Chapter 2

Wireless LANs and PANs

 2.1 Introduction
• Fundamentals of WLANs
• IEEE 802.11
• HIPERLAN
• Bluetooth
• HomeRF
 2.2 Fundamentals of WLANs
• Difference between wireless and wired
– Address is not equivalent to physical location
– Dynamic topology and restricted connectivity
– Medium boundaries are not well-defined
– Error-prone medium
• Use of WLANs
– Surf Internet on the move
– Areas without infrastructure, or affected by
earthquakes or disastersWLANs can be set
up on the fly
– Historic buildings may not be wiring
• Design Goals
– Operational simplicity
– Power-efficient operation
– License-free operation
– Tolerance to interference
– Global usability
– Security
– Safety requirements
– Quality of service requirement
– Compatibility with other technologies and applicatoins
 2.2.2 Network Architecture
• Infrastructure Based vs. Ad Hoc LANs
– Infrastructure: access points (APs) and mobile stations
(STAs)
– Ad hoc LANs: do not need fixed infrastructure
• Components in IEEE 802.11 network
– BSA: coverage of an AP
– BSS
– DS
– ESS
– Figure 2.1
本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
• Service offered by IEEE 802.11 network
– Association
– Reassociation
– Diassociation
– Distribution: routing
– Integration: if send frames through non-802.11
– Authentication
– Deauthentication
– Privacy
– Data delivery
 2.3 IEEE 802.11
• Physical Layer
– Physical medium dependent sublayer (PMD)
– Physical layer convergence protocol (PLCP)
• Abstracts functionality for MAC
• Offers service access point (SAP): 1 or 2Mbps
• Clear channel assessment (CCA): CSMA/CA
– 3 choices:
• FHSS: GFSK and 4-level GFSK
• DSFF: DBPSK and DQPSK
• Infrare: PPM
 2.3.2 Basic MAC Layer
Mechanisms
• Distributed Foundation Wireless Medium Access
Control (DFWMAC)
– Distributed coordination function (DCF)
– CSMA/CA
– To avoid hidden terminal, RTS/CTS
– Point coordination function (PCF): real time services
– Inter-Frame Spacing (IFS)
• SIFS
• PIFS
• DIFS
• EIFS
 2.3.3 CSMA/CA Mechanism
• CSMA/CD is not applicable
• Fig 2.2 IEEE 802.11 DCF and RTS-CTS
• If medium is busy, node backs off, in which
station defers channel access by a random time
chosen within contention window (CW)
• As backoff counter reaches zero, station can
access medium
• During backoff, if busy channel, freeze backoff
counter; resume once channel becomes idle
• CW size
– Unnecessary delay if too large
– Collision probability increase if too small
– Binary exponential backoff technique is used
 Fig. 2.2

本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
 Overhead involved in RTS-CTS
• Non-negligible overhead
• If frame size > RTS_threshold, RTS-CTS is
activated, a four-way handshake (I.e. RTS-
CTS-DATA-ACK)
• If frame size < RTS_threshold, a two-way
handshake (DATA-ACK)
Fig 2.3 MAC as a state machine

本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
 Fragmentation
• Decreasing frame error rate  use shorter
framessplit user data packet into
fragments
• RTS/CTS carry duration for current
fragment and estimated time for next
fragment
• Medium reserved for successive frames
 2.3.4 Other MAC Layer
Functionalities
• Point Coordination Function
– Guarantee on maximum access delay, minimum
transmission bandwidth and other QoS
– Centralized scheme, applicable only in
networks where AP (Point Coordinator) pool
nodes
– Superframe: contention free
periods(CFP)+contention period(CP)
 Synchronization
• Timing synchronization function (TSF)
• Required for
– Power management
– PCF coordination
– Frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) hopping
sequence synchronization
• Within a BSS
– Quasi periodic beacon frames transmitted by AP
– Contains time-stamp for adjusting clock
– Contains information for power optimization and
roaming
 Power Management
• Always ready to receive consume more
power (as high as 100 mA)
• Must be switched off whenever carrier
sensing is not needed
• 2 states: sleep and awake
– Longer periods in sleep leads to low throughput
– Shorter periods in sleep leads to high power
consumption
 Roaming
• Provide uninterrupted service when walk
around with a wireless station
• When poor quality of current link, start
scanning for another AP
– Active scanning: send a probe on each channel
and wait for response
– Passive scanning: listen medium to find other
networks
 2.3.5 Other Issues
• Newer standards
– 802.11a/11b/g
– Trademark by Wireless Ethernet Compatibility
Alliance (WECA) as Wi-Fi
– 802.11e: time-sensitive applications,
voice/video
– 802.11f: inter-AP communication to handle
roaming
– 802.11i: advanced encryption for better privacy
QoS for Voice and Video Packets
• Delay-sensitive packets: higher priority
– Hybrid coordination function (HCF): AP polls
stations in a weighted way to offer QoS
– Extended DCF: higher priority stations choose
random back-off interval from a smaller CW.
Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP)
• Data integrity
• Access control
• Confidentiality
• Vulnerable if more sophisticated
mechanisms are used to crack the key
 2.5 Bluetooth
• Logically partitioned into 3 layers:
– Transport protocol group
• Radio layer
• Baseband layer
• Link manager layer
• Logical link control
• Adaptation layer
• Host controller interface
– Middleware protocol group
• RFCOMM, SDP, IrDA
– Application group
• Application profiles
Fig 2.7 Bluetooth protocol stack

本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
 Radio (Physical) Layer
• GFSK
• 64Kbps voice channels and asynchronous
data channels with peak rate of 1Mbps
• Data channel: asymmetric or symmetric
• 79 channels, 79 hops
• Typical link range: up to 10 m, can be
extended to 100m by increasing power
 Baseband Layer
• Piconet (Fig 2.8)
• 48-bit address

本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
 Piconet
• Master + up to 7 active slaves
Fig 2.9 Operational States

本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
 Fig 2.10 Transmission over a
channel
• ACL: asynchronous connectionless link
• SCO: synchronous connection oriented link

本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
 Inquiry State
• A potential master sends inquiry packet on
inquiry hop sequence of frequencies
• A slave periodically enter inquiry scan state
and listen for inquiry packets
• When received, send response packet
containing hopping sequence and device
address
 Page State
• Master estimate slave’s clock to determine hop
sequence, and send page message
• Slaves listen in page scan mode
• On receiving page message, slave enter page
response sub-state, send page response containing
its device access code (DAC)
• Master enter page response state (after receiving
slave’s response), inform slaves its clock and
address for determining hopping sequence and
synchronization
 Scatternets and Issues
• Piconet may overlap both spatially and temporally
• Each piconet is characterized by a unique master
and hop independently
• As more piconets added, more probability of
collisions
• Device can participate in 2 or more piconets by
time sharing (as a slave in several piconets, but as
a master in only a single piconet)
• A group of piconets scatternet (Fig2.11)
本圖取自"Ad Hoc Wireless Networks", by C. Siva Ram Murthy and B. S. Manoj, published by Prentice Hall, 2004
• Issues:
– Gateway nodes: bound back-and-forth, hard to
achieve full utilization
– Timing may miss:
 Link Manager Protocol
• Power Management
– Active mode: active slaves are polled by master
– Sniff mode: master issues a command to slave to enter
sniff mode
– Hold mode: temporarily not support ACL packets,
performing scanning, paging, inquiring, or attending
another piconet
– Park mode: slave gives up its active member adress
• Security Management
• Minimal QoS support by allowing control over
parameters such delay and jitter
 2.5.4 Bluetooth Profiles
• Promote interoperability among many
implementations of bluetooth protocol stack
• Provide a clear and transparent standard that can
be used to implement a specific user end function
• 4 categories
– Generic profiles
– Telephony profiles
– Networking profiles
– Serial and object exchange profiles