University of Science and Technology

Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology

Computer Networking: Lecture (7)
Wireless and Mobile Networks
Figure 6.1 shows the setting in which we’ll consider the topics of
wireless data communication and mobility. We’ll begin by keeping our discussion
general enough to cover a wide range of networks, including both wireless LANs such as IEEE
802.11 and cellular networks such as a 3G network.
We can identify the following elements in a wireless network:

• Wireless hosts. As in the case of wired networks, hosts are the end-system devices that run
applications. 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 (defined below) or to another wireless
host through a wireless communication link. Different wireless link technologies
have different transmission rates and can transmit over different
distances.
Figure 6.2 shows two key characteristics (coverage area and link rate) of the more popular wireless
network standards.

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• Base station. The base station is a key part of the wireless network
infrastructure. Unlike the wireless host and wireless link, a base station has no obvious

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counterpart in a wired network. Abase station is responsible for sending and receiving data (e.g.,

packets) to and from a wireless host that is associated with

that base station.
A base station will often be responsible for coordinating the
transmission of multiple wireless hosts with which it is
associated.

What do we mean by a wireless host is

“associated” with a base station?
We mean that:
(1) The host is within the wireless communication distance of the base station, and

(2) The host uses that base station to relay data between it (the host) and the
larger network.
Cell towers in cellular networks and access points in 802.11 wireless LANs are examples of
base stations.

What is Infrastructure mode and Infrastructure

less mode?

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 to which a host is
connected via the base station.

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In adhoc networks, wireless hosts have no such
infrastructure with which to connect. In the absence of such
infrastructure, the hosts themselves must provide for
services such as routing, address assignment, DNS-like
name translation.

What is handoff?

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 new network (i.e., change the base
station with which it is associated) a process referred to as
handoff.
Such mobility raises many challenging questions.
If a host can move, how does one find the mobile host’s current location in the network so that
data can be forwarded to that mobile host?

How is addressing performed, given that a host can be in one of many possible locations?
If the host moves during a TCP connection or phone call, how is data routed so that the connection
continues uninterrupted?

Wireless Network Classification

At the highest level we can classify wireless networks

according to two criteria: (i) whether a packet in the

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wireless network crosses exactly one wireless hop or
multiple wireless hops, and (ii) 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 (e.g., the Internet). Furthermore, all communication is between this base
station and a wireless host over a single wireless hop. The 802.11 networks you use in the
classroom, café, or library; and the 3G cellular data networks that we will learn about shortly
all fall in this category.

• Single-hop, infrastructure-less. In these networks, there is no base station that is

connected to a wireless network. However, as we will see, one of the nodes in this single-hop

network may coordinate the transmissions of the other nodes.

Bluetooth networks and 802.11 networks in ad hoc mode are single-
hop, infrastructure-less networks.
• Multi-hop, infrastructure-based. In these networks, a base station is present that is
wired to the larger network. However, some wireless nodes may have to relay their
communication through other wireless nodes in order to communicate via the base station.

Some wireless sensor networks and so-called wireless

mesh networks fall in this category.
• 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. Nodes
may also be mobile, with connectivity changing among nodes—a class of networks known as
mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs).
If the mobile nodes are vehicles, the network is a vehicular ad hoc network (VANET). As you
might imagine, the development of protocols for such networks is challenging and is the subject of
much ongoing research.

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 Wireless and Mobile Networks

What are the Differences between Wired and Wireless Networks?

We have to focus our attention on the link layer when we looking for important differences
between wired and wireless networks.
The most important differences between a wired link and a wireless link are:
1- Decreasing signal strength in wireless networks. Electromagnetic radiation decreases
as it passes through matter (e.g., a radio signal passing through a wall). Even in free space, the
signal will disperse, resulting in decreased signal strength (sometimes referred to as path loss) as
the distance between sender and receiver increases.

2- Signal Interference with other sources. Radio sources transmitting in the same
frequency band will interfere with each other. For example, 2.4 GHz wireless phones and
802.11b wireless LANs transmit in the same frequency band. In addition to interference
from transmitting sources, electromagnetic noise within the environment (e.g., a nearby
motor, a microwave) can result in interference.

3- Multipath propagation of Signals

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. Moving objects between the sender and
receiver can cause multipath propagation to change over time.

Bit Error
Due to the above differences it is clear that bit errors will be more common
in wireless links than in wired links. For this reason, it is perhaps not

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surprising that wireless link protocols employ error detection codes, and
link-level reliable data-transfer protocols that retransmit corrupted frames.

The receiving host receives an electromagnetic signal that is a combination of a degraded form of
the original signal transmitted by the sender and background noise in the environment.

What is SNR?
The 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.

What is Bit Error Rate (BER)?

The bit error rate (BER) is the probability that a transmitted bit is
received in error at the receiver.

Wireless links has a higher bit error rates than wired links.

Hidden Terminal and Fading Problems

Suppose that Station A is transmitting to Station B. Suppose also that Station C is transmitting to
Station B. With the so called hidden terminal problem, physical obstructions in the environment
(for example, a mountain or a building) may prevent A and C from hearing each other’s
transmissions, even though A’s and C’s transmissions are indeed interfering or collide at the
destination, B. This is shown in Figure 6.4(a).
A second scenario that results in undetectable collisions at the receiver results from the fading
(loss) of a signal’s strength as it propagates through the wireless medium. Figure 6.4(b) illustrates
the case where A and C are placed such that their signals are NOT strong enough to detect
each other’s transmissions, but their signals are strong enough to interfere with each other at
station B.
So What?

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The hidden terminal problem and fading make multiple access in a wireless
network considerably more complex than in a wired network.

The question now is

If in a shared medium, multiple hosts send signals to a receiver,

how can we be sure that these signals do interfere at the receiver?

The answer is: we need a protocol to manage this.

CDMA
Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) protocol belongs to the family of channel partitioning
protocols. It is common in wireless LAN and cellular technologies. Because CDMA is so important
in the wireless world, we’ll take a quick look at CDMA now.

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.

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 How CDMA perform encoding and decoding?

1- Suppose that the rate at which original data bits reach the CDMA encoder defines the unit of
time; that is, each original data bit to be transmitted requires a one-bit slot time.
2- Let di be the value of the data bit for the ith bit slot. (For mathematical convenience, we
represent a data bit with a 0 value as –1.)
Each bit slot is further subdivided into M mini-slots; ( in Figure 6.5, M = 8, although in practice
M is much larger).
3- The CDMA code used by the sender consists of a sequence of M values, cm , m = 1, . . . , M,
each taking a +1 or –1 value. (In the example in Figure 6.5, the M-bit CDMA code being
used by the sender is (1, 1, 1, –1, 1, –1, –1, –1)).
4- To encode the the ith data bit, di the output of the CDMA encoder, Zi,m is:

5- The receiver would receive the encoded bits, Zi,m , and recover the original data bit, di , by
computing

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CDMA must work in the presence of interfering senders that are encoding and transmitting their
data using a different assigned code.
But how can a CDMA receiver recover a sender’s original data bits when those data
bits are being tangled with bits being transmitted by other senders?

CDMA works under the assumption that the interfering transmitted bit signals are additive. This
means, for example, that if three senders send a 1 value, and a fourth sender sends a –1 value during
the same mini-slot, then the received signal at all receivers during that mini-slot is a 2 (since 1+ 1+
1- 1 = 2).
In the presence of multiple senders , sender s computes its encoded transmissions, Zsi,m , in
exactly the same manner as in Equation 6.1. The value received at a receiver during the mth mini-

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slot of the ith bit slot, however, is now the sum of the transmitted bits from all N
senders during that mini-slot:

Amazingly, if the senders’ codes are chosen carefully, each receiver can recover the data sent by a
given sender out of the aggregate signal simply by using the sender’s code in exactly the same
manner as in Equation 6.2:

Example
Figure 6.6, shows a two-sender CDMA example. The M-bit CDMA code being used by the upper
sender is (1, 1, 1, –1, 1, –1, –1, –1), while the CDMA code being used by the lower sender is (1, –1,
1, 1, 1, –1, 1, 1). Figure 6.6 illustrates a receiver recovering the original data bits from the upper
sender.

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