OmniCon: a Mobile IP‐based vertical handoff system for wireless LAN and GPRS links

Wi‐Fi based hotspots offer mobile users broadband wireless Internet connectivity in public work spaces and corporate/university campuses. Despite the aggressive deployment of these hotspots in recent years, high‐speed wireless Internet access remains restricted to small geographical areas due to the limited physical coverage of wireless LANs. On the other hand, despite their lower throughput, cellular networks have a significantly wider coverage and are thus much more available. Recognizing that 2.5G or 3G cellular networks can effectively complement wireless LANs, we set out to develop a vertical handoff system that allows mobile users to seamlessly fall back to such cellular networks as the general packet radio service (GPRS) or 3G whenever wireless LAN connectivity is not available. The resulting handoff mechanism allows a network connection of a mobile node to operate over multiple wireless access networks in a way that is transparent to end user applications. In this paper, we present the design, implementation, and evaluation of a fully operational vertical handoff system, called OmniCon, which enables mobile nodes to automatically switch between wireless LAN and GPRS, based on wireless LAN availability, by introducing a simple extension to the existing Mobile IP implementation. We discuss the design issues in the proposed vertical handoff system for heterogeneous networks, including connection setup problems due to network address translation, and the disparity in link characteristics between wireless LANs and GPRS. A detailed performance evaluation study of the OmniCon prototype demonstrates its ability to migrate active network connections between these two wireless technologies with low handoff latency and close to zero packet loss. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

无线网络测试系统的设计与实现

4G通信技术是是集3G与WLAN于一体并能够传输高质量视频图像以及图像传输质量与高清晰度电视不相上下的技术产品。LTE作为4G通信的标准技术,提供了极高的数据传输率,同时也极大地改进了核心网性能。同时,LTE小区具有极大的网络覆盖范围,网络结构简洁,并能与IP网很好地融合,具有广泛的应用前景。LTE对于未来高速铁路信息化建设极其重要。本文设计实现的无线网络测试系统将无线通信测量数据与地理信息数据相结合,为铁路无线通信网络的规划与部署提供参考。     

Bandwidth Aggregation-Aware Dynamic QoS Negotiation for Real-Time Video Streaming in Next-Generation Wireless Networks

In next generation wireless networks, Internet service providers (ISPs) are expected to offer services through several wireless technologies (e.g., WLAN, 3G, WiFi, and WiMAX). Thus, mobile computers equipped with multiple interfaces will be able to maintain simultaneous connections with different networks and increase their data communication rates by aggregating the bandwidth available at these networks. To guarantee quality-of-service (QoS) for these applications, this paper proposes a dynamic QoS negotiation scheme that allows users to dynamically negotiate the service levels required for their traffic and to reach them through one or more wireless interfaces. Such bandwidth aggregation (BAG) scheme implies transmission of data belonging to a single application via multiple paths with different characteristics, which may result in an out-of-order delivery of data packets to the receiver and introduce additional delays for packets reordering. The proposed QoS negotiation system aims to ensure the continuity of QoS perceived by mobile users while they are on the move between different access points, and also, a fair use of the network resources. The performance of the proposed dynamic QoS negotiation system is investigated and compared against other schemes. The obtained results demonstrate the outstanding performance of the proposed scheme as it enhances the scalability of the system and minimizes the reordering delay and the associated packet loss rate.     

军用无线移动自组织通信系统媒质接入技术概述

无线移动自组织网络的发展为新一代军事通信系统的发展注入了新的生命力。媒质接入技术是无线移动自组织网络的关键技术之一。本文介绍了美军近年来研发的基于移动自组织网技术的军用无线通信系统并对媒质接入问题进行了分析与总结。     

Improving TCP performance in heterogeneous mobile environments by exploiting the explicit cooperation between server and mobile host

In recent years, many different kinds of wireless access networks have been deployed and become inseparable parts of the Internet. But TCP, the most widely used transport protocol of the Internet, was designed for stationery hosts. It faces severe challenges when user moves around in these networks and handoff occurs frequently. In this paper, we investigate the potential benefits of bringing explicit cooperation between TCP server and mobile host.For this purpose, TCP HandOff (TCP-HO), a practical end-to-end mechanism, is designed for improving TCP performance in heterogeneous mobile environments. TCP-HO assumes that a mobile host is able to detect the completion of handoff immediately and has a coarse estimation of new wireless link’s bandwidth. When a mobile host detects handoff completion, it will immediately notify the server through two duplicate ACKs, whose TCP option also carries the bandwidth of new wireless link. After receiving this notification, the server begins to transmit immediately and keeps updating ssthresh according to the bandwidth from mobile host and its new RTT samples. This update will end after four RTT samples or after congestion is detected.TCP-HO has been implemented in FreeBSD 5.4. Experimental results indicate that in heterogeneous mobile environments, TCP-HO can improve TCP performance a lot without adversely affecting cross traffic even when mobile host only has a coarse estimation of new wireless link’s bandwidth. Considering that more and more users are accessing the Internet through heterogeneous wireless networks and mobile host could have a coarse estimation of wireless link’s bandwidth, it should be worthwhile to change both server and mobile host for improving TCP performance.     

Service level agreements (SLAs) parameter negotiation between heterogeneous 4G wireless network operators

We are currently witnessing a growing interest of network operators to migrate their existing 2G/3G networks to 4G technologies such as long-term evolution (LTE) to enhance the user experience and service opportunities in terms of providing multi-megabit bandwidth, more efficient use of radio networks, latency reduction, and improved mobility. Along with this, there is a strong deployment of packet data networks such as those based on IEEE 802.11 and 802.16 standards. Mobile devices are having increased capabilities to access many of these wireless networks types at the same time. Reinforcing quality of service (QoS) in 4G wireless networks will be a major challenge because of varying bit rates, channel characteristics, bandwidth allocation and global roaming support among heterogeneous wireless networks. As a mobile user moves across access networks, to the issue of mapping resource reservations between different networks to maintain QoS behavior becomes crucial. To support global roaming and interoperability across heterogeneous wireless networks, it is important for wireless network operators to negotiate service level agreement (SLA) contracts relevant to the QoS requirements. Wireless IP traffic modeling (in terms of providing assured QoS) is still immature because the majority of the existing work is merely based on the characterization of wireless IP traffic without investigating the behavior of queueing systems for such traffic. To overcome such limitations, we investigate SLA parameter negotiation among heterogeneous wireless network operators by focusing on traffic engineering and QoS together for 4G wireless networks. We present a novel mechanism that achieves service continuity through SLA parameter negotiation by using a translation matrix, which maps QoS parameters between different access networks. The SLA matrix composition is modeled analytically based on the G/M/1 queueing system. We evaluate the model using two different scheduling schemes and we derive closed form expressions for different QoS parameters for performance metrics such as packet delay and packet loss rate. We also develop a discrete event simulator and conduct a series of simulation experiments in order to understand the QoS behavior of corresponding traffic classes.     

IPv6 based relay gateway protocol in hybrid networks

During the past few years, WMAN (Wireless Metropolitan Area Network) and WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) provided fast, convenient and reliable solution for all kinds of users. With the development of the communication technology, the future wireless networks will allow mobile users access Internet anywhere, anytime. Therefore, it is a natural trend to combine different wireless networks to provide a seamless roaming for users. It is feasible for mobile terminal which have multiple modes to handoff between different networks. A relay gateway protocol for the WLAN-mode nodes (mono-mode WLAN nodes and dual-mode nodes) in the hybrid network of IEEE 802.16 WMANs and IEEE 802.11 WLANs is proposed to provide wider mobility. Dual-mode mobile nodes with good service can provide WLAN links to nearby WLAN-mode nodes with bad service or out of the WLAN coverage. Simulation results show that the relay gateway scheme can improve network performance of the hybrid networks. Moreover, the relay gateway method can bring additional service coverage and increase the capacity of WMANs and WLANs.     

Mobile broadcast services with MIMO antennae in 4G wireless networks

The deployment of wireless data broadcast to empower mobile information services as a resource-conserving means offers significant benefits due to the scalability feature offered by the technology. In this paper, we present a novel and holistic data broadcast management approach in 4 G wireless networks with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennae. The proposed scheme consists of three elements, namely: (i) broadcast ordering; (ii) Global indexing; and (iii) merging data structure. With the integration of these elements, we expect to obtain substantial efficiency for mobile computing clients when retrieving data on-air. We have experimentally evaluated the performance of the proposed model including comparison with the relevant schemes. The results from the experiments affirm the effectiveness of our proposed approach in respect to minimizing query access time and conserving energy utilization of the clients.     

A survey of energy efficient MAC protocols for IEEE 802.11 WLAN

In recent years, IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been widely deployed, and more and more mobile devices have built-in WLAN interfaces. However, WLAN employs the carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) medium access control (MAC) protocol, which consumes a significant portion of the energy resources of a mobile device. Hence, minimizing the energy consumption of the WLAN interface in mobile devices has recently attracted considerable interest in both academia and industry. This article provides a survey and an experimental study of the energy consumption issues and energy-efficient technologies of the MAC protocol in IEEE 802.11 WLAN.     

Efficient group key management for multi-privileged groups

Multi-privileged group communications containing multiple data streams have been studied in the traditional wired network environment and the Internet. With the rapid development of mobile and wireless networks and in particular mobile ad-hoc networks (MANETs), the traditional Internet has been integrated with mobile and wireless networks to form the mobile Internet. The multi-privileged group communications can be applied to the mobile Internet. Group users can subscribe to different data streams according to their interest and have multiple access privileges with the support of multi-privileged group communications. Security is relatively easy to be guaranteed in traditional groups where all group members have the same privilege. On the other hand, security has been a challenging issue and is very difficult to handle in multi-privileged groups. In this paper, we first introduce some existing rekeying schemes for secure multi-privileged group communications and analyze their advantages and disadvantages. Then, we propose an efficient group key management scheme called ID-based Hierarchical Key Graph Scheme (IDHKGS) for secure multi-privileged group communications. The proposed scheme employs a key graph, on which each node is assigned a unique ID according to access relations between nodes. When a user joins/leaves the group or changes its access privileges, other users in the group can deduce the new keys using one-way function by themselves according to the ID of joining/leaving/changing node on the graph, and thus the proposed scheme can greatly reduce the rekeying overhead.     

Evaluation of mobility and quality of service interaction

With the fast adoption of IP-based communications for mobile computing, users are expecting a similar service in wireless and wired networks. This raises the need for setting guarantees to the quality of the offered service (QoS), despite the technology of the access network (AN) or the mobility of the terminal. As mobile computing is getting more popular on a daily basis, new broadband cellular wireless ANs will appear with overlapping coverage in hot spots. This generates a new challenge for QoS provision, as it will have to deal with fast mobility of terminals. Various QoS architectures have been defined, but none provides full support for guaranteed service levels for mobile hosts (MHs). This paper discusses the problems related to providing QoS to MHs and identifies the existing solutions and future work needed.     

A robust method for soft IP handover

Multimedia streaming over wireless networks - often called mobile multimedia streaming lets users access music, movie, and news services at any time, regardless of location. Given that multimedia streaming is a key goal of third-generation and future wireless networks, vendors will soon deploy streaming clients in advanced mobile terminals. Current mobile terminals, however, fail to adequately support mobile multimedia communication because wireless networks have high packet-loss rates. To eliminate packet loss during handover, we use a packet path diversity scheme and an end-to-end bicasting mechanism that enables soft IP handover. To offset wireless errors, we use a forward error correction (FEC) scheme and embed it in the bicasting mechanism. Our bicasting method encodes the data stream and then splits it, providing more effective diversity than general bicasting, which sends the same data down both paths.' To support our method, we propose the mobile multimedia streaming protocol (MMSP), a new transport-layer protocol that supports multihoming and bicasting in combination with FEC.     

基于表驱动的最佳动态路由代理MANET路由算法

MANET(mobileadhocnetworks)是由无线移动节点动态地构成的一个临时网络,它不需要任何固定的网络基础设施或网络管理中心。由于无线传输的范围有限,因此,一个节点要和另一个节点交换信息可能通过多跳的方式跨越另一个网络。文章在基于路由表驱动的基础上,针对MANET提出了一个提高带宽利用率,适应网络拓扑结构动态变化的路由算法,并与DSDV,GSR做了对比。     

An efficient password-based three-party authenticated multiple key exchange protocol for wireless mobile networks

With the rapid development of wireless mobile communication, the password-based three-party authenticated key exchange protocol has attracted an increasing amount of attention. To generate more session keys at one time for different applications, Li et al. proposed a password-based three-party authenticated multiple key exchange (3PAMKE) protocol for wireless mobile networks. They claimed that their protocol could withstand various attacks. In this paper, we will show Li et al.’s protocol is not secure off-line password guessing. Furthermore, we proposed an improved 3PAMKE protocol to overcome weakness in Li et al.’s protocol. Security analysis and performance analysis shows our protocol not only overcomes security weakness, but also has better performance. Therefore, our protocol is more suitable for wireless mobile networks.     

4G无线网络的安全体系设计

随着无线网络的不断发展,移动通信技术从3G网络逐步朝4G网络发展,由于4G无线网络的特点,导致4G系统中的安全隐患也越来越严重.在本文的研究中,通过对4G网线网络安全隐患的分析,从无线网络终端、无线网络和无线业务三个方面对4G系统安全体系设计进行研究.     

Minimization of communication cost through caching in mobileenvironments

Users of mobile computers will soon have online access to a large number of databases via wireless networks. Because of limited bandwidth, wireless communication is more expensive than wire communication. In this paper, we present and analyze various static and dynamic data allocation methods. The objective is to optimize the communication cost between a mobile computer and the stationary computer that stores the online database. Analysis is performed in two cost models. One is connection (or time) based, as in cellular telephones, where the user is charged per minute of connection. The other is message based, as in packet radio networks, where the user is charged per message. Our analysis addresses both the average case and the worst case for determining the best allocation method     

An overview of transmission theory and techniques of large-scale antenna systems for 5G wireless communications

To meet the future demand for huge traffic volume of wireless data service, the research on the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems has been undertaken in recent years. It is expected that the spectral and energy efficiencies in 5G mobile communication systems should be ten-fold higher than the ones in the fourth generation (4G) mobile communication systems. Therefore, it is important to further exploit the potential of spatial multiplexing of multiple antennas. In the last twenty years, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna techniques have been considered as the key techniques to increase the capacity of wireless communication systems. When a large-scale antenna array (which is also called massive MIMO) is equipped in a base-station, or a large number of distributed antennas (which is also called large-scale distributed MIMO) are deployed, the spectral and energy efficiencies can be further improved by using spatial domain multiple access. This paper provides an overview of massive MIMO and large-scale distributed MIMO systems, including spectral efficiency analysis, channel state information (CSI) acquisition, wireless transmission technology, and resource allocation.     

位置相关信息服务移动终端缓存替换研究

随着无线网络的快速发展,相应的无线应用服务越来越多,位置相关信息服务(LDISs)就是其中典型的例子。无线网络受信道带宽以及终端计算能力等因素的限制,缓存技术减少了网络开销并且支持在网络断接下使用数据的优点而成为研究热点。本文根据无线应用环境的特点,结合位置相关信息数据的特征,运用粗糙集(RoughSet,RS)这一强有力的数学工具,给出一种更加准确、实用的移动缓存替换策略。     

Wireless Handheld Devices Become Trusted Network Devices

ABSTRACT

In the world of information technology, a security model is only as secure as its weakest link. There are several layers of security and different measures that can currently be implemented. However, they lack coordination, and therefore potential security breaches might compromise the network. With wireless access becoming the norm, and users requiring “on the move communication” even within a campus, networks are expanding past the traditional wired networks by adding wireless access points. This gives customers the flexibility they require but leaves a net threat vector to the network. There have been various encryption and security steps taken to validate the communication and authentication of the devices and end users connecting. This project addresses the critical problem of secure authentication using the 802.1x standard, which will be implemented using Microsoft's Radius server elements. It will involve the enrollment of secure certificates on Windows mobile devices, thus securing mobile devices from physical attacks. To ensure that all steps are adhered to, that all necessary applications have been installed, and to handle Web service communication, an application will be created that will provide an automated solution.     

基于规模化无线网络技术架构解决方案的思考

随着宽带网络迅速普及,越来越多的人希望用手提电脑、PDA、手机等设备移动接入网络.而无线宽带网络逐渐在公共接入.公共安全.公共服务等方面发挥巨大潜力,引发了无线网络建设的热潮;本文在分析制约无线网络发展的主要问题基础上.对规模化无线网络建设给出一些具体方案和建议.