MODULE-3

(Wireless LANs) Wireless LAN - Advantages, Design goals,

Applications, Infrastructure Vs Ad-hoc mode, IEEE 802.11 System
Architecture, Protocol Architecture, Physical layer, Medium Access
Control layer, HIPERLAN-1, Bluetooth
 Wireless LAN
• The global goal of WLANs is to replace office cabling, to enable wireless
access to the internet and to introduce a higher flexibility for ad-hoc
communication.

Advantages of WLANs
 Flexibility: Within radio coverage, nodes can communicate without further restriction.
Radio waves can penetrate walls, senders and receivers can be placed anywhere
 Planning: Wireless ad-hoc networks no need any previous planning but wired network
needs wiring plans cabling with the right plugs and probably interworking units
 Design: Small Devices, independent of devices can use it at anywhere.
 Robustness: Wireless networks can survive disasters, e.g., earthquakes or users pulling a
plug. If the wireless devices survive, people can still communicate.
 Cost: After providing wireless access to the infrastructure via an access point for the first
user, adding additional users to a wireless network will not increase the cost.
 Disadvantages
• Quality of service: higher error rates due to interference and higher delay/delay
variation
• Proprietary solutions: No standard products. Lot of adaptors are required.
• Restrictions: Several government and non-government institutions worldwide
regulate the operation and restrict frequencies to minimize interference.
• Safety and security: The open radio interface makes eavesdropping much easier
in WLANs. All standards must offer (automatic) encryption, privacy
mechanisms, support for anonymity etc.
 Design goals
• Global operation: WLAN products should sell in all countries so, national and
international frequency regulations have to be considered.
• Low power: Devices communicating via a WLAN are typically also wireless devices
running on battery power.
• License-free operation: The equipment must operate in a license-free band, such as the 2.4
GHz ISM (Industry Scientific and Medical) band.
• Robust transmission technology: It use radio transmission, many other electrical devices
can interfere with them. Antennas are typically omnidirectional, not directed. Senders and
receivers may move.
• Simplified spontaneous cooperation: WLANs should not require complicated setup
routines but should operate spontaneously after power-up.
• Easy to use: Wireless LANs are made for simple use. They should not require complex
management, but rather work on a plug-and-play basis.
• Protection of investment: The wireless LANs should support the same data types and
services that standard LANs support.
• Safety and security: Wireless LANs should be safe to operate, especially regarding low
radiation if used, Users should not be able to read personal data during transmission, i.e.,
encryption mechanisms should be integrated. The networks should also take into account
user privacy,
• Transparency for applications: Existing applications should continue to run over WLANs,
the only difference being higher delay and lower bandwidth.
 Applications
• Internet Access: Every member of a family or small business can easily share a single high-speed connection
Everybody can simultaneously have access to the Internet and roam anywhere in the house or office.
• Voice over Wireless: transmission of voice conversations
• Inventory Control: The connections between the manufacturing equipment and main control systems are
wireless, the company can reconfigure the assembly process at any time from anywhere, saving time and
money.
• Health Care: Hospitals are deploying wireless networks to improve operational efficiency and convenience
• Education: Schools and Colleges using Wi-Fi
• Utilities: Identifies the activities and usage of machines and send the report
• Field Service: No need to go anywhere
• Field Sales: Sales professionals are always on the move and meeting with customers
• Vending: Status about the vending machine
• Home Security
• Public Networks
• Location-Based Services (Identifying the location of a particular object)
Infrastructure and ad-hoc networks
Adhoc wireless networks
 IEEE802.11
802.11 LAN

• The IEEE standard 802.11 specifies 802. x LAN

the most famous family of WLANs in

which many products are available. STA1

• 802.3 Ethernet or 802.5 Token Ring BBS1

Portal

• Additional features of the WLAN

AccessPoint

should include the support of power

management to save battery power, the Distribution system

handling of hidden nodes and the AccessPoint

ability to operate worldwide ESS

• The stations and the AP which are BSS2

within the same radio coverage form a

basic service set (BSSi).

STA2 802.11 LAN STA3

Architecture of IEEE 802.11
adhoc networks
  The basic tasks of the MAC layer comprise medium access, fragmentation
of user data, and encryption
Protocol architecture  It also controls authentication mechanisms, synchronization of a station with
regard to an access point, and power management to save battery power.
 LLC, covers the differences of the medium access control layers needed for
the different media.
 The physical layer is subdivided into the physical layer convergence protocol
(PLCP) and the physical medium dependent sublayer PMD.
 The PLCP sublayer provides a carrier sense signal, called clear channel
assessment (CCA), and a common PHY service access point (SAP) independent
of the transmission technology
 The PMD sublayer handles modulation and encoding/decoding of signals.
 Physical layer
• IEEE 802.11 supports three different physical layers: one layer based on infra red and
two layers based on radio transmission.
• The PHY layer offers a service access point (SAP) with 1 or 2 Mbit/s transfer rate to the
MAC
Frequency hopping spread spectrum
Format of an IEEE 802.11 PHY frame using FHSS

Synchronization: The PLCP preamble starts with 80 bit synchronization, which is a

010101... bit pattern
SFD: 16 bits (0000110010111101)
PLW: Length of Payload (range between 0 and 4,095)
PSF: (PLCP signaling field) indicates the data rate of the payload 0000 -1 Mbit/s, 0010-2
Mbit/s, 1111-8.5 Mbit/s
HEC: Header error check (16bit checksum)
 Direct sequence spread spectrum

 Synchronization: The first 128 bits are not only used for synchronization, but also gain setting,
energy detection and frequency offset compensation. The synchronization field only consists of
scrambled 1 bits.
 SFD: 1111001110100000
 Signal: Indicate the data rate of the payload 0x0A indicates 1 Mbit/s (and thus DBPSK) 0x14
indicates 2 Mbit/s (and thus DQPSK)
 Service: This field is reserved for future use
 Length : Length of Payload
 Header error check (HEC): checksum
Infra red
• The PHY layer, which is based on infrared (IR) transmission, uses near visible
light at 850–950 nm.
• Infrared light is not regulated apart from safety restrictions (using lasers instead of
LEDs). The standard does not require a line-of-sight between sender and receiver.
• This allows for point-to-multipoint communication. The maximum range is about 10m
if no sunlight or heat sources interfere with the transmission.
• Typically, such a network will only work in buildings, e.g., classrooms, meeting rooms
etc.
• Frequency reuse is very simple a wall is more than enough to shield one IR based
IEEE 802.11 network from another.
Medium access control layer

• Mac has to control medium access, but it can also offer support for roaming,
authentication, and power conservation.
• The basic services provided by the MAC layer are the mandatory
asynchronous data service and an optional time-bounded service.
• Three basic access mechanisms have been defined for IEEE 802.11 (the
mandatory basic method based on a version of CSMA/CA, distributed
coordination function (DCF) & point coordination function (PCF))
• DCF only offers asynchronous service, while PCF offers both asynchronous
and time-bounded service
● Short inter-frame spacing (SIFS): The shortest waiting time for medium access, highest
priority is defined for short control messages, such as acknowledgements of data packets or
polling responses. For DSSS SIFS is 10 µs and for FHSS it is 28 µs.
● PCF inter-frame spacing (PIFS): A waiting time between DIFS and SIFS, medium priority
is used for a time-bounded service. PIFS is defined as SIFS plus one slot time. (point
coordination function)
● DCF inter-frame spacing (DIFS): This parameter denotes the longest waiting time and has
the lowest priority for medium access. This waiting time is used for asynchronous data
service within a contention period. DIFS is defined as SIFS plus two slot times. (Distributed
coordination function)
Basic DFWMAC-DCF using CSMA/CA (Distributed foundation wireless
medium access control)

 If the medium is busy, nodes have to wait for the duration of DIFS, entering a
contention phase
 Each node now chooses a random backoff time within a contention window
 The node continues to sense the medium. As soon as a node senses the channel is
busy, it has lost this cycle and has to wait for the next chance.
 But if the randomized additional waiting time for a node is over and the medium
is still idle, the node can access the medium immediately.
Basic DFWMAC–DCF with several competing senders

 Five stations trying to send a packet at

the marked points in time.
 Station-3 has the first request from a
higher layer to send a packet. It sense
the medium and after DIFS, send the
packets
 Station-1, station-2, and station-5 have
to wait at least until the medium is idle
for DIFS again after station-3 has
stopped sending

 Now all three stations choose a backoff time within the contention window and start
counting down their backoff timers.
 station-1 as sum of boe (the elapsed backoff time) and bor (the residual backoff time). The
same is shown for station-5.
 Station-2 has a total backoff time of only boe and gets access to the medium first.
IEEE 802.11 unicast data transfer

 Sender accessing the medium and sending its data.

 Receiver answers directly with an acknowledgement (ACK).
 The receiver accesses the medium after waiting for a duration of SIFS
 No other station can access the medium in the meantime and cause a
collision.
DFWMAC-DCF with RTS/CTS extension

 After DIFS the sender can issue a request to send (RTS) control packet.
 Every node receiving this RTS has to set its net allocation vector (NAV) in
accordance with the duration field.
 NAV specifies at when the station can try to access the medium again.
Fragmentation of user data
 DFWMAC-PCF with polling

 At time t0 the contention-free period of the super frame should theoretically start, but another station is still transmitting
data.
 PCF also defers to DCF, and the start of the super frame may be postponed.
 The only possibility of avoiding variations is not to have any contention period at all.
 After the medium has been idle until t1, the point coordinator has to wait for PIFS before accessing the medium. As PIFS
is smaller than DIFS, no other station can start sending earlier.
MAC frames

Duration/ID: The field value is less than 32,768, the medium is occupied (in µs). The value is
above 32,768 are reserved for identifiers. This field is used for setting the NAV for the virtual
reservation mechanism using RTS/CTS.
Address 1 to 4: The four address fields contain standard IEEE 802 MAC addresses. (mobile
stations and access point)
Sequence control: Due to the acknowledgement mechanism frames may be duplicated. Sequence
number is used to filter duplicates.
Protocol version: This 2 bit field indicates the current protocol version and is fixed to 0 by
now.
Type: 00-Management, 01- Control, 10-data. The value 11 is reserved.
Subtype: 0000 for association request & data frame, 1000 for beacon. 1011 for RTS is a
control frame and 1100 for CTS.
To DS/From DS
More fragments: This field is set to 1 it indicates, that another fragment is have to follow.
Retry: This bit is set to 1 for retransmission frames. Used to eliminate duplicate frames.
Power management: Set to 1 indicates that the station goes into power-save mode. Set to 0,
indicates the station stays active.
More data: This field is used to indicate a receiver that a sender has more data to send than
the current frame.
Wired equivalent privacy (WEP): This field indicates that the standard security mechanism
of 802.11 is applied.
Order: If this bit is set to 1 the received frames must be processed in strict order.
 HIPERLAN 1
• HIPERLAN 1 as a wireless LAN supporting priorities and packet life time for data
transfer at 23.5 Mbit/s, including forwarding mechanisms, topology discovery, user
data encryption, network identification and power conservation mechanisms.
• HIPERLAN 1 should operate at 5.1–5.3 GHz with a range of 50 m in buildings at 1
W transmit power.
Phases of the HIPERLAN
Prioritization
Determine the highest priority of a data packet ready to be sent by competing
nodes.
HIPERLAN 1 offers five different priorities for data packets ready to be sent.
• The objective of the prioritization phase is to make sure that no node with a
lower priority gains access to the medium while packets with higher priority are
waiting at other nodes
• In the first step of the prioritization phase, the priority detection, time is divided
into five slots, slot 0 (highest priority) to slot 4 (lowest priority)
• If a node has the access priority p, it has to listen into the medium for p slots.
• If the node senses the medium is idle for the whole period of p slots, the node
asserts the priority by immediately transmitting a burst for the duration.
Contention (Elimination): Select the highest current priority for transmission.
Several nodes may now enter the elimination phase
Time is divided into 12 slots,
The probability of bursting within a slot is 0.5

• Each contending node sends an elimination burst with length n as determined via the
probabilities and then listens to the channel during the survival verification interval
• A contending node survives the elimination phase only if, it senses the channel is idle
during its survival verification period. Otherwise, the node is eliminated.
• The nodes which are survive this elimination phase, can continue with the next phase.
Yield Phase
During the yield phase, the remaining nodes only listen into the medium
without sending any additional bursts.
Each node in the yield phase, senses the channel during the whole period, it
has survived only if the medium is free. Otherwise, it withdraws for the rest of
the current transmission cycle.
At least one node will survive this phase and can start to transmit data.
Transmission
Transmit the packet selected node.
The sender expects to receive an immediate acknowledgement from the
destination, called an acknowledgement (AK-HCPDU) (HIPERLAN 1 CAC
protocol data unit)
 Bluetooth

 Connection of peripheral devices

 Support of ad-hoc networking
 Bridging of networks
 Architecture of Bluetooth
 Piconet is a collection of Bluetooth devices which are
synchronized to the same hopping sequence
 One device in the piconet act as master (M), all other
devices connected to the master must act as slaves (S)
 The master determines the hopping pattern in the piconet
and the slaves have to synchronize to this pattern
 Each piconet has a unique hopping pattern
 Parked devices (P) cannot actively participate in the
piconet but can be reactivated within some milliseconds
 stand-by (SB) do not participate in the piconet.
 Each piconet has exactly one master and up to seven
simultaneous slaves. More than 200 devices can be
parked
 Parked device wants to communicate and there are
already seven active slaves, one slave has to switch to
park mode to allow the parked device to switch to active
mode.
Forming a Bluetooth piconet
• Any two or more devices can form a piconet.
• The unit establishing the piconet automatically
becomes the master, all other devices will be slaves
• The first step master sending its clock and device ID
• The device ID, is a 48-bit worldwide unique
identifier.
• After adjusting the internal clock according to the
master a device may participate in the piconet.
• All active devices are assigned a 3-bit active
member address (AMA).
• All parked devices use an 8-bit parked member
address (PMA).
• Devices in stand-by do not need an address
 Bluetooth scatternet
 Groups of piconets are called scatternet
 One device can participates two different
piconets
 Bluetooth applies FH-CDMA for
separation of piconets
 A collision occurs if two or more piconets
use the same carrier frequency at the same
time
 A master can also leave its piconet and act
as a slave in another piconet.
 When master leaves a piconet, all traffic
within this piconet is suspended until the
master returns.
 Scatternets are not yet supported by all
devices.
 Protocol stack

● Radio: Specification of the air interface, i.e., frequencies, modulation, and transmit power.
● Baseband: Description of basic connection establishment, packet formats, timing, and basic QoS
parameters.
• Link manager protocol: Link set-up and management between devices
also perform security functions and parameter negotiation.
• Host controller interface (HCI) Provides interface between the
baseband and L2CAP to access the hardware status and control registers.
• Logical link control and adaptation protocol (L2CAP): Adaptation of
higher layers to the baseband
• RFCOMM supports multiple serial ports over a single physical channel.
• Service discovery protocol: Device discovery in close proximity plus
querying of service characteristics.
• Telephony control protocol specification – binary (TCS BIN)
describes a bit-oriented protocol that defines call control signaling for
the establishment of voice and data calls between Bluetooth devices. It
also describes mobility and group management functions.
• AT modem commands: Used by Telephony applications
• BNEP: Bluetooth network encapsulation protocol
• OBEX: (object exchange protocol) Used to exchange the Calendar and
business card objects (vCalendar/vCard).