in the field of networking and signal processing, with particular reference to network performance modeling, medium access control, wireless networks, cognitive radio systems, and video transmission over packet networks. He is Senior Member of IEEE and Associate Editor of IEEE Communications Letters.     

Polling-based MAC protocols for improving real-time performance in a wireless PROFIBUS

The idea of having a wireless PROFIBUS is appealing, since this can bring benefits like reduced cabling need and mobile stations to the factory floor. However, unfortunately, wireless transmission is error prone, which affects the timeliness and reliability behavior users expect from a fieldbus system (hard real time). In this paper, we compare two different approaches for the medium access control (MAC) and link layer of a wireless PROFIBUS system with respect to their so-called real-time performance in the presence of transmission errors. Specifically, we compare the existing PROFIBUS MAC and link layer protocol with a simple round-robin protocol. It is shown that round-robin delivers significantly better real-time performance than the PROFIBUS protocol under bursty error conditions. In a second step, we propose three add-ons to round-robin and we show that they further increase the real-time performance of round-robin. The add-ons take certain characteristics of the wireless medium into account.     

QoS enhancement in IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks

A distributed medium access scheme called EDCF, which is adopted in an upcoming standard IEEE 802.11e to allow prioritized medium access for applications with QoS requirements, is described and discussed. Its performance is also evaluated via simulations.     

A flow rejection algorithm for QoS maintenance in a variable bandwidth wireless IP environment

A flow rejection algorithm for the dynamic resource reservation protocol (dRSVP) protocol is proposed. dRSVP is an enhanced version of RSVP, aiming at providing dynamic quality-of-service (QoS) support in a variable bandwidth environment (e.g., wireless) through guarantees of ranges of bandwidth instead of specific values. Flow rejection occurs when the channel quality decreases to a level that even the minimum bandwidth requirements per flow cannot be fulfilled. The proposed algorithm aims at improving the flow dropping probability of dRSVP, without affecting the bandwidth utilization. Its operation is based on setting priority classes and rejecting the minimum required number of flows per class, in order to guarantee QoS to the remaining. Both mathematical analysis and simulation results show that the overall flow dropping probability can be significantly reduced.     

Where there's a WILL [wireless in the local loop]

Linking telephone subscribers into the network via wireless in the local loop (WILL) promises to boost telephone usage and enhance the effectiveness of telecommunications liberalisation. There is a wide choice of wireless technology potentially suitable for deployment in WILL applications. Candidates include the various analogue cellular technologies, digital cellular including GSM, and cordless systems including CT2 and DECT. The author discusses the FDMA/TDMA based fixed radio access system of Ionica, and the CDMA based system of Liberty. Both are in competition with BT. The choice of radio technology is discussed as are the problems caused by telecommunications liberalisation     

Interference analysis in fixed service microwave links due to overlay of broadband SSDS‐CDMA wireless local loop system

In this paper the results of the interference analysis in FS‐ML due to new WLL systems with broadband SSDS‐CDMA techniques, sharing the same frequency band, is evaluated. Effects of WLL systems are expressed through the interference noise power at the FDM/FM receiver and BER at the DML receiver output, respectively. The results obtained show that in the typical working conditions with careful cell planning, interference can be neglected, and in most situations WLL overlay would not cause excessive interference in the FS‐ML. This conclusion is of great importance for the development of telecommunication systems, specially in rural areas, because it is possible to develop telecommunication systems fast and economically, without any additional frequency demands and under favourable economical conditions. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

QoS for wireless sensor networks: Enabling service differentiation at the MAC sub-layer using CoSenS

Providing service differentiation in wireless sensor networks while proposing simple and highly scalable solution is a challenging problem. We retain the use of CSMA/CA as access protocol because of its simplicity, versatility and good scalability properties. We developed CoSenS, a Collect then Send burst Scheme, on top of it to address its weaknesses while facilitating the implementation of scheduling policies. In this article, we propose a simple and scalable service differentiation solution; we implement fixed priority and earliest deadline first on top of CoSenS. The simulation analysis shows that our solution self-adapts to the traffic variation and greatly enhances end-to-end delay, reliability and deadline meet ratio for urgent traffic while not degrading best effort traffic compared to IEEE 802.15.4 original protocol and IEEE 802.15.4 implementing these scheduling policies. Additionally, CoSenS is implemented and tested on motes. The real experimentation results validated our simulation analysis.     

Design and performance evaluation of a new medium access controlprotocol for local wireless data communications

This paper proposes a new medium access control protocol for wireless data communications in local area, called the reservation-based multiple access with variable frame length (RMAV). We design RMAV under the consideration that the population of wireless terminals and the system load frequently change and are almost unpredictable in wireless data communications. RMAV is based on the slot reservation scheme and adopts a frame structure with variable length. The frame length increases as the number of active terminals and/or the system load increases. We evaluate the performance of RMAV by analysis and computer simulation. Due to its adaptability to traffic patterns, RMAV offers short delay in light load conditions and high throughput in heavy load conditions     

为推动亚太区无线发展描绘蓝图三个高层国际专题会议在深圳举行

9月1日至10日，三个重要的无线领域国际高层会议相继在圳深举行。它们分别是国际电联（ITU）亚太区域宽带无线接入研讨会、亚太电信组织（APT）无线通信论坛第二次会议、APT无线射频识别技术（RFID）研讨会。     

Equality of access and local loop unbundling in the UK broadband telecommunications market

The relationship between an incumbent telecommunications operator and those companies that access its network is often fraught. This is particularly true in respect of local loop unbundling (LLU), a key product in the broadband telecommunications market. OFCOM, the UK’s telecommunications regulator, recently conducted a major review of the industry that resulted in a new approach to tackling this relationship. This paper focuses on this new approach, which combined a new regulatory concept – equality of access – with the establishment of a mini-regulator focusing on local loop unbundling processes, and goes on to assess the extent to which the relationship has been improved.     

OFCDM: a promising broadband wireless access technique

Future mobile communication systems aim to provide extremely high-speed data transmission, especially in the downlink. The broadband orthogonal frequency- and code-division multiplexing system with two-dimensional spreading (time and frequency domain spreading) is becoming a very promising technique for highspeed wireless communications due to its advantages over OFDM. This article presents the basic structure and main functions of the OFCDM system. A nonsequential code assignment scheme is introduced. The novel detection method for the OFCDM, called hybrid multi-code interference cancellation and minimum mean square error detection, is described. The application of advanced techniques to the OFCDM, such as turbo coding and MIMO, is also discussed. It is shown in this article that OFCDM is superior to OFDM.     

Opportunistic packet scheduling algorithm for non-real-time service with a soft QoS requirement in a mobile broadband wireless access system

In this paper, we present a packet scheduling algorithm for a non-real-time service, with soft QoS requirements, which allows for degrading the QoS level, e.g., typically the packet delay, whenever necessary, in mobile broadband wireless Internet access systems. This algorithm is designed to properly trade off system throughput and delay performance, which can improve the system capacity by relaxing the delay constraint with respect to the underlying soft QoS requirement. This is as opposed to most of the existing packet scheduling algorithms for non-real-time service which are simply designed to maximize the system throughput without a delay constraint. The proposed adaptive exponential scheduling algorithm intentionally introduces additional delay to some users, especially under bad channel conditions, opportunistically allowing for serving users only under good channel conditions, as long as the resulting QoS degradation is acceptable for non-real-time service users. The results from a system-level simulation demonstrate that the system capacity can be significantly increased over existing algorithms, by as much as 65%, using the adaptive exponential scheduling algorithm while satisfying the given QoS-level requirements.     

IP QoS技术的现状与发展趋势

文章介绍了IP服务质量的研究背景和意义，然后从用户业务流量控制和网络业务管理两个方面剖析了IP服务质量方面的主要技术，讨论了当前的服务质量研究现状和存在的问题，最后指出了该项技术的发展趋势。     

Providing statistical QoS guarantee for voice over IP in the IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs

Recent years have seen greatly increasing interests in voice over IP in wireless LANs, in which the IEEE 802.11 distributed coordination function protocol or enhanced DCF protocol is used. However, since both DCF and EDCF are contention-based medium access control protocols, it is difficult for them to support the strict QoS requirement for VoIP. Therefore, in this article we propose a novel call admission control scheme that runs at the MAC layer to support VoIP services. The call admission control mechanism regulates voice traffic to efficiently coordinate medium contention among voice sources. The rate control mechanism regulates non-voice traffic to control its impact on the performance of voice traffic. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed schemes can well support statistical QoS guarantees for voice traffic and maintain stable high throughput for non-voice traffic at the same time.