Module 5

Wireless and Mobile Networks

Introduction
▪ Cover a wide range of networks, including both wireless LANs such as IEEE 802.11 and cellular networks such as a
3G network

▪ Elements in a wireless network:

▪ Wireless hosts
▪ A wireless host might be a laptop, palmtop, smartphone, or desktop computer. The hosts themselves may or may
not be mobile

▪ Wireless links
▪ A host connects to a base station through a wireless communication link
▪ Different wireless link technologies have different transmission rates and can transmit over different distances

▪ Base station
▪ The base station is a key part of the wireless network infrastructure
▪ A base station is responsible for sending and receiving data to and from a wireless host that is associated with
that base station
Elements of a wireless network
Introduction
▪ A wireless host is “associated” with a base station

▪ Means
▪ the host is within the wireless communication distance of the base station
▪ the host uses that base station to relay data between the host and the larger network

▪ Cell towers in cellular networks and access points in 802.11 wireless LANs are examples of base
stations

▪ Hosts associated with a base station are often referred to as operating in infrastructure mode, since
all traditional network services (e.g., address assignment and routing) are provided by the network

▪ In ad hoc networks, wireless hosts have no such infrastructure with which to connect, so the hosts
themselves must provide for services such as routing, address assignment etc.
Introduction
▪ When a mobile host moves beyond the range
of one base station and into the range of
another, it will change its point of attachment
into the larger network—a process referred to
as handoff

▪ Network infrastructure
▪ This is the larger network with which a
wireless host may wish to communicate
Classification of Wireless Networks
▪ Classification of wireless networks according to two criteria:
▪ whether a packet in the wireless network crosses exactly one wireless hop or multiple wireless hops
▪ whether there is infrastructure such as a base station in the network

▪ Single-hop, infrastructure-based: These networks have a base station that is connected to a

larger wired network. Ex: classroom, café, or library; and the 3G cellular data networks
▪ Single-hop, infrastructure-less: In these networks, there is no base station that is connected to
a wireless network. Ex: Bluetooth networks, 802.11 networks in ad hoc mode
▪ Multi-hop, infrastructure-based: In these networks, a base station is present that is wired to
the larger network. Ex: wireless mesh networks
▪ Multi-hop, infrastructure-less: There is no base station in these networks, and nodes may
have to relay messages among several other nodes in order to reach a destination. Ex:
MANETs, VANETs
Wireless Links and Network Characteristics
▪ Important differences between a wired link and a wireless link

1. Decreasing signal strength

▪ Electromagnetic radiation attenuates as it passes through matter and Even in free space, the
signal will disperse

2. Interference from other sources

▪ Radio sources transmitting in the same frequency band will interfere with each other
▪ Ex: 2.4 GHz wireless phones and 802.11b wireless LANs transmit in the same frequency band

3. Multipath propagation
▪ Occurs when portions of the electromagnetic wave reflect off objects and the ground, taking
paths of different lengths between a sender and receiver
Wireless Links and Network Characteristics
▪ Signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
▪ is a relative measure of the strength of the received signal (i.e., the information
being transmitted) and this noise
▪ measured in units of decibels (dB)
▪ a larger SNR makes it easier for the receiver to extract the transmitted signal
from the background noise
Wireless Link Characteristics
10-1

▪ SNR: signal-to-noise ratio 10-2

▪ larger SNR – easier to extract signal 10-3

from noise (a “good thing”)

BER
10-4
▪ SNR versus BER tradeoffs
▪ given physical layer: increase power -> 10-5
increase SNR->decrease BER
10-6
▪ given SNR: choose physical layer that
meets BER requirement, giving highest
thruput 10-7
10 20 30 40
▪ SNR may change with mobility: SNR(dB)
dynamically adapt physical layer
(modulation technique, rate) QAM256 (8 Mbps)

QAM16 (4 Mbps)

BPSK (1 Mbps)
Wireless Links and Network Characteristics
▪ For a given SNR, a modulation technique with a higher bit transmission rate (whether in error
or not) will have a higher BER
▪ QAM16 would make it the preferred modulation technique in this situation

▪ Dynamic selection of the physical-layer modulation technique can be used to adapt the
modulation technique to channel conditions
▪ the selection of a modulation technique that provides the highest transmission rate possible

▪ In case of wired broadcast links, all nodes receive the transmissions from all other nodes

▪ In the case of wireless links, hidden terminal problem and fading makes it complex
Wireless network characteristics
Multiple wireless senders and receivers create additional problems
(beyond multiple access):

Hidden terminal problem

 B, A hear each other Signal attenuation:
 B, C hear each other  B, A hear each other

 A, C can not hear each other  B, C hear each other

means A, C unaware of their  A, C can not hear each other

interference at B interfering at B
CDMA
▪ Code division multiple access (CDMA) belongs to the family of channel partitioning
protocols
▪ In a CDMA protocol, each bit being sent is encoded by multiplying the bit by a signal
(the code) that changes at a much faster rate (known as the chipping rate) than the
original sequence of data bits
▪ unique “code” assigned to each user; i.e., code set partitioning
▪ all users share same frequency, but each user has own “chipping” sequence (i.e., code) to
encode data
▪ allows multiple users to “coexist” and transmit simultaneously with minimal interference (if codes
are “orthogonal”)
▪ encoded signal = (original data) X (chipping sequence)
▪ decoding: inner-product of encoded signal and chipping sequence
CDMA encode/decode
channel output Zi,m
Zi,m= di.cm
data d0 = 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
d1 = -1
bits -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
sender
1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 slot 1 slot 0
code channel channel
-1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
output output
slot 1 slot 0

M
Di = S Zi,m.cm
m=1
M
received 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
d0 = 1
input -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 d1 = -1

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 slot 1 slot 0
code channel channel
-1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1

receiver output output

slot 1 slot 0
CDMA: two-sender interference
channel sums
together
transmissions by
Sender 1
sender 1 and 2

Sender 2

using same code as

sender 1, receiver
recovers sender 1’s
original data from
summed channel
data!
WiFi : 802.11 Wireless LANs
▪ IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN, also known as WiFi
▪ Several 802.11 standards for wireless LAN technology, including 802.11b,
802.11a, and 802.11g
▪ 802.11g is by far the most popular technology
▪ A few dual mode (802.11a/g) and tri-mode (802.11a/b/g) devices are also
available
▪ They all use the same medium access protocol, CSMA/CA
▪ Use the same frame structure for their link-layer frames
▪ All three standards allow for both “infrastructure mode” and “ad hoc mode”
Summary of IEEE 802.11 standards

▪ A new WiFi standard, 802.11n [IEEE 802.11n 2012]

▪ Uses multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas
▪ two or more antennas on the sending side and two or more antennas on the receiving
side that are transmitting/receiving different signals
The 802.11 Architecture
▪ The fundamental building block is the basic service set (BSS)
▪ A BSS contains one or more wireless stations and a central base station, known
as an access point (AP)
▪ AP in each of two BSSs is connected to an interconnection device which in turn
leads to the Internet
▪ In a typical home network, there is one AP and one router that connects the BSS
to the Internet
▪ Each 802.11 wireless station has a 6-byte MAC address stored in 802.11 adapter
▪ Each AP also has a MAC address for its wireless interface
IEEE 802.11 LAN Architecture
The 802.11 Architecture
▪ Wireless LANs that deploy APs are
often referred to as infrastructure
wireless LANs
▪ IEEE 802.11 stations can also group
themselves together to form an ad
hoc network—a network with no
central control and with no
connections to the “outside world”
▪ An ad hoc network might be formed
when people with laptops get together
and want to exchange data in the
absence of a centralized AP

An IEEE 802.11 ad hoc network

The 802.11 Architecture
▪ Channels and Association
▪ In 802.11, each wireless station needs to associate with an AP before it can send
or receive network-layer data
▪ When a network administrator installs an AP, the administrator assigns a one or two-
word Service Set Identifier (SSID) to the access point
▪ Routers use one of the two WiFi frequency bands for signal : 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz
▪ The main difference between these two frequency bands are the range and
bandwidth that they provide
▪ If you're looking for more WiFi coverage, you want to be using the 2.4 GHz band; if
you're looking for faster speeds, you want to be using the 5 GHz band
The 802.11 Architecture
▪ Within these WiFi frequency bands, we have smaller bands which are referred to
as WiFi channels
▪ A WiFi channel is the medium through which our wireless networks can send and
receive data
▪ 2.4 GHz band has 11 channels, and the 5 GHz band has 45 channels
▪ Certain channels aren't the best choice to use is because they have interference
▪ In the 2.4 GHz band, each channel is allotted 20 MHz and separated by 5 MHz
▪ 2.4 GHz band is only 100 MHz wide, the 11 channels of 20 MHz overlap with one
another
▪ This causes interference on network and and a lag in WiFi's performance
The 802.11 Architecture
▪ There are some channels in the 2.4 GHz spectrum that don't overlap with the
other channels
▪ Channels 1, 6, and 11
▪ A WiFi jungle is any physical location where a wireless station receives a
sufficiently strong signal from two or more Aps
▪ If there are five APs in the WiFi jungle, to gain Internet access, your wireless station
needs to join exactly one of the subnets and hence needs to associate with exactly one
of the Aps

▪ How to associate with one AP?

▪ The 802.11 standard requires that an AP periodically send beacon frames, each of
which includes the AP’s SSID and MAC address
▪ Selects one of the AP
The 802.11 Architecture
▪ The host chooses the AP whose beacon frame is received with the highest
signal strength
▪ The process of scanning channels and listening for beacon frames is known as
passive scanning
▪ A wireless host can also perform active scanning, by broadcasting a probe
frame that will be received by all APs within the wireless host’s range
▪ APs respond to the probe request frame with a probe response frame
Passive/Active Scanning

Active Scanning
Passive Scanning ▪ Probe Request frame broadcast from H1
▪ beacon frames sent from Aps ▪ Probe Response frames sent from APs
▪ association Request frame sent: H1 to ▪ Association Request frame sent: H1 to
selected AP selected AP
▪ association Response frame sent from ▪ Association Response frame sent from
selected AP to H1 selected AP to H1
The 802.11 Architecture
▪ To create an association with a particular AP, the wireless station may be required
to authenticate itself to the AP
▪ First approach, used by many companies, is to permit access to a wireless
network based on a station’s MAC address
▪ Second approach, used by many Internet cafés, employs usernames and
passwords
▪ In both cases, the AP communicates with an authentication server, relaying
information between the wireless end-point station and the authentication server
using a protocol such as RADIUS [RFC 2865] or DIAMETER [RFC 3588]
The 802.11 MAC Protocol
▪ Multiple stations may want to transmit data frames at the same time over the
same channel, a multiple access protocol is needed to coordinate the
transmissions
▪ A station is either a wireless station or an AP(access point)
▪ 802.11 chose a random-access protocol for 802.11 wireless LANs, referred to as
CSMA with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA)
▪ “CSMA” in CSMA/CA stands for “carrier sense multiple access,” meaning that
each station senses the channel before transmitting, and refrains from
transmitting when the channel is sensed busy
Difference between CSMA/CD and CSMA/CA
▪ The two MAC protocols have important differences:

1. First, instead of using collision detection, 802.11 uses collision-avoidance

techniques
2. Second, because of the relatively high bit error rates of wireless channels,
802.11 (unlike Ethernet) uses a link-layer acknowledgment/retransmission
(ARQ) scheme
The 802.11 MAC Protocol
▪ 802.11 MAC protocol does not implement collision detection
▪ There are two important reasons for this:
▪ The ability to detect collisions requires the ability to send (the station’s own signal) and
receive (to determine whether another station is also transmitting) at the same time

it is costly to build hardware that can detect a collision

▪ even if the adapter could transmit and listen at the same, the adapter would still not be
able to detect all collisions, due to the hidden terminal problem and fading
The 802.11 MAC Protocol
▪ 802.11’S LINK-LAYER ACKNOWLEDGMENT SCHEME
▪ when the destination station receives a frame that passes the CRC, it waits a
short period of time known as the Short Inter-frame Spacing (SIFS) and then
sends back an acknowledgment frame
▪ f the transmitting station does not receive an acknowledgment within a given
amount of time, it assumes that an error has occurred and retransmits the frame
▪ If an acknowledgment is not received after some fixed number of
retransmissions, the transmitting station gives up and discards the frame
The 802.11 CSMA/CA protocol
▪ Suppose that a station (wireless station or an AP) has a
frame to transmit:
▪ If initially the station senses the channel idle, it transmits its
frame after a short period of time known as the Distributed
Inter-frame Space (DIFS)
▪ Otherwise, the station chooses a random backoff value
using binary exponential backoff and waits for the channel to
be idle
▪ When the channel is sensed idle, the station transmits the
entire frame and then waits for an acknowledgment
▪ If an acknowledgment is received, the transmitting station
knows that its frame has been correctly received at the
destination station
Dealing with Hidden Terminals: RTS and CTS
▪ Hidden terminals can be problematic
▪ IEEE 802.11 protocol allows a station to use a short Request to Send (RTS) control
frame and a short Clear to Send (CTS) control frame to reserve access to the channel
▪ When sender wants to send a DATA frame
▪ Sender send an RTS frame to the AP, indicating the total time required
▪ AP receives the RTS frame, it responds by broadcasting a CTS frame
▪ CTS frame serves two purposes:
1. It gives the sender explicit permission to send and
2. instructs the other stations not to send for the reserved duration
Collision avoidance
using the RTS and
CTS frames
Dealing with Hidden Terminals: RTS and CTS
▪ The use of the RTS and CTS frames can improve performance in two important
ways:
▪ The hidden station problem is mitigated, since a long DATA frame is transmitted only
after the channel has been reserved
▪ Once the RTS and CTS frames are correctly transmitted, the following DATA and ACK
frames should be transmitted without collisions

▪ USING 802.11 AS A POINT-TO-POINT LINK

▪ t if two nodes each have a directional antenna, they can point their directional
antennas at each other and run the 802.11 protocol over a point-to-point link
Initial elements of a Mobile Network Architecture
▪ The permanent home of a mobile node (such as a laptop or smartphone) is known
as the home network
▪ Entity within the home network that performs the mobility management functions
on behalf of the mobile node is known as the home agent
▪ The network in which the mobile node is currently residing is known as the foreign
(or visited) network
▪ Entity within the foreign network that helps the mobile node with the mobility
management functions is known as a foreign agent
▪ Role of the foreign agent is to create a so-called care-of address (COA) for the
mobile node, with the network portion of the COA matching that of the foreign
network
Initial elements of a Mobile Network Architecture

▪ Two addresses associated

with a mobile node:
▪ permanent address
(analogous to our mobile
youth’s family’s home
address) and
▪ COA, sometimes known as
a foreign address
(analogous to the address
of the house in which our
mobile youth is currently
residing)
Mobile IP
▪ The Internet architecture and protocols for supporting mobility, collectively known
as mobile IP, are defined primarily in RFC 5944 for IPv4
▪ Mobile IP is a flexible standard, supporting many different modes of operation,
multiple ways for agents and mobile nodes to discover each other, use of single
or multiple COAs, and multiple forms of encapsulation
▪ The mobile IP standard consists of three main pieces:
1. Agent discovery
2. Registration with the home agent
3. Indirect routing of datagrams
Agent Discovery
▪ The discovery of a new foreign agent, with a new network address, that allows
the network layer in a mobile node to learn that it has moved into a new foreign
network. This process is known as agent discovery
▪ Agent discovery can be accomplished in one of two ways:
▪ via agent advertisement or
▪ via agent solicitation

▪ AGENT ADVERTISEMENT
▪ a foreign or home agent advertises its services using an extension to the existing
router discovery protocol [RFC 1256]
Agent Discovery
▪ The agent periodically broadcasts an ICMP message with a type field of 9 (router
discovery) on all links to which it is connected
▪ The router discovery message contains the IP address of the router, thus
allowing a mobile node to learn the agent’s IP address
▪ The router discovery message also contains a mobility agent advertisement
extension that contains additional information:
▪ Home agent bit (H)
▪ Foreign agent bit (F)
▪ Registration required bit (R)
▪ M, G encapsulation bits
▪ Care-of address (COA) fields
Agent Discovery

▪ ICMP router
discovery message
with mobility agent
advertisement
extension
Registration with the Home Agent
▪ Once a mobile IP node has received a COA, that address must be registered with
the home agent
▪ Four steps are involved:
▪ Following the receipt of a foreign agent advertisement, a mobile node sends a mobile IP
registration message to the foreign agent
▪ The foreign agent receives the registration message and records the mobile node’s
permanent IP address, The foreign agent then sends a mobile IP registration message
to port 434 of the home agent
▪ The home agent receives the registration request and checks for authenticity and
correctness, The home agent sends a mobile IP registration reply
▪ The foreign agent receives the registration reply and then forwards it to the mobile node
Registration with the Home Agent
▪ Registration is complete, and the mobile node can receive datagrams sent to its
permanent address
▪ Home agent specifies a lifetime that is smaller than the lifetime requested by the
mobile node
▪ A foreign agent need not explicitly deregister a COA when a mobile node
leaves its network
▪ This will occur automatically, when the mobile node moves to a new network
and registers a new COA
Agent advertisement and
mobile IP registration