Mobile Computing

NOTES
(Subject Code – CSE506)

for
Diploma
in

Computer Science Engineering

Department of Computer Science Engineering

Government Polytechnic Dumka
Sonwadangal, Near–S P College, Dumka Jharkhand, 814101
 Scan me

Visit for Online Reading –

http://online.flipbuilder.com/egwf/xuuj/
 1

Subject: Mobile Computing (Elective-I)

Code: CSE506
 2

Unit-I
Introduction 10 hrs

Issues in mobile computing, overview of wireless telephony: cellular concept,

GSM: air-interface, channel structure, location management: HLR-VLR,
hierarchical, handoffs, Channel allocation in cellular systems

Unit II
Mobile Network & Transport Layer 12 hrs

Mobile IP Goals, assumptions, entities and terminology, IP packet delivery, agent

advertisement and discovery, registration, tunnelling and encapsulation, Dynamic
Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), Traditional TCP, Indirect TCP, Snooping
TCP, Mobile TCP, Fast retransmit/fast recovery, Transmission /time-out
freezing, Selective retransmission, Transaction oriented TCP.

Unit III
Wireless Networking 10 hrs

Wireless LAN Overview: MAC issues, IEEE 802.11, Blue Tooth, Wireless
multiple access protocols, TCP over wireless, Wireless applications, data
broadcasting, Mobile IP, WAP: Architecture, protocol stack, application
environment, applications.

Unit IV
Mobile Ad hoc Networks 10 hrs

Mobile Agents computing, security and fault tolerance, transaction processing in

mobile computing environment, Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs):
Overview, Properties of a MANET, spectrum of MANET applications, routing
and various routing algorithms, security in MANETs.
3
4
 5

Mobile computing: Mobile computing is changing into progressively

necessary because of the increase within the variety of moveable computers and
also the want to possess continuous network property to the web regardless of the
physical location of the node. Mobile computing has quick become an important
new paradigm in today's world of networked computing systems. Starting since
wireless laptops to mobile and Wi-Fi/Bluetooth- permitted PDA’s to wireless
sensing element networks, mobile computing has become present in its impact on
our daily lives. The goal of this paper is to show a number of the restrictions,
characteristics, applications and problems with mobile computing. during this
paper introduction to Mobile Computing, Characteristics and few of the
technologies used for communication, Limitations, Applications, the problems
regarding Mobile computing. Keywords— Mobile, Software, Mobile
Computing,
 6

Issues in Mobile Computing

Security problems: In this paper the author had mentioned varied sorts of security
problems and
protocols that are used for securing the information once communication between
them.

 Privacy: avoiding unauthorized users from fast access to essential data of

any explicit customer.
 Reliability: Ensures unauthorized modification, damage or creation of
knowledge cannot occur.
 Availability: making certain approved users obtaining the access they need.
 Legitimate: making certain that only approved users have access to
services.
 Accountability: making certain that the users are command liable for their
security connected

activities by composing the user and his/her activities are joined if and once
necessary.
Primarily author has mentioned on parallel and uneven key coding mechanisms
for providing security
to the information across the network

Bandwidth: Bandwidth utilization is often improved by work (bulk operations

against short requests) and compression of information before transmission. In
addition, lazy write back and file perfecting will facilitate the network in times of
peak demands. Lazy write back is incredibly useful within the sense that the
information to be written could bear any modifications. The technique of caching
often accessed information things will play a very important role in reducing
rivalry in slim information measure wireless networks. The cached information
will facilitate improve question reaction time. Since mobile purchasers usually
disconnect to conserve battery power the cached information will support
disconnected procedures.

Location aptitude: Mobile computers move they come across networks with
completely different options. A mobile computer should be ready to switch from
infrared mode to radio mode because it moves from inside to outdoors. In addition
it ought to be capable of change from cellular mode of operation to satellite mode
because the computer moves from urban and rural areas. In mobile computing as
computers are operating in cells and are being maintained by totally different
network suppliers, the physical distance might not replicate actuality network
distance. A little movement might end in a far longer path if cell or network
boundaries are crossed. It will additionally result in change of the placement
 7

dependent information as delineated above. This will increase the network

latency likewise as risk of disconnection. Service connections should be
dynamically transferred to the closest server. However, once load equalization
may be a priority this could not be potential.

Power Consumption: Mobile Computers can deem their batteries because the
primary power supply. Batteries should be ideally as lightweight as potential
however at constant time they must be capable of longer operation times. Power
consumption should be decreased to extend battery life. Chips are redesigned to
control at lower voltages. Power management may also facilitate. Individual
Components, be high-powered down once they are idle.

Advantages and Categories of Mobile Computing

Computers are one among the main inventions of the world. The invention of
computer has modified the world. During lately each field of life looks to be
processed. Later within the 21st century a replacement technology was introduced
within the world referred to as mobile computing. Now-a-days computers area
unit changed into mobile computers referred to as laptops. A little introduction of
mobile computing is that you just will do your add motion. In easy words it means
you'll do your work whereas sitting anyplace within the world. You are doing not
need to sit at one place to try to your work. The most challenge of Mobile
computing is that, we are able to communicate with alternative people’s whereas
sitting anyplace within the world.
The name MOBILE comes from the primary letter in every of the six classes that
conjure the framework. The six classes are:

M They would like for mobility

O The necessity to enhance operations
B The got to break business barriers
I The got to improve info quality
L The got to decrease dealings lag
E The got to improve potency
 8

Applications of Mobile Computing

Applications of Mobile Computing Mobile operating infrastructure will deliver

real time business advantages, corporations of all sizes are walking up to the
actual fact that they will improve productivity and increase profits by giving
workers remote access to mission essential company IT system. The importance
of Mobile Computers has been highlighted in several fields of that some are
represented below:

For Estate Agents: Estate agents will work either reception or call at the sector.
With mobile computers they will be a lot of productive. They will acquire current
property data by accessing multiple listing services, that they will do from home,
workplace or automobile once out with purchasers. They will give shoppers with
immediate feedback concerning specific homes or neighbourhoods, and with
quicker loan approvals, since applications is submitted on the spot. Therefore,
mobile computers enable them to devote longer to purchasers.

Emergency Services: Ability to receive data on the move is important wherever

the emergency services are concerned. Data concerning the address, kind and
different details of an event is sent quickly, via a Cellular Digital Packet data
(CDPD) system using mobile computers, to 1 or many acceptable mobile units
that are within the locality of the incident.

In courts: Defence counsels will take mobile computers in court. Once the
opposing counsel references a case that they are not familiar, they'll use the
computer to induce direct, period access to on-line legal information services,
wherever they'll gather data on the case and connected precedents. Mobile
computers enable immediate access to a wealth of data, creating individuals
higher knowing and ready.

In companies: Managers will use mobile computers in, say, and essential shows
to major customers. They will access the most recent market share data. At a tiny
low recess, they will revise the presentation to require advantage of this data.
They will communicate with the workplace regarding doable new offers and
decision conferences for discussing responds to the new proposals. Therefore,
mobile computers will leverage competitive blessings.

MasterCard Verification: At purpose of Sale (POS) terminals in retailers and

supermarkets, once customers use credit cards for transactions, the
communication is needed between the bank central pc and also the POS terminal,
so as to result verification of the cardboard usage, will happen quickly and firmly
over cellular channels using a mobile computer unit. This could speed up the
dealings method and relieve congestion at the POS terminals.
 9

Cellular Telephony

Cellular telephony is designed to provide communications between two moving

unites, called mobile stations (MSs), or between one Mobile unit and one
stationary unit, often called a land unit. A service provides must be able to locate
and track a caller, assign a channel to the call, and transfer the channel the base
station to base station as the caller moves out of range.
To make this tracking possible, each cellular service area is divided into
small regions called cells. Each cell contains an antenna and controlled by a solar
or AC powered network station, called the basic station (BS). Each base station,
in tum, is controlled by a switching office, called a mobile switching centre
(MSC). Coordinates communications between all the base station and the
telephone central office, It is a computerized centre that is responsible for
connecting cells, recoding call information, and billing.
Cell size is not fixed and can be increased or depending on the population
of the area. The typical radius of cell a 1 to 12 mi. High-density areas require
more, geographically smaller cells to meet traffic demands than do low-density
areas. Once determined, cell size is optimized to prevent the interference of
adjacent cell signals. The transmission power of each cell is kept low to prevent
its signal from interfering with those of other cells.

Cellular Telephone System

Cellular system comprises the following basic components:

 Mobile Stations (MS): Mobile handsets, which is used by an user to

communicate with another user
 Cell: Each cellular service area is divided into small regions called cell (5
to 20 Km)
 Base Stations (BS): Each cell contains an antenna, which is controlled by
a small office.
 Mobile Switching Centre (MSC): Each base station is controlled by a
switching office, called mobile switching centre.

Frequency Reuse Principle

Cellular telephone systems rely on an intelligent allocation and reuse of channels.

Each base station is given a group of radio channels to be used within a cell. Base
stations in neighbouring cells are assigned completely different set of channel
frequencies. By limiting the coverage areas, called footprints, within cell
boundaries, the same set of channels may be used to cover different cells
 10

separated from one another by a distance large enough to keep interference level
within tolerable limits as shown in Fig. 5.9.2. Cells with the same letter use the
same set of frequencies, called reusing cells. N cells which collectively use the
available frequencies (S = k.N) is known as cluster. If a cluster is replicated M
times within a system, then total number duplex channels (capacity) is C =
M.k.N= M.S.

Reuse factor: Fraction of total available channels assigned to each cell within a
cluster is 1/N. Example showing reuse factor of ¼ is shown in Fig. 5.9.2 (a) and
Fig. 5.9.2(b) shows reuse factor of 1/7.
B
G C
A
B F D
D C B B EB
A D C G G
C B
B A A A
G C
D C F F
D D
A
A E FE D
E

A B

(A) Cells showing reuse factor of ¼,

(B) Cells showing reuse factor of 1/7

As the demand increases in a particular region, the number of stations can be

increased by replacing a cell with a cluster as shown in Fig. 5.9.3. Here cell C has
been replaced with a cluster. However, this will be possible only by decreasing
the transmitting power of the base stations to avoid interference

B B
G C G C
A A
F D F D
E E

A cell is replaced by a cluster as demand increases

 11

Transmitting and Receiving

Basic operations of transmitting and receiving in a cellular telephone network are

discussed in this section.
Transmitting involves the following steps:

 A caller enters a 10-digit code (phone number) and presses the send button.
 The MS scans the ba nd to select a free channel and sends a strong signal
to send the number entered.
 The BS relays the number to the MSC.
 The MSC in turn dispatches the request to all the base stations in the
cellular system.
 The Mobile Identification Number (MIN) is then broadcast over all the
forward control channels throughout the cellular system. It is known as
paging.
 The MS responds by identifying itself over the reverse control channel.
 The BS relays the acknowledgement sent by the mobile and informs the
MSC about the handshake.
 The MSC assigns an unused voice channel to the call and call is
established.

Receiving involves the following steps:

 All the idle mobile stations continuously listen to the paging signal to
detect messages directed at them.
 When a call is placed to a mobile station, a packet is sent to the callee’s
home MSC to find out where it is.
 A packet is sent to the base station in its current cell, which then sends a
broadcast on the paging channel.
 The callee MS responds on the control channel.
 In response, a voice channel is assigned and ringing starts at the MS.

Mobility Management

A MS is assigned a home network, commonly known as location area. When an

MS migrates out of its current BS into the footprint of another, a procedure is
performed to maintain service continuity, known as Handoff management. An
agent in the home network, called home agent, keeps track of the current location
of the MS. The procedure to keep track of the user’s current location is referred
to as Location management. Handoff management and location management
together are referred to as Mobility management.
 12

Handoff: At any instant, each mobile station is logically in a cell and under the
control of the cell’s base station. When a mobile station moves out of a cell, the
base station notices the MS’s signal fading away and requests all the
neighbouring BSs to report the strength they are receiving. The BS then transfers
ownership to the cell getting the strongest signal and the MSC changes the
channel carrying the call. The process is called handoff. There are two types of
handoff; Hard Handoff and Soft Handoff. In a hard handoff, which was used in
the early systems, a MS communicates with one BS. As a MS moves from cell A
to cell B, the communication between the MS and base station of cell A is first
broken before communication is started between the MS and the base station of
B. As a consequence, the transition is not smooth. For smooth transition from one
cell (say A) to another (say B), an MS continues to talk to both A and B. As the
MS moves from cell A to cell B, at some point the communication is broken with
the old base station of cell A. This is known as soft handoff

Roaming: Two fundamental operations are associated with Location

Management; location update and paging. When a Mobile Station (MS) enters a
new Location Area, it performs a location updating procedure by making an
association between the foreign agent and the home agent. One of the BSs, in the
newly visited Location Area is informed and the home directory of the MS is
updated with its current location. When the home agent receives a message
destined for the MS, it forwards the message to the MS via the foreign agent. An
authentication process is performed before forwarding the message.

Medium Access Control Techniques

Channelization is a multiple access method in which the available bandwidth of

a link is shared in time, frequency or using code by a number of stations. Basic
idea these approaches can be explained in simple terms using the cocktail party
theory. In a cocktail party people talk to each other using one of the following
modes:

FDMA: When all the people group in widely separated areas and talk within each
group.
TDMA: When all the people are in the middle of the room, but they take turn in
speaking.
CDMA: When all the people are in the middle of the room, but different pairs
speak in different languages.

Basic principle of these approaches are briefly explained below:

 13

FDMA: The bandwidth is divided into separate frequency bands. In case of burst
traffic, the efficiency can be improved in FDMA by using a dynamic sharing
technique to access a particular frequency band; channels are assigned on demand

TDMA: The bandwidth is timeshared as shown in Fig. 5.9.5. Channel allocation

is done dynamically.

CDMA: Data from all stations are transmitted simultaneously and are separated
based on coding theory as shown in Fig. 5.9.6. In TDMA and FDMA the
transmissions from different stations are clearly separated in either time or
frequency. In case of CDMA, the transmission from different stations occupy the
entire frequency band at the same time. Multiple simultaneous transmissions are
separated by using coding theory. Each bit is assigned a unique m-bit code or chip
sequence.

First Generation System

The first generation was designed for voice communication. One example is
Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) used in North America. AMPS is an
analog cellular phone system. It uses 800 MHz ISM band and two separate analog
channels; forward and reverse analog channels. The band between 824 to 849
MHz is used for reverse communication from MS to BS. The band between 869
to 894 MHz is used for forward communication from BS to MS. Each band is
divided in to 832 30-KHz channels as shown in Fig. 5.9.8. As each location area
is shared by two service providers, each provider can have 416 channels, out of
which 21 are used for control. AMPS uses Frequency Division Multiple Access
(FDMA) to divide each 25-MHz band into 30-KHz channels

Second Generation
The first generation cellular network was developed for analog voice
communication. To provide better voice quality, the second generation was
developed for digitized voice communication. Three major systems were evolved

Second Generation

IS-95
IS-136
GSM CDMA
D-AMPS

TDMA-FDMA TDMA-FDMA TDMA-FDMA

 14

D-AMPS: D-AMPS is essentially a digital version of AMPS and it is backward

compatible with AMPS. It uses the same bands and channels and uses the
frequency reuse factor of 1/7. 25 frames per second each of 1994 bits, divided in
6 slots shared by three channels. Each slot has 324 bits-159 data, 64 control, 101
error-correction, it uses both TDMA and FDMA medium access control
techniques.
GSM: The Global System for Mobile (GSM) communication is a European
standard developed to replace the first generation technology. Uses two bands for
duplex communication. Each voice channel is digitized and compressed to a
13Kbps digital signal. Each slot carries 156.25 bits, 8 slots are multiplexed
together creating a FDM frame, 26 frames are combined to form a multifare, as
shown in Fig. 5.9.12. For medium access control, GSM combines both TDMA
and FDMA. There is large amount of overhead in TDMA, 114 bits are generated
by adding extra bits for error correction. Because of complex error correction, it
allows a reuse factor as low as 1/3.

IS-95 CDMA: IS-95 is based on CDMA/DSSS and FDMA medium access

control technique. The forward and backward transmissions

Third Generation
We are presently using the second generation technologies and the development
of the
third generation technologies are in progress. Goals of the third generation (3G)
technologies are mentioned below:
 Allow both digital data and voice communication.
 To facilitate universal personnel communication.
 Listen music, watch movie, access internet, video conference, etc.

Criteria for 3G Technologies are:

 Voice quality: Same as present PSTN network.
 Data rate: 144Kbps (car), 384 (pedestrians) and 2Mbps (stationary).
 Support for packet-switched and circuit-switched data services.
 Bandwidth of 2 MHz
 Interface to the internet.
ITU developed a blueprint called Internet Mobile Communication for year 2000
(IMT2000). All five Radio Interfaces adopted by IMT-2000 evolved from the
second
generation technologies

Third generation

IMT-DS IMT-MS IMT-TC IMT-SC IMT-SC

Direct Sequence Multicarrier Time Code Sigle Carrier Frequency Time

Third generation cellular technologies

 15

GSM radio subsystem and list any four GSM air interface
specifications

 Radio subsystem as the name implies, the radio subsystem (RSS)

comprises all radio specific entities, i.e., the mobile stations (MS) and the
base station subsystem (BSS).
 A GSM network is composed of several functional entities, whose
functions and interfaces are specified. The GSM network can be divided
into three broad parts.

1. The Mobile Station is carried by the subscriber.

2. The Base Station Subsystem controls the radio link with the Mobile
Station.
3. The Network Subsystem.

 The Mobile Station and the Base Station Subsystem communicate across
the Um interface, also known as the air interface or radio link.
 The Base Station Subsystem communicates with the Mobile services
Switching Centre across the A interface.

Mobile Station:

 The mobile station (MS) consists of the mobile equipment (the terminal)
and a smart card called the Subscriber Identity Module (SIM).

Base Station Subsystem:

 The Base Station Subsystem is composed of two parts:

 The Base Transceiver Station (BTS) and
 The Base Station Controller (BSC).
 These communicate across the standardized Abis interface, allowing (as in
the rest of the system) operation between components made by different
suppliers.
 The Base Transceiver Station houses the radio transceivers that define a
cell and handles the radio-link protocols with the Mobile Station. In a large
urban area, there will potentially be a large number of BTSs deployed, thus
the requirements for a BTS are ruggedness, reliability, portability, and
minimum cost.
 The Base Station Controller manages the radio resources for one or more
BTSs. It handles radio-channel setup, frequency hopping, and handovers,
as described below. The BSC is the connection between the mobile station
and the Mobile service Switching Centre (MSC).
 16

Sr. No. Parameter Specification

1 Reverse Channel Frequency 890-915 MHz

2 Forward Channel Frequency 935-960

3 ARFCN Number 0 to 124 and 975 to 1023

4 Tx/Rx Frequency Spacing 45 MHz

5 Tx/Rx Time slot Spacing 3 Time slots

6 Modulation Data rate 270.8333 kbps

7 Frame Period 4.615ms

8 User per Frame (Full rate) 8

9 Time Slot Period 576.9s

10 Bit Period 3.692 s

11 Modulation 0.3 GMSK

12 ARFCN Channel Spacing 200 kHz

13 Interleaving (Max. Delay) 40

14 Voice Coder Bit Rate 13.4 kbps

 17

Channel structure in GSM

Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) is the most popular technology
for mobile phones now days.). GSM a standard developed by the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI). Firstly, its name was the group
special mobile (GSM) and later named as global system for mobile
communications (GSM). It is a digital mobile telephony system that is widely
used in Europe.
The main motto of GSM was to provide a mobile phone system that allows users
to roaming facility throughout Europe. It is a second generation (2G) standard for
mobile networks and uses digital techniques. GSM uses the Frequency Division
Multiple Access (FDMA) and Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA).

GSM provides three different categories of services:

 Bearer.
 Tele
 Supplementary services
Bearer Service or Data Services
Bearer services permit transparent and non-transparent, synchronous or
asynchronous data transmission. It allows data transmission between network
interfaces. By using data services, a user can to transmit appropriate signals
between user network interfaces.

Teleservices or Telephony Services:

GSM provides the following main Telephony Services.
 Voice Calls
 Videotext
 Short Text Messages

Supplementary services
GSM provides the following Supplementary services
 Multiparty Service or conferencing
 Call Waiting.
 Call Hold
 Call Forwarding
 Number Identification.
 Closed User Groups (CUGs).
 18

Channel structure in GSM:

Frequency Correction Channel (FCCH)
Synchronization Channel (SCH)
Broadcast Broadcast Control Channel (BCCH)

Pegging Chenal (PCH)

Access Grant Channel (AGCH)
Signal Channel Common Control Random Access Channel (RACH)

Stand-alone Dedicated Control Channel

Slow Associated Control Channel (SACCH)
Dedicated Control Fast Associated Control Channel (FACCH)
Logical Channel

Half Rate
Traffic Channel
Full Rate
 19

Location Management HLR-VLR Scheme

The HLR in telecom is the reference database for subscriber parameters. Actually,
HLR Having all the detail like customer ID, customer number, billing detail and
for prepaid with IN intelligent network it has detail of current recharge of prepaid
user. The HLR in telecom database contains the master database of all the
subscribers to a GSM PLMN.

The Basic Parameters stored in the HLR in telecom are listed below:
1. Subscriber ID (IMSI and MSISDN)
2. Current Subscriber VLR (Current Location)
3. Supplementary Services Subscriber to (Caller Tone, Missed Call Alert,
Any Other Services etc.)
4. Subscriber Status (Registered or Deregistered)
5. Authentication Key and AUC Functionality
6. Mobile Subscriber Roaming Number

Visitor Location Register (VLR):

The VLR contains a copy of most of the data stored at the HLR. It is, however,
temporary data which exists for only as long as the subscriber is “active” in the
particular area covered by the VLR.
The additional data stored in the VLR in telecom is listed below:
1. Location Area Identity (LAI).
2. Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity (TMSI).
3. Mobile Station Roaming Number (MSRN).
4. Mobile status (busy/free/no answer etc.).

Location Area Identity in Both VLR and HLR in TELECOM

Cells within the Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) are grouped together into
geographical areas. Each area is assigned a Location Area Identity (LAI), a
location area may typically contain 30 cells.
Each VLR controls several LAIs and as a subscriber moves from one LAI to
another, the LAI is updated in the VLR. As the subscriber moves from one VLR
to another, the VLR address is updated at the HLR.

Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity (TMSI) is in VLR

The VLR controls the allocation of new Temporary Mobile Subscriber Identity
(TMSI) numbers and notifies them to the HLR. The TMSI will be updated
frequently, this makes it very difficult for the call to be traced and therefore
provides a high degree of security for the subscriber.
 20

Mobile Subscriber Roaming Number

As a subscriber may wish to operate outside its “home” system at some time, the
VLR can also allocate a Mobile Station Roaming Number (MSRN). This number
is assigned from a list of numbers held at the VLR (MSC). The MSRN is then
used to route the call to the MSC which controls the base station in the MSs
Current location.

Handoff in Mobile Connections

Definition
In cellular communications, the handoff is the process of transferring an active
call or data session from one cell in a cellular network or from one channel to
another. In satellite communications, it is the process of transferring control from
one earth station to another. Handoff is necessary for preventing loss of
interruption of service to a caller or a data session user. Handoff is also called
handover.

Handoff of subscriber 1
from cell 2 microcell Basic Station of Cell 2

Basic Station of Cell 1

Handoff of subscriber 2
From cell 3 to cell 4

Situations for triggering Handoff

Handoffs are triggered in any of the following situations –

 If a subscriber who is in a call or a data session moves out of coverage of

one cell and enters coverage area of another cell, a handoff is triggered for
a continuum of service. The tasks that were being performed by the first
cell are delineating to the latter cell.
 Each cell has a pre-defined capacity, i.e. it can handle only a specific
number of subscribers. If the number of users using a particular cell reaches
its maximum capacity, then a handoff occurs. Some of the calls are
transferred to adjoining cells, provided that the subscriber is in the
overlapping coverage area of both the cells.
 21

 Cells are often sub-divided into microcells. A handoff may occur when
there is a transfer of duties from the large cell to the smaller cell and vice
versa. For example, there is a traveling user moving within the jurisdiction
of a large cell. If the traveller stops, then the jurisdiction is transferred to a
microcell to relieve the load on the large cell.
 Handoffs may also occur when there is an interference of calls using the
same frequency for communication.

Types of Handoffs
There are two types of handoffs –

 Hard Handoff − In a hard handoff, an actual break in the connection

occurs while switching from one cell to another. The radio links from the
mobile station to the existing cell is broken before establishing a link with
the next cell. It is generally an inter-frequency handoff. It is a “break before
make” policy.
 Soft Handoff − In soft handoff, at least one of the links is kept when radio
links are added and removed to the mobile station. This ensures that during
the handoff, no break occurs. This is generally adopted in co-located sites.
It is a “make before break” policy.

Hand Handoff

Soft Handoff

Mobile Assisted Handoff

Mobile Assisted Handoff (MAHO) is a technique in which the mobile devices

assist the Base Station Controller (BSC) to transfer a call to another BSC. It is
used in GSM cellular networks. In other systems, like AMPS, a handoff is solely
the job of the BSC and the Mobile Switching Centre (MSC), without any
participation of the mobile device. However, in GSM, when a mobile station is
not using its time slots for communicating, it measures signal quality to nearby
BSC and sends this information to the BSC. The BSC performs handoff according
to this information.
 22

Channel Allocation Strategies in Computer Network

Channel Allocation means to allocate the available channels to the cells in a

cellular system. When a user wants to make a call request then by using channel
allocation strategies their requests are fulfilled. Channel Allocation Strategies are
designed in such a way that there is efficient use of frequencies, time slots
and bandwidth.

Types of Channel Allocation Strategies:

These are Fixed, Dynamic, and Hybrid Channel Allocation as explained as

following below.

 Fixed Channel Allocation (FCA):

Fixed Channel Allocation is a strategy in which fixed number of channels
or voice channels are allocated to the cells. Once the channels are allocated
to the specific cells then they cannot be changed. In FCA channels are
allocated in a manner that maximize Frequency reuse.

A
20
Channels

10
C Channels

5
Channels
B

In cell A 20 Channels or Voice channels are allocated. If all channels are

occupied and user make a call then the call is blocked. Borrowing
Channels handles this type of problem. In this cell borrow channels from
other cells.

 Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA):

Dynamic Channel allocation is a strategy in which channels are not
permanently allocated to the cells. When a User makes a call request then
Base Station (BS) send that request to the Mobile Station Centre (MSC)
for the allocation of channels or voice channels. This way the likelihood of
blocking calls is reduced. As traffic increases more channels are assigned
and vice-versa.
 23

 Hybrid Channel Allocation (HCA):

Hybrid Channel Allocation is a combination of both Fixed Channel
Allocation (FCA) and Dynamic Channel Allocation (DCA). The total
number of channels or voice channels are divided into fixed and dynamic
set. When a user make a call then first fixed set of channels are utilized but
if all the fixed sets are busy then dynamic sets are used. The main purpose
of HCA is to work efficiently under heavy traffic and to maintain a
minimum S/I.
24
25
 26

Mobile IP: Goals,Assumptions,Tunnelling,Entities and Terminology

Mobile IP: Goals and Assumptions
The goal of a mobile IP can be summarized as: 'supporting end-system mobility
while maintaining scalability, efficiency, and compatibility in all respects with
existing applications and Internet protocols'.

Mobile IP is an internet protocol designed to support host mobility. Its goal is to

provide the ability of a host to stay connected to the internet regardless of their
location. Mobile IP is able to track a mobile host without needing to change the
mobile host's long-term IP address.

Mobile Internet Protocol (IP) is a new recommended Internet protocol designed

to support the mobility of a user (host). Host mobility is becoming important
because of the recent blossoming of laptop computers and the high desire to have
continuous network connectivity anywhere the host happens to be. The
development of Mobile IP makes this possible. This paper describes and
summarizes the characteristics of the current Internet draft for Mobile IP. In
addition to the current internet draft, this paper also discusses alternative Mobile
IP proposals so that the reader may understand the different design issues
associated with the different protocol.

Home Foreign
Agent Agent

Home Network Foreign Network

Router Router

Wireless Wireless
Transceiver Transceiver

Internet

Mobile Node Internet Host Mobile Node

 27

Mobile IP: Tunnelling

Tunnelling establishes a virtual pipe for the packets available between a tunnel
entry and an endpoint.
It is the process of sending a packet via a tunnel and it is achieved by a
mechanism called encapsulation. It takes place to forward an IP datagram from
the home agent to the care-of-address. Whenever home agent receives a packet
from correspondent node, it encapsulates the packet with source address as home
address and destination as care-of-address.

Reverse Tunnel

Mobile Node Foreign Agent Home Agent

Forward Tunnel

IP Correspondent Node
Network

Encapsulation is the mechanisms of taking a packet consisting of packet header

and data and putting it into the data part of new packet.
Route Optimization in Mobile IP: The route optimization adds a conceptual
data structure, the binding cache, to the correspondent node. The binding cache
contains bindings for mobile node’s home address and its current care-of-address.
Every time the home agent receives an IP datagram that is destined to a mobile
node currently away from the home network, it sends a binding update to the
correspondent node to update the information in the correspondent node’s
binding cache. After this the correspondent node can directly tunnel packets to
the mobile node.
 28

Mobile IP: Entities and Terminology

Mobile Node (MN): It is the hand-held communication device that the user caries
e.g., Cell phone.
Home Network: It is a network to which the mobile node originally belongs to
as per its assigned IP address (home address).
Home Agent (HA): It is a router in home network to which the mobile node was
originally connected
Home Address: It is the permanent IP address assigned to the mobile node
(within its home network).
Foreign Network: It is the current network to which the mobile node is visiting
(away from its home network).
Foreign Agent (FA): It is a router in foreign network to which mobile node is
currently connected. The packets from the home agent are sent to the foreign
agent which delivers it to the mobile node.
Correspondent Node (CN): It is a device on the internet communicating to the
mobile node.
Care of Address (COA): It is the temporary address used by a mobile node while
it is moving away from its home network.
 29

IP packet delivery Process

The mobile i.e. movement of MN from one location to another has to be hidden
as per the requirement of mobile IP. CN may not know the exact location of MN.

3.
Router
Home Router 2. FA MN
Network HA
Foreign
Network
4.

Internet

1.

CN
Router

STEP 1: CN sends the packet as usual to the IP address of MN. With Source
address as CN and Destination address as MN. The internet, which does not have
any information of the current location of MN, routes the packet to the router
responsible for the home network of MN. This is done using the standard routing
mechanisms of the internet.

STEP 2: The HA now diverts the packet, knowing that MN is currently not in its
home network. The packet is not forwarded into the subnet as usual, but
encapsulated and tunnelled to the COA. A new header is put in front of the old IP
header showing the COA as new destination and HA as source of the
encapsulated packet.

STEP 3: The foreign agent (FA) now decapsulates the packet, i.e., removes the
additional header (newly added as COA as destination and HA as source), and
forwards the original packet with CN as source and MN as destination to the MN.
Again, for the MN mobility is not visible.
Finally, the MN Receives the packet with the Source address as CN and
Destination address as MN.
 30

STEP 4: The MN sends the packet MN as Source Address and CN as Destination

Address. The router with the FA acts as default router and forwards the packet in
the same way as it would do for any other node in the foreign network. Simple
mechanism works if CN is Fixed at a location if it has got mobility then the above
Steps 1 to 3 are to be followed to deliver the packet from MN to CN.
 31

Tunnelling and encapsulation

A tunnel establishes a virtual pipe for data packets between a tunnel entry and a
tunnel endpoint. Packets entering a tunnel are forwarded inside the tunnel and
leave the tunnel unchanged. Tunnelling, i.e., sending a packet through a tunnel is
achieved by using encapsulation
Encapsulation is the mechanism of taking a packet consisting of packet header
and data and putting it into the data part of a new packet. The reverse operation,
taking a packet out of the data part of another packet, is called de-capsulation.
Encapsulation and de-capsulation are the operations typically performed when a
packet is transferred from a higher protocol layer to a lower layer or from a lower
to a higher layer respectively. The HA takes the original packet with the MN as
destination, puts it into the data part of a new packet and sets the new IP header
so that the packet is routed to the CO. The new header is called outer header.][1]

Types of Encapsulation Three types of encapsulation protocols are specified for

Mobile IP:
 IP-in-IP encapsulation: required to be supported. Full IP header added to
the original IP packet. The new header contains HA address as source and
Care of Address as destination.
 Minimal encapsulation: optional. Requires less overhead but requires
changes to the original header. Destination address is changed to Care of
Address and Source IP address is maintained as is.
 Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE): optional. Allows packets of a
different protocol suite to be encapsulated by another protocol suite.
 32

Transition States of DHCP with Neat Diagram

 DHCP is Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol for assigning IP
addresses to devices on a network, a device can have different IP address
every time it connects to the network.
 The DHCP has been devised to provide static and dynamic address
allocation.
 To provide dynamic address allocation, the DHCP client acts as a state
machine that performs transitions from one state to another depending on
the messages it receives or sends. Figure shows the transition diagram with
main states.

Boot

INIT

-/DHCPDISCOVER

DHCPOFFER
SELECTING

Select Offer / DHCPREQUEST Lease time expired

or
REQUESTING DHCPNACK

DHCP ACK
Lease time 50% expired Lease Cancelled
DHCPREQUEST DHCPRELEASE
BOUND

DHCP ACK DHCP ACK

RENEWING REBENDING

Lease time 87.5% expired /

DHCP REQUEST
 33

 INIT State: When the DHCP client first starts, it is in the INIT state
(initializing state). The client broadcasts a DHCPDISCOVER message (a
request message with the DHCPDISCOVER option), using port 67.

 SELECTING State: After sending the DHCPDISCOVER message, the

client goes to the selecting state. Those servers that can provide this type
of service respond with a DHCPOFFER message. In these messages, the
servers offer an IP address. They can also offer the lease duration. The
default is 1 hour. The server that sends a DHCPOFFER locks the offered
IP address so that it is not available to any other clients. The client chooses
one of the offers and sends a DHCPREQUEST message to the selected
server. It then goes to the requesting state. However, if the client receives
no DHCPOFFER message, it tries four more times, each with a span of 2
seconds. If there is no reply to any of these DHCPDISCOVERs, the client
sleeps for 5 minutes before trying again.

 REQUESTING State: The client remains in the requesting state until it

receives a DHCPACK message from the server that creates the binding
between the client physical address and its IP address. After receipt of the
DHCPACK, the client goes to the bound state.

 BOUND State: In this state, the client can use the IP address until the lease
expires. When 50 percent of the lease period is reached, the client sends
another DHCPREQUEST to ask for renewal. It then goes to the renewing
state. When in the bound state, the client can also cancel the lease and go
to the initializing state.

 RENEWING State: The client remains in the renewing state until one of
two events happens. It can receive a DHCPACK, which renews the lease
agreement. In this case, the client resets its timer and goes back to the
bound state. Or, if a DHCPACK is not received, and 87.5 percent of the
lease time expires, the client goes to the rebinding state.

 REBINDING State: The client remains in the rebinding state until one of
three events happens. If the client receives a DHCPNACK or the lease
expires, it goes back to the initializing state and tries to get another IP
address. If the client receives a DHCPACK, it goes to the bound state and
resets the timer.
 34

Traditional TCP

Mechanisms that influence the efficiency of TCP in a mobile environment

 Congestion control
 Slow start
 Fast retransmit/fast recovery
 Implications on mobility

Congestion control

 TCP has been designed for fixed networks with fixed end-systems
 Hardware and software are mature enough to ensure reliability of data
 The probable reason for a packet loss in a fixed network is a temporary
overload some point in the transmission path, i.e., a state of congestion at
a node
 The packet buffers of a router are filled and the router cannot forward the
packets fast enough
 The only thing a router can do in this situation is to drop packets
 The sender notices the missing acknowledgement for the lost packet and
assumes a packet loss due to congestion
 Retransmitting the missing packet and continuing at full sending rate
would now be unwise, as this might only increase the congestion.

Slow start

 The behaviour TCP shows after the detection of congestion is called slow
start
 The sender always calculates a congestion window for a receiver.
 The start size of the congestion window is one segment (TCP packet).
 This scheme doubles the congestion window every time the
acknowledgements come back, which takes one round trip time (RTT) like
1, 2, 4, 8 etc.
 This is called the exponential growth of the congestion window in the slow
start mechanism.
 The exponential growth stops at the congestion threshold.
 As soon as the congestion window reaches the congestion threshold,
further increase of the transmission rate is only linear by adding 1 to the
congestion window each time the acknowledgements come back
 35

 Linear increase continues until a time-out at the sender occurs due to a

missing acknowledgement, or until the sender detects a gap in transmitted
data
o The sender sets the congestion threshold to half of the current
congestion window
o The congestion window itself is set to one segment

Fast retransmit/fast recovery Fast Retransmit

Fast Retransmit

 a receiver sends acknowledgements only if it receives any packets from the

sender.
 Receiving acknowledgements from a receiver also shows that the receiver
continuously receives something from the sender.
 The gap in the packet stream is not due to severe congestion, but a simple
packet loss due to a transmission error.
 The sender can now retransmit the missing packet(s) before the timer
expires.
 This behaviour is called fast retransmit

Fast Recovery

 The receipt of acknowledgements shows that there is no congestion to

justify a slow start.
 The sender can continue with the current congestion window.
 The sender performs a fast recovery from the packet loss
 This mechanism can improve the efficiency of TCP dramatically

Implications on mobility

 TCP concludes a congestion situation from a missing acknowledgement

o typically, wrong in wireless networks, here we often have packet loss
due to transmission errors
o Mobility itself can cause packet loss, if e.g., a mobile node roams from
one access point (e.g. foreign agent in Mobile IP) to another while there
are still packets in transit to the wrong access point and forwarding is
not Possible.
 The performance of an unchanged TCP degrades severely
 36

o TCP cannot be changed fundamentally due to the large base of

installation in the fixed network,
 TCP for mobility has to remain compatible
o The basic TCP mechanisms keep the whole Internet together

Classical TCP Improvements

 Indirect TCP (I-TCP)

 Snooping TCP
 Mobile TCP
 Fast retransmit/fast recovery
 Transmission/time-out freezing
 Selective retransmission
 Transaction-oriented TCP

Indirect TCP (I-TCP)

Access Point
(foreign agent)

‘Wired’ Internet

Mobile Host

Standard TCP
‘Wireless’ TCP

Socket and Stage migration after handover of a Mobile Host

 37

Access Point 1

Socket migration
Internet
and state transfer

Access Point 2
Mobile Host

 I-TCP segments a TCP connection into a

o Fixed part - Standard TCP is used
o wireless part - optimized TCP protocol

 Splitting of the TCP connection at, e.g., the foreign agent into 2 TCP
connections, no real end-to-end connection any longer
 Hosts in the fixed part of the net do not notice the characteristics of the
wireless part

Advantages

 No changes in the fixed network necessary, no changes for the hosts (TCP
protocol) necessary, all current optimizations to TCP still work
 transmission errors on the wireless link do not propagate into the fixed
network
 simple to control, mobile TCP is used only for one hop between, e.g., a
foreign agent and mobile host
 38

 Therefore, a very fast retransmission of packets is possible, the short delay

on the mobile hop is known
Disadvantages
 loss of end-to-end semantics, an acknowledgement to a sender does now
not any longer mean that a receiver really got a packet, foreign agents
might crash
 Higher latency possible due to buffering of data within the foreign agent
and forwarding to a new FA

Snooping TCP

 The foreign agent buffers all packets with destination mobile host and
additionally ‘snoops’ the packet flow in both directions to recognize
acknowledgements
 buffering enable the FA to perform a local retransmission in case of packet
loss on the wireless link
 Transparent extension of TCP within the foreign agent
 buffering of packets sent to the mobile host
 lost packets on the wireless link (both directions!) will be retransmitted
immediately by the mobile host or foreign agent, respectively (so called
“local” retransmission)
 The foreign agent therefore “snoops” the packet flow and recognizes
acknowledgements in both directions, it also filters ACKs
 Changes of TCP only within the foreign agent

Foreign agent
Local retransmission
Correspondent Host

‘Wired’ Internet

Mobile Host

Snooping of ACKs Buffering of Data

End-To-End TCP connection

 39

 Data transfer to the mobile host

o FA buffers data until it receives ACK of the MH, FA detects packet
loss via duplicated ACKs or time-out
o fast retransmission possible, transparent for the fixed network
 Data transfer from the mobile host
o FA detects packet loos on the wireless link via sequence Number
 FA answers directly with a NACK to the MH

o MH can now retransmit data with only a very short delay

 Integration of the MAC layer

o MAC layer often has similar mechanisms to those of TCP
o Thus, the MAC layer can already detect duplicated packets due to
retransmissions and discard them

Problems
o snooping TCP does not isolate the wireless link as good as I-TCP
o snooping might be useless depending on encryption schemes

Advantages
 The end-to-end TCP semantic is preserved
 The correspondent host does not need to be changed; most of the
enhancements are in the foreign agent
 It does not need a handover of state as soon as the mobile host moves to
another foreign agent.
 It does not matter if the next foreign agent uses the enhancement or not

Disadvantages
 Snooping TCP does not isolate the behaviour of the wireless link as well
as ITCP
 Using negative acknowledgements between the foreign agent and the
mobile host assumes additional mechanisms on the mobile host.
 All efforts for snooping and buffering data may be useless if certain
encryption schemes are applied end-to- end between the correspondent
host and mobile host
 40

Mobile TCP

 Special handling of lengthy and/or frequent disconnections

 M-TCP splits as I-TCP does
o unmodified TCP fixed network to supervisory host (SH)
o optimized TCP SH to MH

Supervisory host
o no caching, no retransmission
o monitors all packets, if disconnection detected
 set sender window size to 0
 sender automatically goes into persistent mode
o Old or new SH reopen the window

Advantages
 maintains semantics, supports disconnection, no buffer forwarding

Disadvantages
 loss on wireless link propagated into fixed network
 adapted TCP on wireless link

Fast retransmit / fast recovery

 Change of foreign agent often results in packet loss
o TCP reacts with slow-start although there is no congestion
 Forced fast retransmit
o as soon as the mobile host has registered with a new foreign agent, the
MH sends duplicated acknowledgements on purpose
o this forces the fast retransmit mode at the communication partners
o additionally, the TCP on the MH is forced to continue sending with the
actual window size and not to go into slow-start after registration

Advantage
 simple changes result in significant higher performance

Disadvantage
 further mix of IP and TCP, no transparent approach
 41

Transmission / time-out freezing

 Mobile hosts can be disconnected for a longer time

o no packet exchange possible, e.g., in a tunnel, disconnection due to
overloaded cells or mux. with higher priority traffic
o TCP disconnects after time-out completely

 TCP freezing
o MAC layer is often able to detect interruption in advance
o MAC can inform TCP layer of upcoming loss of connection
o TCP stops sending, but does now not assume a congested link
o MAC layer signals again if reconnected

Advantage
 scheme is independent of data

Disadvantage
 TCP on mobile host has to be changed, mechanism depends on MAC
layer

Selective Retransmission

 TCP acknowledgements are often cumulative

o ACK n acknowledges correct and in-sequence receipt of packets up to n
o if single packets are missing quite often a whole packet sequence
beginning at the gap has to be retransmitted (go-back-n), thus wasting
bandwidth
 Selective retransmission as one solution
o RFC2018 allows for acknowledgements of single packets, not only
acknowledgements of in-sequence packet streams without gaps
o sender can now retransmit only the missing packets

Advantage
 much higher efficiency

Disadvantage
 more complex software in a receiver, buffer needed at the receiver
 42

Transaction-oriented TCP
 TCP phases
o setup, data transmission, connection release
o using 3-way-handshake needs 3 packets for setup and release, respectively
o thus, even short messages need a minimum of 7 packets!

Transaction oriented TCP

o RFC1644, T-TCP, describes a TCP version to avoid this overhead
o connection setup, data transfer and connection release can be combined
o thus, only 2 or 3 packets are needed

Advantage: efficiency
Disadvantage
o Requires changed TCP
o Mobility no longer transparent

Approach Mechanism Advantages Disadvantages

Splits TCP connection Isolation of Loss of TCP
Indirect TCP into two connections wireless link, semantics, higher
simple latency at handover,
security problems
Snoops data and Transparent for end- Insufficient isolation
Snooping TCP acknowledgements, local to- end connection, of wireless link,
retransmission MAC security problems
integration
possible
Splits TCP Maintains end- to-end Bad isolation of
connection, chokes semantics, andles long wireless link,
M-TCP
sender via window term and frequent processing overhead
size disconnections due to bandwidth
management, security
problems
Fast retransmit/ Avoids slow-start Simple and Mixed layers, not
fast recovery after roaming efficient transparent
Transmission / time- Freezes TCP state at Independent of Changes in TCP
out freezing disconnection, resumes content, works for required, MAC
after reconnection longer interruptions dependent
Selective Retransmits only lost Slightly more
retransmission data Very efficient complex receiver
software, more
buffer space needed
Transaction- Combines connection Efficient for Changes in TCP
oriented TCP setup/release and data certain applications required, not
transmission transparent,
security problems
43
44
 45

Introduction to Wireless LAN

Wireless LAN stands for Wireless Local Area Network. It is also called LAWN
(Local Area Wireless Network). WLAN is one in which a mobile user can
connect to a Local Area Network (LAN) through a wireless connection.
The IEEE 802.11 group of standards defines the technologies for wireless LANs.
For path sharing, 802.11 standard uses the Ethernet protocol and CSMA/CA
(carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance). It also uses an encryption
method i.e. wired equivalent privacy algorithm.
Wireless LANs provide high speed data communication in small areas such as
building or an office. WLANs allow users to move around in a confined area
while they are still connected to the network.
In some instance wireless LAN technology is used to save costs and avoid laying
cable, while in other cases, it is the only option for providing high-speed internet
access to the public. Whatever the reason, wireless solutions are popping up
everywhere.
Examples of WLANs that are available today are NCR's waveLAN and
Motorola's ALTAIR.
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 (also non-visible, e.g., within devices, in walls
etc.).
 Planning: Only wireless ad-hoc networks allow for communication
without previous planning, any wired network needs wiring plans.
 Design: Wireless networks allow for the design of independent, small
devices which can for example be put into a pocket. Cables not only restrict
users but also designers of small notepads, PDAs, etc.
 Robustness: Wireless networks can handle disasters, e.g., earthquakes,
flood etc. whereas, networks requiring a wired infrastructure will usually
break down completely in disasters.
 Cost: The cost of installing and maintaining a wireless LAN is on average
lower than the cost of installing and maintaining a traditional wired LAN,
for two reasons. First, after providing wireless access to the wireless
network via an access point for the first user, adding additional users to a
network will not increase the cost. And second, wireless LAN eliminates
the direct costs of cabling and the labour associated with installing and
repairing it.
 Ease of Use: Wireless LAN is easy to use and the users need very little
new information to take advantage of WLANs.
 46

Disadvantages of WLANs
 Quality of Services: Quality of wireless LAN is typically lower than wired
networks. The main reason for this is the lower bandwidth due to
limitations is radio transmission, higher error rates due to interference and
higher delay/delay variation due to extensive error correction and detection
mechanisms.
 Proprietary Solutions: Due to slow standardization procedures, many
companies have come up with proprietary solutions offering
standardization functionality plus many enhanced features. Most
components today adhere to the basic standards IEEE 802.11a or 802.11b.
 Restrictions: Several govt. and non-govt. institutions world-wide regulate
the operation and restrict frequencies to minimize interference.
 Global operation: Wireless LAN products are sold in all countries so,
national and international frequency regulations have to be considered.
 Low Power: Devices communicating via a wireless LAN are typically
power consuming, also wireless devices running on battery power.
Whereas the LAN design should take this into account and implement
special power saving modes and power management functions.
 License free operation: LAN operators don't want to apply for a special
license to be able to use the product. The equipment must operate in a
license free band, such as the 2.4 GHz ISM band.
 Robust transmission technology: If wireless LAN uses radio
transmission, many other electrical devices can interfere with them (such
as vacuum cleaner, train engines, hair dryers, etc.).Wireless LAN
transceivers cannot be adjusted for perfect transmission is a standard office
or production environment.
 47

Wireless Mac Issues

The three important issues are:
1. Half Duplex operation –> either send or receive but not both at a given
time
2. Time varying channel
3. Burst channel errors

1. Half Duplex Operation

In wireless, it‘s difficult to receive data when the transmitter is sending the data,
because: When node is transmitting, a large fraction of the signal energy leaks
into the receiver path. The transmitted and received power levels can differ by
orders of magnitude. The leakage signal typically has much higher power than
the received signal -―Impossible to detect a received signal, while transmitting
data‖. Collision detection is not possible, while sending data. As collision cannot
be detected by the sender, all proposed protocols attempt to minimize the
probability of collision - Focus on collision avoidance.
2. Time Varying Channel
Three mechanisms for radio signal propagation
 Reflection – occurs when a propagating wave impinges upon an object that
has very large dimensions than the wavelength of the radio wave e.g.,
reflection occurs from the surface of the earth and from buildings and walls
 Diffraction – occurs when the radio path between the transmitter and the
receiver is obstructed by a surface with sharp edges
 Scattering – occurs when the medium through which the wave travels
consist of objects with
The received signal by a node is a superposition of time-shifted and attenuated
versions of the transmitted signals the received signal varies with time. The time
varying signals (time varying channel) phenomenon also known as multipath
propagation. The rate of variation of channel is determined by the coherence time
of the channel Coherence time is defined as time within which When a node ‘s
received signal strength drops below a certain threshold the node is said to be in
fade. Handshaking is widely used strategy to ensure the link quality is good
enough for data communication. A successful handshake between a sender and a
receiver (small message) indicates a good communication link.
 48

3. Burst Channel Errors

As a consequence of time varying channel and varying signals strengths errors
are introduced in the transmission (Very likely) for wire line networks the bit
error rate (BER) is the probability of packet error is small .For wire line networks
the errors are due to random For wireless networks the BER is as high. For
wireless networks the errors are due to node being in fade as a result errors occur
in a long burst. Packet loss due to burst errors - mitigation techniques
o Smaller packets
o Forward Error Correcting Codes
o Retransmissions (Acks)

Location Dependent Carrier Sensing

Location Dependent Carrier Sensing results in three types of nodes that
protocols need to deal with
Hidden Nodes: Even if the medium is free near the transmitter, it may not be free
near the
intended receiver
Exposed Nodes: Even if the medium is busy near the transmitter, it may be free
near the intended receiver
Capture: Capture occurs when a receiver can cleanly receive a transmission from
one of two simultaneous transmissions

Hidden Node/Terminal Problem

A hidden node is one that is within the range of the intended destination but out
of range of sender Node B can communicate with A and C both A and C cannot
hear each other When A transmits to B, C cannot detect the transmission using
the carrier sense mechanism C falsely thinks that the channel is idle
Exposed Nodes
An exposed node is one that is within the range of the sender but out of range of
destination. when a node ‘s received signal, strength drops below a certain
threshold the node is said to be in fade. Handshaking is widely used strategy to
ensure the link quality is good enough for data communication. A successful
handshake between a sender and a receiver (small message) indicates a good
communication link.
 49

In theory C can therefore have a parallel transmission with any node that
cannot hear the transmission from B, i.e. out of range of B. But C will not transmit
to any node because its an exposed node. Exposed nodes waste bandwidth.
Capture
Capture is said to occur when a receiver can cleanly receive a transmission from
one of two simultaneous transmissions both within its range Assume node A and
D transmit simultaneously to B. The signal strength received from D is much
higher than that from A, and
D‘s transmission can be decoded without errors in presence of transmissions from
A.D has captured A. Capture is unfair because it gives preference to nodes that
are closer to the receiver. It may improve protocol performance.
 50

Architecture of IEEE 802.11

IEEE 802.11:
IEEE 802.11 is a set of media access control (MAC) and physical layer (PHY)
specifications for implementing wireless local area network (WLAN) computer
communication in the 900 MHz and 2.4, 3.6, 5, and 60 GHz frequency bands
The IEEE developed an international standard for WLANs. The 802.11 standard
focuses on the bottom two layers of the OSI model, the physical layer (PHY) and
data link layer (DLL).
The objective of the IEEE 802.11 standard was to define a medium access control
(MAC) sublayer, MAC management protocols and services, and three PHYs for
wireless connectivity of fixed, portable, and moving devices within a local area.
The three physical layers are an IR base band PHY, an FHSS radio in the 2.4 GHz
band, and a DSSS radio in the 2.4 GHz.

IEEE 802.11 Architecture:

The architecture of the IEEE 802.11 WLAN is designed to support a network
where most decision making is distributed to mobile stations. This type of
architecture has several advantages. It is tolerant of faults in all of the WLAN
equipment and eliminates possible bottlenecks a centralized architecture would
introduce. The architecture is flexible and can easily support both small, transient
networks and large, semipermanent or permanent networks. In addition, the
architecture and protocols offer significant power saving and prolong the battery
life of mobile equipment without losing network connectivity

Two network architectures are defined in the IEEE 802.11 standard:

 Infrastructure network: An infrastructure network is the network
architecture for providing communication between wireless clients and
wired network resources. The transition of data from the wireless to wired
medium occurs via an AP. An AP and its associated wireless clients define
the coverage area. Together all the devices form a basic service set (refer
figure 1).
 Point-to-point (ad-hoc) network: An ad-hoc network is the architecture
that is used to support mutual communication between wireless clients.
Typically, an ad-hoc network is created spontaneously and does not
support access to wired networks. An ad-hoc network does not require an
AP.
 51

Distribution System

Access Access
Station Station Point
Point

Station Station
Station Station

ESS

STA: Station
AP: Access Point
BSS: Basic Service Set
ESS: Extended service Set

BSS and ESS Configuration of IEEE 802.11 WLAN

IEEE 802.11 supports three basic topologies for WLANs, the independent basic
service set (IBSS), the basic service set, and the extended service set (ESS). The
MAC layer supports implementations of IBSS, basic service set, and ESS
configurations.
Independent basic service set: The IBSS configuration is referred to as an
independent configuration or an ad-hoc network. An IBSS configuration is
analogous to a peer-to-peer office network in which no single node is required to
act as a server. IBSS WLANs include a number of nodes or wireless stations that
communicate directly with one another on an ad-hoc, peer-to-peer basis.
Generally, IBSS implementations cover a limited area and are not connected to
any large network. An IBSS is typically a short-lived network, with a small
number of stations, that is created for a particular purpose.
Basic service set: The basic service set configuration relies on an AP that acts as
the logical server for a single WLAN cell or channel. Communications between
station 1 and station 4 actually flow from station 1 to AP1 and then from AP1 to
AP2 and then from AP2 to AP4 and finally AP4 to station 4 (refer to Figure 2).
An AP performs a bridging function and connects multiple WLAN cells or
channels, and connects WLAN cells to a wired enterprise LAN.
 52

AP #3

AP #2

AP #1

ST #4

ST #1

Extended service set: The ESS configuration consists of multiple basic service
set cells that can be linked by either wired or wireless backbones called a
distributed system. IEEE 802.11 supports ESS configurations in which multiple
cells use the same channel, and configurations in which multiple cells use
different channels to boost aggregate throughput. To network the equipment
outside of the ESS, the ESS and all of its mobile stations appear to be a single
MAC layer network where all stations are physically stationary. Thus, the ESS
hides the mobility of the mobile stations from everything outside the ESS (refer
figure 1).
 53

Bluetooth Technology
Bluetooth technology is a high speed and low powered wireless technology
designed to connect phones or other portable equipment for communication or
file transmissions. This is based on mobile computing technology. Following is a
list of some prominent features of Bluetooth technology:
 Bluetooth is also known as IEEE 802.15 standard or specification that uses
low power radio communications to link phones, computers and other
network devices over a short distance without using any type of connecting
wires.
 As Bluetooth is an open wireless technology standard so, it is used to send
or receive data to connected devices present across a certain distance using
a band of 2.4 to 2.485 GHz.
 In Bluetooth technology, the wireless signals transmit data and files over a
short distance, typically up to 30 feet or 10 meters.
 Bluetooth technology was developed by a group of 5 companies known as
Special Interest Group formed in 1998. The companies are Ericsson, Intel,
Nokia, IBM, and Toshiba.
 The range of Bluetooth technology for data exchange was up to 10 meters
in older versions of devices, but the latest version of Bluetooth technology
i.e., Bluetooth 5.0, can exchange data in the range of about 40-400 meters.
 The average speed of data transmission in Bluetooth technology was
around 1 Mbps in the very first version. The second version was 2.0+ EDR,
which provided the data rate speed of 3Mbps. The third was 3.0+HS, which
provided the speed of 24 Mbps. The latest version of this technology is 5.0.

History of Bluetooth
There is an amazing story behind the history of Bluetooth technology. The
Bluetooth wireless technology was named after a Danish King named Harald
Blatant. His last name means "Bluetooth" in English. The name "Bluetooth" was
awarded to this technology because the Danish King named Harald Blatant was
united the Denmark and Norway, same as Bluetooth wireless technology is used
to unite two disparate devices for communication or data transmission.
Ericsson Mobile Communications started the development of Bluetooth
technology in 1994. The main motive behind the development of this amazing
technology was to find an alternative to the use of cables for communication
between mobile phones and other devices. In 1998, 4 big companies of that time
named Ericsson, IBM, Nokia and Toshiba formed the Bluetooth Special Interest
Group (SIG), which published the 1st version of Bluetooth technology in 1999.
 54

After that, four versions have been released. The latest version of this technology
is Bluetooth 5.2.
The Architecture of Bluetooth Technology
 In Bluetooth technology, the network of Bluetooth consists of a Personal
Area Network or a
 Bluetooth's architecture is also called a "Piconet" because it is made of
multiple networks.
 It contains a minimum of 2 to a maximum of 8 Bluetooth peer devices.
 It usually contains a single master and up to 7 slaves.
 Piconet provides the technology which facilitates data transmission based
on its nodes, i.e., Master node and Slave Nodes.
 The master node is responsible for sending the data while the slave nodes
are used to receive the data.
 In Bluetooth technology, data transmission occurs through Ultra-High
frequency and short-wavelength radio waves.
 The Piconet uses the concept of multiplexing and spread spectrum. It is a
combination of code division multiple access (CDMA) and frequency
hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) technique.

How does Bluetooth work?

As we stated that there is one master and up to 7 slaves may exist for a Bluetooth
connection. The master is the device that initiates communication with other
devices. The master device handles the communications link and traffic between
itself and the slave devices associated with it. The slave devices have to respond
to the master device and synchronize them transmit/receive timing with the
master device's specified time.
 55

Conditions for Successful Data transmission

Following is a list of some conditions that must be satisfied for a successful data
transmission in Bluetooth technology:
 Maximum number of Master Node - 1
 Maximum number of Slave Nodes - 7
 Maximum number of Nodes in a Piconet - 8
 Maximum number of devices that can be paired - 2 – 1= 255
 Number of devices that can be parked → Infinite (∞)

SB S SB

S
S
M

S
P
P
S

Explanation
 The parked node is a type of node that is ready to be connected and stand
by node is a type of node that can either become a slave or parked node or
remains idle or disconnected.
 In Bluetooth technology, the data transmission can only occur between
master and slave nodes. It cannot be done between slave and slave nodes.
However, two master nodes can be connected.
 If the connection from the master node gets disconnected, the whole
Piconet gets disconnected.
 If there is a connection between two master nodes, then that network is
called as Scatter-net.
 It means scatter-nets are created when a device becomes an active member
of more than one Piconet and the adjoining device shares its time slots
among the different piconets.
 If the number of slaves or devices is increased in a Piconet, then the data
transmission speed will be decreased, and if the number of slaves or
devices is decreased in number, then the data transmission speed will be
increased.
 56

Specifications of Bluetooth Technology

Bluetooth technology can be specified in two types:
 The Core Specification
 The Pro?les Speci?cation

I. The Core Specifications

The core specification is used to define the Bluetooth protocol stack and the
requirements for the testing and qualification process of the Bluetooth-based
products.
The core specification of Bluetooth Technology contains 5 layers:
1. Radio: It is used to specify the requirements for radio transmission such as
frequency, modulation, and power characteristics for a Bluetooth
transceiver.
2. Baseband Layer: It is used to define physical and logical channels, voice
or data link types, various packet formats, transmit and receive timing,
channel control, and the mechanism for frequency hopping and device
addressing. It also specifies point to point or point to multipoint links. The
length range of a packet can vary from 68 bits to a maximum of 3071 bits.
3. Link Manager Protocol (LMP): The Link manager protocol is used to
de?ne the procedures for link set up and ongoing link management.
4. Logical Link Control and Adaptation Protocol (L2CAP): It is used for
adapting upper-layer protocols to the baseband layer.
5. Service Discovery Protocol (SDP): It facilitates the Bluetooth device to
query other Bluetooth devices for device information, provided services,
and the characteristics of those services.
Here, the first three layers denote the Bluetooth module, whereas the last two
layers make up the host. The interface between these two logical groups is called
the Host Controller Interface.

II. The Pro?les Speci?cation

It provides usage models to show detailed information about using the Bluetooth
protocol for various types of applications.
 57

Advantages of Bluetooth Technology

Following is a list of some advantages of the Bluetooth technology:
 Bluetooth Technology is based on Wireless technology. That's why it is
cheap because it doesn't need any transmission wire that reduces the cost.
 It is very simple to form a Piconet in Bluetooth technology.
 It removes the problem of radio interference by using the Speed Frequency
Hopping technique.
 The energy or power consumption is very low, about 0.3mW. It makes it
possible for the least utilization of battery life.
 It is robust because it guarantees security at a bit level. The authentication
is controlled using a 128bit key.
 You can use it for transferring the data, and verbal communication as
Bluetooth can support data channels of up to 3 similar voice channels.
 It doesn't require line of sight and one to one communication as used in
other modes of wireless communications such as infrared.

Disadvantages of Bluetooth Technology

Following is a list of some disadvantages of the Bluetooth technology:
 In Bluetooth technology, the bandwidth is low.
 The data transmission range may also be an issue because it is also less.

Applications of Bluetooth Technology

Bluetooth technology is used in many communicational and entertainment
devices. The following are some most used applications of the Bluetooth
technology:
 Bluetooth technology is used in cordless desktop. It means the peripheral
devices such as a mouse, keyboard, printer, speakers, etc. are connected
to the desktop without a wire.
 It is used in the multimedia transfer, such as exchanging multimedia data
like songs, videos, pictures etc. that can be transferred among devices
using Bluetooth.
 This technology is also used in the following devices: i.e.
 Bluetooth Speakers.
 Bluetooth Headphones.
 Bluetooth Headsets for calling purposes.
 Bluetooth gaming consoles etc.
 58

Wireless Multiple Access Protocols

Multiple – Access Protocol

Random Access Protocol Controlled – Access Protocol Channelization Protocol

ALOHA Reservation CDMA

GSMA Polling TDMA
GSMA/CD Token Passing CDMA
GSMA/CA

1. RANDOM ACCESS
 In random access or contention methods, no station is superior to another
station and none is assigned the control over another. No station permits,
or does not permit, another station to send. At each instance, a station that
has data to send uses a procedure defined by the protocol to make a
decision on whether or not to send.
 This decision depends on the state of the medium (idle or busy).Two
features give this method its name. First, there is no scheduled time for a
station to transmit. Transmission is random among the stations. That is why
these methods are called random access. Second, no rules specify which
station should send next. Stations compete with one another to access the
medium. That is why these methods are also called contention methods

ALOHA
This random-access method, was developed at the University of Hawaiian early
1970. It was designed for a radio (wireless) LAN, but it can be used on any shared
medium. It is obvious that there are potential collisions in this arrangement. The
medium is shared between the stations. When a station sends data, another station
may attempt dodo so at the same time. The data from the two stations collide and
become garbled.
 59

Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Detection (CSMA/CD)

 The problem with CSMA is that transmitting station continues to transmit
its frame even though a collision occurs.
 The channel time is unnecessarily wasted due to this. In CSMA/CD, if a
station receives other transmissions when it is transmitting, then a collision
can be detected as soon as it occurs and the transmission time is saved.
 As soon as a collision is detected, the transmitting stations release a jam
signal.
 The jam signal will alert the other stations. The stations then are not
supposed to transmit immediately after the collision has occurred.
Otherwise, there is possibility that the same frames would collide again.
 After some ―back off‖ delay time the stations will retry the transmission.
If again the collision takes place then the back off time is increased
progressively.

Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA)

 In a wired network, the received signal has almost the same energy as the
sent signal because either the length of the cable is short or there are
repeaters that amplify the energy between the sender and the receiver. This
means that in a collision, the detected energy almost doubles.
 However, in a wireless network, much of the sent energy is lost in
transmission. The received signal has very little energy. Therefore, a
collision may add only 5 to 10% additional energy. This is not useful for
effective collision detection. We need to avoid collisions on wireless
networks because they cannot be detected.
 Carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) was
invented for this network. Collisions are avoided through the use of
CSMAICA's three strategies: the interframe space, the contention window,
and acknowledgments
 60

2. CONTROLLED ACCESS
Controlled Access
In controlled access, the stations consult one another to find which station has the
right to send. A station cannot send unless it has been authorized by other stations.
We discuss three popular controlled-access methods.

Reservation
In the reservation method, a station needs to make a reservation before sending
data. Time is divided into intervals. In each interval, a reservation frame precedes
the data frames sent in that interval. If there are N stations in the system, there are
exactly N reservation minislots in the reservation frame. Each minislot belongs
to a station. When a station needs to send a data frame, it makes a reservation in
its own minislot.
The stations that have made reservations can send their data frames after the
reservation frame. Figure below shows a situation with five stations and a five-
mini slot reservation frame. In the first interval, only stations 1, 3, and 4 have
made reservations. In the second interval, only station 1 has made a reservation.

1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5 1 2 3 4 5
Data Data Data Data
0 0 0 0 0 Station 1 1 0 0 0 0 Station 4 Station 3 Station 1 1 0 1 1 0

Reservation frame

Polling
Polling works with topologies in which one device is designated as a primary
station and the other devices are secondary stations. All data exchanges must be
made through the primary device even when the ultimate destination is a
secondary device.
The primary device controls the link; the secondary devices follow its
instructions. It is up to the primary device to determine which device is allowed
to use the channel at a given time. The primary device, therefore, is always the
initiator of a session
 61

If the primary wants to receive data, it asks the secondary ‘s if they have
anything to send; this is called poll function. If the primary wants to send data,
it tells the secondary to get ready to receive; this is called select function.

Token Passing:
 In the token-passing method, the stations in a network are organized in a
logical ring. In other words, for each station, there is a predecessor and a
successor. The predecessor is the station which is logically before the
station in the ring; the successor is the station which is after the station in
the ring.
 The current station is the one that is accessing the channel now. The right
to this access has been passed from the predecessor to the current station.
The right will be passed to the successor when the current station has no
more data to send.
 Token management is needed for this access method. Stations must be
limited in the time they can have possession of the token. The token must
be monitored to ensure it has not been lost or destroyed.
 For example, if a station that is holding the token fails, the token will
disappear from the network. Another function of token management is to
assign priorities to the stations and to the types of data being transmitted.
And finally, token management is needed to make low-priority stations
release the token to high priority stations.

3. CHANNELIZATION
Channelization is a multiple-access method in which the available bandwidth of
a link is shared in time, frequency, or through code, between different stations.
Three channelization protocols: FDMA, TDMA, and CDMA.

Code Code

Code

Freq
Freq

Freq Time Time

Time
FDMA TDMA CDMA
 62

FDMA: In frequency-division multiple access (FDMA), the available bandwidth

is divided into frequency bands. Each station is allocated a band to send its data.
In other words, each band is reserved for a specific station, and it belongs to the
station all the time. Each station also uses a bandpass filter to confine the
transmitter frequencies. To prevent station interferences, the allocated bands are
separated from one another by small guard bands.
TDMA: In time-division multiple access (TDMA), the stations share the
bandwidth of the channel in time. Each station is allocated a time slot during
which it can send data. Each station transmits its data in is assigned time slot.
CDMA:
 In CDMA each user is given a unique code sequence or signature sequence.
This sequence allows the user to spread information signal across the
assigned frequency band.
 At the receiver the signal is recovered by using the same code sequence.
At the receiver, the signals received from various users are separated by
checking the cross-correlation of the received signal with each possible
user signature sequence.
 In CDMA the users access the channel in a random manner. Hence the
signals transmitted by multiple users will completely overlap both in time
and in frequency.
 The CDMA signals are spread in frequency. Therefore, the demodulation
and separation of these signals at the receiver can be achieved by using the
pseudorandom code sequence. CDMA is sometimes also called as spread
spectrum multiple access (SSMA).
 In CDMA as the bandwidth as well as time of the channel is being shared
by the users, it is necessary to introduce the guard times and guard bands.
 CDMA does not any synchronization, but the code sequences or signature
waveforms are required.
 63

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

Wireless Application Protocol or WAP is a programming model or an application
environment and set of communication protocols based on the concept of the
World Wide Web (WWW), and its hierarchical design is very much similar to
TCP/IP protocol stack design. See the most prominent features of Wireless
Application Protocol or WAP in Mobile Computing:
 WAP is a De-Facto standard or a protocol designed for micro-browsers,
and it enables the mobile devices to interact, exchange and transmit
information over the Internet.
 WAP is based upon the concept of the World Wide Web (WWW), and the
backend functioning also remains similar to WWW, but it uses the markup
language Wireless Markup Language (WML) to access the WAP services
while WWW uses HTML as a markup language. WML is defined as XML
1.0 application.
 In 1998, some giant IT companies such as Ericson, Motorola, Nokia and
Unwired Planet founded the WAP Forum to standardize the various
wireless technologies via protocols.
 After developing the WAP model, it was accepted as a wireless protocol
globally capable of working on multiple wireless technologies such as
mobile, printers, pagers, etc.
 In 2002, by the joint efforts of the various members of the WAP Forum, it
was merged with various other forums of the industry and formed an
alliance known as Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
 WAP was opted as a De-Facto standard because of its ability to create web
applications for mobile devices.

Telecoms Exchange

Internet

Firewall
WAP Gateway

Internet
Application
Server

Database
Server
 64

Working of Wireless Application Protocol or WAP Model

The following steps define the working of Wireless Application Protocol or WAP
Model:
 The WAP model consists of 3 levels known as Client, Gateway and Origin
Server.
 When a user opens the browser in his/her mobile device and selects a
website that he/she wants to view, the mobile device sends the URL
encoded request via a network to a WAP gateway using WAP protocol.
 The request he/she sends via mobile to WAP gateway is called as encoding
request.
 The sent encoding request is translated through WAP gateway and then
forwarded in the form of a conventional HTTP URL request over the
Internet.
 When the request reaches a specified Web server, the server processes the
request just as it would handle any other request and sends the response
back to the mobile device through WAP gateway.
 Now, the WML file's final response can be seen in the browser of the
mobile users.

CLIENT WAP GATEWAY ORGIN SERVER

WAP user Encoder CGI Scripts

Agent
Encoding HTTP

Request Response
Content
Protocol Decoder
Stack
Decoded HTTP

Response Response

WIRELESS NETWORK INTERNET NETWORK

(WAP PROTOCL) (INTERNET PROTOCL)
 65

WAP Protocol Stack

It specifies the different communications and data transmission layers used in the
WAP model:
Application Layer: This layer consists of the Wireless Application Environment
(WAE), mobile device specifications, and content development programming
languages, i.e., WML.
Session Layer: The session layer consists of the Wireless Session Protocol
(WSP). It is responsible for fast connection suspension and reconnection.
Transaction Layer: The transaction layer consists of Wireless Transaction
Protocol (WTP) and runs on top of UDP (User Datagram Protocol). This layer is
a part of TCP/IP and offers transaction support.
Security Layer: It contains Wireless Transaction Layer Security (WTLS) and
responsible for data integrity, privacy and authentication during data
transmission.
Transport Layer: This layer consists of Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP). It
provides a consistent data format to higher layers of the WAP protocol stack.

Advantages of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

Following is a list of some advantages of Wireless Application Protocol or
WAP:
 WAP is a very fast-paced technology.
 It is an open-source technology and completely free of cost.
 It can be implemented on multiple platforms.
 It is independent of network standards.
 It provides higher controlling options.
 It is implemented near to Internet model.
 By using WAP, you can send/receive real-time data.
 Nowadays, most modern mobile phones and devices support WAP.
 66

Disadvantages of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

Following is a list of some disadvantages of Wireless Application Protocol or
WAP:

 The connection speed in WAP is slow, and there is limited availability

also.
 In some areas, the ability to connect to the Internet is very sparse, and in
some other areas, Internet access is entirely unavailable.
 It is less secured.
 WAP provides a small User interface (UI).

Applications of Wireless Application Protocol (WAP)

The following are some most used applications of Wireless Application
Protocol or WAP:

 WAP facilitates you to access the Internet from your mobile devices.
 You can play games on mobile devices over wireless devices.
 It facilitates you to access E-mails over the mobile Internet.
 Mobile hand-sets can be used to access timesheets and fill expenses claims.
 Online mobile banking is very popular nowadays.
 It can also be used in multiple Internet-based services such as geographical
location, Weather forecasting, Flight information, Movie & cinema
information, Traffic updates etc. All are possible due to WAP technology.
 67

Applications of Wireless Communication

Following is a list of applications in wireless communication:
Vehicles
Many wireless communication systems and mobility aware applications are used
for following purpose:
o Transmission of music, news, road conditions, weather reports, and other
broadcast information are received via digital audio broadcasting (DAB)
with 1.5Mbit/s.
o For personal communication, a universal mobile telecommunications
system (UMTS) phone might be available offering voice and data
connectivity with 384kbit/s.
o For remote areas, satellite communication can be used, while the current
position of the car is determined via the GPS (Global Positioning System).
o A local ad-hoc network for the fast exchange of information (information
such as distance between two vehicles, traffic information, road
conditions) in emergency situations or to help each other keep a safe
distance. Local ad-hoc network with vehicles close by to prevent guidance
system, accidents, redundancy.
o Vehicle data from buses, trucks, trains and high speed train can be
transmitted in advance for maintenance.
o In ad-hoc network, car can comprise personal digital assistants (PDA),
laptops, or mobile phones connected with each other using the Bluetooth
technology.
Emergency
Following services can be provided during emergencies:
o Video communication: Responders often need to share vital information.
The transmission of real time situations of video could be necessary. A
typical scenario includes the transmission of live video footage from a
disaster area to the nearest fire department, to the police station or to the
near NGOs etc.
o Push To Talk (PTT): PTT is a technology which allows half duplex
communication between two users where switching from voice reception
mode to the transmit mode takes place with the use of a dedicated
momentary button. It is similar to walkie-talkie.
o Audio/Voice Communication: This communication service provides full
duplex audio channels unlike PTT. Public safety communication requires
novel full duplex speech transmission services for emergency response.
o Real Time Text Messaging (RTT): Text messaging (RTT) is an effective
and quick solution for sending alerts in case of emergencies. Types of text
messaging can be email, SMS and instant message.
 68

Business
Travelling Salesman
o Directly access to customer files stored in a central location.
o Consistent databases for all agents
o Mobile office
o To enable the company to keep track of all the activities of their travelling
employees.
In Office
o Wi-Fi wireless technology saves businesses or companies a considerable
amount of money on installations costs.
o There is no need to physically setup wires throughout an office building,
warehouse or store.
o Bluetooth is also a wireless technology especially used for short range that
acts as a complement to Wi-Fi. It is used to transfer data between
computers or cell phones.
Transportation Industries
o In transportation industries, GPS technology is used to find efficient routes
and tracking vehicles.
o Replacement of Wired Network
o Wireless network can also be used to replace wired network. Due to
economic reasons it is often impossible to wire remote sensors for weather
forecasts, earthquake detection, or to provide environmental information,
wireless connections via satellite, can help in this situation.
o Tradeshows need a highly dynamic infrastructure, since cabling takes a
long time and frequently proves to be too inflexible.
o Many computers fairs use WLANs as a replacement for cabling.
o Other cases for wireless networks are computers, sensors, or information
displays in historical buildings, where excess cabling may destroy valuable
walls or floors.
Location dependent service
o It is important for an application to know something about the location
because the user might need location information for further activities.
Several services that might depend on the actual location can be described
below:
o Follow-on Services:
o Location aware services: To know about what services (e.g. fax, printer,
server, phone, printer etc.) exist in the local environment.
o Privacy: We can set the privacy like who should get knowledge about the
location.
o Information Services: We can know about the special offers in the
supermarket. Nearest hotel, rooms, cabs etc.
 69

Infotainment: (Entertainment and Education)

o Wireless networks can provide information at any appropriate location.
o Outdoor internet access.
o You may choose a seat for movie, pay via electronic cash, and send this
information to a service provider.
o Ad-hoc network is used for multiuser games and entertainment.

Mobile and Wireless devices

Even though many mobile and wireless devices are available, there will be many
more devices in the future. There is no precise classification of such devices, by
sizes, shape, weight, or computing power. The following list of given examples
of mobile and wireless devices graded by increasing performance (CPU, memory,
display, input devices, etc.)
Sensor: Wireless device is represented by a sensor transmitting state information.
1 example could be a switch, sensing the office door. If the door is closed, the
switch transmits this information to the mobile phone inside the office which will
not accept incoming calls without user interaction; the semantics of a closed door
is applied to phone calls.
Embedded Controller: Many applications already contain a simple or
sometimes more complex controller. Keyboards, mouse, headsets, washing
machines, coffee machines, hair dryers and TV sets are just some examples.
Pager: As a very simple receiver, a pager can only display short text messages,
has a tiny display, and cannot send any messages.
Personal Digital Assistant: PDAs typically accompany a user and offer simple
versions of office software (calendar, notepad, mail). The typically input device
is a pen, with built-in character recognition translating handwriting into
characters. Web browsers and many other packages are available for these
devices.
Pocket computer: The next steps towards full computers are pocket computers
offering tiny keyboards, color displays, and simple versions of programs found
on desktop computers (text processing, spreadsheets etc.)
Notebook/laptop: Laptops offer more or less the same performance as standard
desktop computers; they use the same software - the only technical difference
being size, weight, and the ability to run on a battery. If operated mainly via a
sensitive display (touch sensitive or electromagnetic), the device are also known
as notepads or tablet PCs.
 70

Datacasting or Data Broadcasting

 Datacasting (data broadcasting) is the broadcasting of data over a wide area
via radio waves.
 It most often refers to supplemental information sent by television stations
along with digital television, but may also be applied to digital signals on
analog TV or radio. It generally does not apply to data which is inherent to
the medium, which defines virtual channels for DTV or direct broadcast
satellite systems; or to things like cable modem or satellite modem, which
use a completely separate channel for data.
 Datacasting often provides news, weather, traffic, stock market, and other
information which may or may not relate to the program[s] it is carried
with. It may also be interactive, such as gaming, shopping, or education.

The need for Data Broadcast:

 Due to the limited bandwidth of the mobile systems, data should be
organized and presented to the users based on its need.
 Data Broadcast can be used to manage sending (pushing) the same data
interest to the listening clients without a prior request (or lock).

Client
Broadcasting Witbful
Station Network
Client (Fixed)
Client

Client

Data Broadcasting
• Server continually broadcasts data to MUs.
• Scalability: Cost does not depend on number of users listening.
• Mobile Unit may/may not have cache.
• Facilitates data access during disconnected periods.
• Allows location dependent data access.
• No need to predict with 100% accuracy the future data needs.
• Broadcast based on probability of access.
• Periodic broadcasting of all data.
 71

Mobile IP
Mobile IP or MIP is an Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) RFC 2002, De-
Facto standard communication protocol. It is created by extending Internet
Protocol, IP.
The Mobile IP allows mobile device users to move from one network to another
while maintaining the same permanent IP address.
The concept and role of Mobile IP are very important in the field of mobile
computing technology.
The mobile IP makes the communication flawless and ensures that the
communication will occur without the user's sessions or connections being
dropped.
Mobile IP is based on IP, so it is scalable for the Internet. Any media that supports
IP can also support Mobile IP.
Introduction to Mobile IP Technology
In IP networks, when a device is within its home network, the routing is based on
the static IP addresses. The device within a network is connected through normal
IP routing by the IP address assigned on the network. It is the same as how a
postal letter is delivered to the fixed address on the envelope. The problem occurs
when a device goes away from its home network and is no longer reachable using
normal IP routing. In this condition, the active sessions of the device are
terminated. The idea of Mobile IP was introduced to resolve this issue. It
facilitates users to keep the same IP address while going to a different network or
a different wireless operator without being communication disrupted or without
sessions or connections being dropped.
The mobility function of the Mobile IP is performed on the network layer rather
than the physical layer.
The architecture of Mobile IP Technology
The components of the Mobile IP and the relationship among them are specified in the following image:
Mobile node
visiting Mobile node
foreign network at Home

Foreign Network Internet Home Network

Foreign Agent Home Agent

Foreign Network
Foreign Agent
 72

This is the architecture of Mobile IP technology. It consists of the following

components:
o Mobile Node (MN)
o Home Agent (HA)
o Foreign Agent (FA)
o Home Network (HN)
o Foreign Network (FN)
o Corresponding Node (CN)
o Care of Address (COA)

Mobile Node
The Mobile Node is a device or a user or a router that can frequently change their
network positions without changing its original IP address. Examples of mobile
nodes are cell phone, personal digital assistant (PDA), laptop, etc. whose software
enables network roaming capabilities.
Home Agent
The Home Agent is a router on the home network. It serves as the anchor point
for communication with the Mobile Node.
Foreign Agent
The Foreign Agent is a router that provides several services such as tunnelling
data-grams whenever a mobile node visits a foreign network. It is responsible for
delivering packets from the Home Agent to the Mobile Node.
Home Network
The home network is the base station network to which the mobile node originally
belongs to.
Foreign Network
Any network other than the home network or the networks on which mobile nodes
have a registered IP is called a foreign network.
Corresponding Node
The partner nodes which are used for communication with mobile nodes are
called corresponding nodes.
Care of Address
The Care of Address or COA is used to define the mobile node's current position
or user. It is used to deliver data packets through the process of tunnelling.
 73

Working of Mobile IP
The working of Mobile IP can be described in 3 phases:
Agent Discovery
In the Agent Discovery phase, the mobile nodes discover their Foreign and Home
Agents. The Home Agent and Foreign Agent advertise their services on the
network using the ICMP Router Discovery Protocol (IRDP).
Registration
The registration phase is responsible for informing the current location of the
home agent and foreign agent for the correct forwarding of packets.
Tunnelling
This phase is used to establish a virtual connection as a pipe for moving the data
packets between a tunnel entry and a tunnel endpoint.

Applications of Mobile IP
The mobile IP technology is used in many applications where the sudden changes
in network connectivity and IP address can cause problems. It was designed to
support seamless and continuous Internet connectivity.
It is used in many wired and wireless environments where users have to carry
their mobile devices across multiple LAN subnets.
Although Mobile IP is not required within cellular systems such as 3G, it is often
used in 3G systems to provide seamless IP mobility between different packet data
serving node (PDSN) domains.

MOBILE IP (Problem situation)

 The address of a host consists of two parts (1) the higher order bits ofthe
address determines the n/w on which the host resides (2) the remaining low
order bits determine the host number. IP decides the nest-hop by
determining the network information from the destination address of the
packet. On the other hand, higher level layers like TCP maintain on
formation about connections that are indexed by quadruplet containing the
IP addresses of both the endpoints and the port numbers. Thus, while trying
to support mobility on the Internet under the existing protocol suite, we are
faced with two mutually conflicting requirements:
 74

o A mobile node has to change its IP address whenever it changes its

point of attachment, so that packets destined to the node are routed
correctly.
o To maintain existing TCP connections, the mobile node its IP
address the same. Changing the IP address will cause the connection
to be disrupted and lost.
 computer mobility in heterogenic networks
 relocation between different IP-subnets
 Goal: transparent migration and localization, compatibility to IP, no
changes of existing routers
 Idea: introduction of temporary/ actual IP-addresses (also “care-of
o Mobile IP is a proposed standard protocol that builds on the Internet
Protocol for packet routing and delivery by making mobility
transparent to applications and higher-level protocols like TCP.
o Changed perceptions of the Internet due to large variety of wireless
devices offering IP connectivity, such as PDAs, handhelds, and
digital cellular phones.
Routing
 Based on IP destination address, network prefix (e.g. 129.13.42)
 Determines physical subnet
 Change of physical subnet implies change of IP address to have a
topological correct address (standard IP) or needs special entries in the
routing tables.
Specific routes to end-systems?
 Change of all routing table entries to forward packets to the Right
Destination Does not scale with the number of mobile hosts and frequent
 Changes in the location, security problems
Changing the IP-address?
 Adjust the host IP address depending on the current location
 Almost impossible to find a mobile system, DNS updates take to long time
 TCP connections break, security problems
 Without specific support, delivery not possible for mobile nodes away
from its home IP subnet (because routing based on the network prefix and
dents IP add).
 Cannot change IP address on moving to new IP-subnet (because cannot
maintain tpt/higher level connections).
 75

Wireless Application Protocol

WAP stands for Wireless Application Protocol. It is a protocol designed for
micro-browsers and it enables the access of internet in the mobile devices. It uses
the mark-up language WML (Wireless Mark-up Language and not HTML),
WML is defined as XML 1.0 application. It enables creating web applications for
mobile devices. In 1998, WAP Forum was founded by Ericson, Motorola, Nokia
and Unwired Planet whose aim was to standardize the various wireless
technologies via protocols.
WAP protocol was resulted by the joint efforts of the various members of WAP
Forum. In 2002, WAP forum was merged with various other forums of the
industry resulting in the formation of Open Mobile Alliance (OMA).
Mobile Alliance (OMA).

Internet

WAP
Gateway

Mobile Devices

WAP Model: The user opens the mini-browser in a mobile device. He selects a
website that he wants to view. The mobile device sends the URL encoded request
via network to a WAP gateway using WAP protocol.

Client Gateway Web Server

Scripts
WAE Encoded
Request Encoders Request(URL)

User and
Agent Decoders
Encoded Response
Response (Content) DB
 76

The WAP gateway translates this WAP request into a conventional HTTP URL
request and sends it over the internet. The request reaches to a specified Web
server and it processes the request just as it would have processed any other
request and sends the response back to the mobile device through WAP gateway
in WML file which can be seen in the micro-browser.
WAP Protocol stack:

Application Layer (WAE)

Session Layer (WSP)

Transaction Layer (WTP)

Security Layer (WTLS)

Transport Layer (WDP)

Application Layer: This layer contains the Wireless Application Environment

(WAE). It contains mobile device specifications and content development
programming languages like WML.
Session Layer: This layer contains Wireless Session Protocol (WSP). It provides
fast connection suspension and reconnection.
Wireless Session Protocol (WSP). Unlike HTTP, WSP has been designed by the
WAP Forum to provide fast connection suspension and reconnection.
Transaction Layer: This layer contains Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP).
It runs on top of UDP (User Datagram Protocol) and is a part of TCP/IP and offers
transaction support.
Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP). The WTP runs on top of a datagram
service, such as User Datagram Protocol (UDP) and is part of the standard suite
of TCP/IP protocols used to provide a simplified protocol suitable for low
bandwidth wireless stations.
 77

Security Layer: This layer contains Wireless Transaction Layer Security

(WTLS). It offers data integrity, privacy and authentication.
Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS). WTLS incorporates security features
that are based upon the established Transport Layer Security (TLS) protocol
standard. It includes data integrity checks, privacy, service denial, and
authentication services.
Transport Layer: This layer contains Wireless Datagram Protocol. It presents
consistent data format to higher layers of WAP protocol stack.
Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP). The WDP allows WAP to be bearer-
independent by adapting the transport layer of the underlying bearer. The WDP
presents a consistent data format to the higher layers of the WAP protocol stack,
thereby offering the advantage of bearer independence to application developers.
Each of these layers provides a well-defined interface to the layer above it. This
means that the internal workings of any layer are transparent or invisible to the
layers above it. The layered architecture allows other applications and services to
utilise the features provided by the WAP-stack as well. This makes it possible to
use the WAP-stack for services and applications that currently are not specified
by WAP.
 78

Wireless Application Environment

The main idea behind the wireless application environment (WAE) is to create a
general-purpose application environment based mainly on existing technologies
and philosophies of the world wide web.
Wireless Application Environment
The main idea behind the wireless application environment (WAE) is to
create a general-purpose application environment based mainly on existing
technologies and philosophies of the world wide web. This environment should
allow service providers, software manufacturers, or hardware vendors to integrate
their applications so they can reach a wide variety of different wireless platforms
in an efficient way. However, WAE does not dictate or assume any specific man-
machine-interface model, but allows for a variety of devices, each with its own
capabilities and probably vendor-specific extras (i.e., each vendor can have its
own look and feel). WAE has already integrated the following technologies and
adapted them for use in a wireless environment with low power handheld devices.
HTML, JavaScript, and the handheld device markup language HDML
form the basis of the wireless markup language (WML) and the scripting
language WML script. The exchange formats for business cards and phone books
vCard and for calendars calendar have been included. URLs from the web can be
used. A wide range of mobile telecommunication technologies have been adopted
and integrated into the wireless telephony application (WTA).
Besides relying on mature and established technology, WAE focuses on devices
with very limited capabilities, narrow-band environments, and special security
and access control features. The first phase of the WAE specification developed
a whole application suite, especially for wireless clients as presented in the
following sections. Future developments for the WAE will include extensions for
more content formats, integration of further existing or emerging technologies,
more server-side aspects, and the integration of intelligent telephone networks.

Origin Services Gateway Client

WTA
Web User agent
Server Response Encoded
With Response
content With
content
Encoded WML
Push & Encoded User agent
Content Push
Other Decoders Content
Connect Server

Other
WTA
Request Encoded user agent
request

Fig 4.10 WAE Logical Model

 79

One global goal of the WAE is to minimize over-the-air traffic and

resource consumption on the handheld device. This goal is also reflected in the
logical model underlying WAE (Figure 10.29) showing some more detail than
the general overview in Figure 10.10. WAE adopts a model that closely follows
the www model, but assumes additional gateways that can enhance transmission
efficiency.
A client issues an encoded request for an operation on a remote server.
Encoding is necessary to minimize data sent over the air and to save resources on
the handheld device as explained together with the languages WML and
WMLscript. Decoders in a gateway now translate this encoded request into a
standard request as understood by the origin servers. This could be a request to
get a web page to set up a call. The gateway transfers this request to the
appropriate origin server as if it came from a standard client. Origin servers could
be standard web servers running HTTP and generating content using scripts,
providing pages using a database, or applying any other (proprietary) technology.
WAE does not specify any standard content generator or server, but assumes that
the majority will follow the standard technology used in today‘s www.
The origin servers will respond to the request. The gateway now encodes
the response and its content (if there is any) and transfers the encoded response
with the content to the client. The WAE logical model not only includes this
standard request/response scheme, but it also includes push services. Then an
origin server pushes content to the gateway. The gateway encodes the pushed
content and transmits the encoded push content to the client.
Several user agents can reside within a client. User agents include such
items as: browsers, phonebooks, message editors etc. WAE does not specify the
number of user agents or their functionality, but assumes a basic WML user agent
that supports WML, WML script, or both (i.e., a ‗WML browser‘). Further
domain specific user agents with varying architectures can be implemented.
Again, this is left to vendors. However, one more user agent has been specified
with its fundamental services, the WTA user agent. This user agent handles
access to, and interaction with, mobile telephone features (such as call control).
As over time many vendor dependent user agents may develop, the standard
defines a user agent profile (UAProf), which describes the capabilities of a user
agent. Capabilities may be related to hardware or software.
Examples are: display size, operating system, browser version, processor,
memory size, audio/video codec, or supported network types. The basic
languages WML and WML Script , and the WTA will be described in the
following three sections.
 80

WAP Applications
“At first, the most popular mobile Internet service is likely to be e-mail. SMS
(short message service) messages have proved a big success in the Nordic nations
and volumes are growing rapidly throughout western Europe”
One of the most significant advantages of Internet access from mobile rather that
your PC is the ability to instantly identify users geographic location. This opens
up a huge opportunity for highly customized services.
As Ericsson puts it,
“the content providers will know where their users are geographically and will be
able to direct them to specific destinations - restaurants or theatres, for example
handheld devices are mobile, but their position is instantly identifiable. So think
of content that knows where the user is, and offers content tailored to that
geography. Weather forecasts, restaurant locations (with table availability and
instant reservations fast food delivery, finding and booking a plumber, dating
services (with pre-recorded video profiles and e-mail or voicemail exchanges)
any service where physical proximity is important can migrate a vital part of its
value-added to the new devices.”
Some of the interesting applications of WAP (already existing or being worked
on) are:
 Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC) and Nokia are working with a
Finnish fashion retailer who plans to send clothing offers direct to mobile
telephones using a combination of cursors, touch screen technology and
WAP to allow would-be shoppers to hot-link to order-entry pages on the
web.
 In Finland, children already play new versions of competitive games such
as "Battleships", via the cellular networks. In the music world, Virgin
Mobile in the UK offers to download the latest pop hits to customers in a
daily offering.
 Scala has developed several WAP products for small to medium-sized
companies which would allow, for example, a field sales force to access
customer order information and stock availability details via a WAP
handset.
 A key growth area for the technology will be business-to-workforce, with
companies using WAP applications to reach employees at any time. Scala
is currently working on time-sheet applications and techniques for entering
and filing expense claims via the mobile phone.
 Nokia says applications that will benefit from WAP include customer care
and provisioning, message notification and call management, e-mail,
mapping and location services, weather and traffic alerts, sports and
 81

financial services, address book and directory services and corporate

intranet applications.
As brought out by [1] and the examples above WAP services are currently limited
to simple information services, but as higher speeds become available and some
of the technical issues specific to WAP are resolved, several new service types
will emerge, including:
Infotainment: They could include weather forecasts, stock quotes, horoscopes
and news
Messaging: services such as e-mail, voicemail and unified messaging
Personal Information management: services such as call management and
personal directories, which enable the modification of personal information
Financial Services: mobile banking and mobile e-commerce services
Location-based Services: services that are dependent on location include
mapping and vehicle location information
82
83
 84

Mobile Agents in Mobile Computing

In Mobile Computing, Mobile Agents are the composition of computer software
and data that can autonomously move from one computer to another computer
and continue its execution on the destination computer.
In other words, you can say that A Mobile Agent is an autonomous program that
is capable of moving from host to host in a network and interact with resources
and other agents. In this process, the chance of data loss is scarce because the
state of the running program is saved and then transported to the new host. It
allows the program to continue execution from where it left off before migration.
The most significant advantage of mobile agents is the possibility of moving
complex processing functions to the location where you have enormous amounts
of data and that have to be processed.
Mobile Agents are also called as transportable agents. They are classified into
two types:
 Mobile Agents with pre-defined path: They have a static migration path.
 Mobile Agents with undefined path i.e., Roamer: They have dynamic
migration paths. The mobile agents choose their path according to the
present network condition.

Features of Mobile Agents

The mobile agents are autonomous with intelligence, social ability, learning, and
the most important feature is their mobility. They are independent in nature, self-
driven and do not require a corresponding node for communication. They can
work efficiently even after the user gets disconnected from the network.

Intelligence

Mobile Agents are capable of learning and searching for knowledge about their
domain. That's why they are called intelligent agents because they possess a
degree of domain knowledge. They can also transport their state from one
environment to another without disturbing the previous holding data and be
capable of performing appropriately in the new environment.

Autonomous

The Mobile Agents are Autonomous. It means the agents are not only motivated
by the outside actions initiated by the users or system but also they have internal
events that decided their performance and behavior. The mobile agents can also
take an autonomous decision while selecting a node.
 85

Mobility

Mobile Agents contain some degree of mobility. The agent is not limited to its
home node only. They can migrate from one node to another and can carry out
tasks along with them. This feature distributes the processing and balancing of
the load. Another benefit of this capability is that when the user goes offline, the
agents will still keep functioning.

Communicative

Mobile Agents can communicate effectively with other agents, users and systems.
The mobile agents use a communication language for inter-agent communication.

Life Cycle of Mobile Agents

The life cycle of mobile agents ensures the following conditions:
 They can adapt to the environment. For example, either home or foreign
environment.
 They are capable of switching among the positions of one node to another.
 They are autonomous and focused on the final output.

USER PROGRAM
MOBILE
MOBILEAGENCY
AGENCY

Internet

USER PROGRAM USER PROGRAM

MOBILE AGENCY MOBILE AGENCY
 86

Advantages of Mobile Agents

The following are some advantages of mobile agents over conventional agents:
 Mobile Agents are autonomous and self-driven in nature.
 They are maintenance-friendly or easily maintainable.
 They are Fault-tolerant. It means they are able to operate without an active
connection between client and server.
 They reduce the compilation time.
 They provide less delay in the network.
 They provide fewer loads on the network.
 They facilitate parallel processing. It means they can be asynchronously
executed on multiple heterogeneous network hosts.
 They provide dynamic adaptation in which their actions are dependent on
the state of the host environment.
Disadvantages of Mobile Agents
The following are some disadvantages of mobile agents:
 The most significant disadvantage of mobile agents is their security. They
are less secured
Applications of Mobile Agents
Mobile agents are used in the following applications:
 Mobile Agents are applied in a wide range of domains such as E-
commerce, traffic control, network management, robotics, data-intensive
applications etc.
 They are also used in grid computing, parallel computing, distributed
computing and mobile computing etc
 87

Fault Tolerance
Fault Tolerance simply means a system’s ability to continue operating
uninterrupted despite the failure of one or more of its components. This is true
whether it is a computer system, a cloud cluster, a network, or something else. In
other words, fault tolerance refers to how an operating system (OS) responds to
and allows for software or hardware malfunctions and failures.
An OS’s ability to recover and tolerate faults without failing can be handled by
hardware, software, or a combined solution leveraging load balancers (see more
below). Some computer systems use multiple duplicate fault tolerant systems to
handle faults gracefully. This is called a fault tolerant network.

Web Server

Web Application

Load Balancer

Standby Web Server

What is Fault Tolerance?

The goal of fault tolerant computer systems is to ensure business continuity and
high availability by preventing disruptions arising from a single point of failure.
Fault tolerance solutions therefore tend to focus most on mission-critical
applications or systems.
Fault tolerant computing may include several levels of tolerance:
 At the lowest level, the ability to respond to a power failure, for example.
 A step up: during a system failure, the ability to use a backup system
immediately.
 88

 Enhanced fault tolerance: a disk fails, and mirrored disks take over for it
immediately. This provides functionality despite partial system failure, or
graceful degradation, rather than an immediate breakdown and loss of
function.
 High level fault tolerant computing: multiple processors collaborate to scan
data and output to detect errors, and then immediately correct them. Fault
tolerance software may be part of the OS interface, allowing the
programmer to check critical data at specific points during a transaction.
Fault-tolerant systems ensure no break in service by using backup
components that take the place of failed components automatically. These
may include:
 Hardware systems with identical or equivalent backup operating systems.
For example, a server with an identical fault tolerant server mirroring all
operations in backup, running in parallel, is fault tolerant. By eliminating
single points of failure, hardware fault tolerance in the form of redundancy
can make any component or system far safer and more reliable.
 Software systems backed up by other instances of software. For example,
if you replicate your customer database continuously, operations in the
primary database can be automatically redirected to the second database if
the first goes down.
 Redundant power sources can help avoid a system fault if alternative
sources can take over automatically during power failures, ensuring no loss
of service.

High Availability vs Fault Tolerance

Highly available systems are designed to minimize downtime to avoid loss of
service. Expressed as a percentage of total running time in terms of a system’s
uptime, 99.999 percent uptime is the ultimate goal of high availability.

Although both high availability and fault tolerance reference a system’s total
uptime and functionality over time, there are important differences and both
strategies are often necessary. For example, a totally mirrored system is fault-
tolerant; if one mirror fails, the other kicks in and the system keeps working with
no downtime at all. However, that’s an expensive and sometimes unwieldy
solution.
 89

On the other hand, a highly available system such as one served by a load balancer
allows minimal downtime and related interruption in service without total
redundancy when a failure occurs. A system with some critical parts mirrored and
other, smaller components duplicated has a hybrid strategy.
In an organizational setting, there are several important concerns when creating
high availability and fault tolerant systems:
Cost. Fault tolerant strategies can be expensive, because they demand the
continuous maintenance and operation of redundant components. High
availability is usually part of a larger system, one of the benefits of a load
balancing solution, for example.
Downtime. The greatest difference between a fault-tolerant system and a highly
available system is downtime, in that a highly available system has some minimal
permitted level of service interruption. In contrast, a fault-tolerant system should
work continuously with no downtime even when a component fails. Even a
system with the five nines standard for high availability will experience
approximately 5 minutes of downtime annually.
Scope. High availability systems tend to share resources designed to minimize
downtime and co-manage failures. Fault tolerant systems require more, including
software or hardware that can detect failures and change to redundant components
instantly, and reliable power supply backups.
Certain systems may require a fault-tolerant design, which is why fault tolerance
is important as a basic matter. On the other hand, high availability is enough for
others. The right business continuity strategy may include both fault tolerance
and high availability, intended to maintain critical functions throughout both
minor failures and major disasters.

Fault Tolerance Architecture

There is more than one way to create a fault-tolerant server platform and thus
prevent data loss and eliminate unplanned downtime. Fault tolerance in computer
architecture simply reflects the decisions administrators and engineers use to
ensure a system persists even after a failure. This is why there are various types
of fault tolerance tools to consider.
At the drive controller level, a redundant array of inexpensive disks (RAID) is a
common fault tolerance strategy that can be implemented. Other facility level
forms of fault tolerance exist, including cold, hot, warm, and mirror sites.
 90

Fault tolerance computing also deals with outages and disasters. For this reason,
a fault tolerance strategy may include some uninterruptible power supply (UPS)
such as a generator—some way to run independently from the grid should it fail.
Byzantine fault tolerance (BFT) is another issue for modern fault tolerant
architecture. BFT systems are important to the aviation, blockchain, nuclear
power, and space industries because these systems prevent downtime even if
certain nodes in a system fail or are driven by malicious actors.

Relationship Between Security and Fault Tolerance?

Fault tolerant design prevents security breaches by keeping your systems online
and by ensuring they are well-designed. A naively-designed system can be taken
offline easily by an attack, causing your organization to lose data, business, and
trust. Each firewall, for example, that is not fault tolerant is a security risk for
your site and organization.
 91

Mobile Adhoc Network (MANET)

 A MANET consists of a number of mobile devices that come together to
form a network as needed, without any support from any existing internet
infrastructure or any other kind of fixed stations.
 A MANET can be defined as an autonomous system of nodes or MSs(also
serving as routers) connected by wireless links, the union of which forms
a communication network modelled in the form of an arbitrary
communication graph.
 This is in contrast to the well-known single hop cellular network model
that supports the needs of wireless communication between two mobile
nodes relies on the wired backbone and fixed base stations.
 In a MANET, no such infrastructure exists and network topology may be
changed dynamically in an unpredictable manner since nodes are free to
move and each node has limiting transmitting power, restricting access to
the node only in the neighbouring range.
 MANETs are basically peer-to-peer, multi-hop wireless networks in which
information packets are transmitted in a store and forward manner from a
source to an arbitrary destination, via intermediate nodes as given in the
figure:

MS2 MS2

MS4

Asymmetric link

MS3 MS5
MS7

Symmetric link
MS1
MS6
 92

 As nodes move, the connectivity may change based on relative locations

of other nodes. The resulting change in the network topology known at the
local level must be passed on to other nodes so that old topology
information can be updated.
 For example, as MS2 in the figure changes its point of attachment from
MS3 to MS4, other nodes that are part of the network should use this new
route to forward packets to MS2. In the figure, we assume that it is not
possible to have all nodes within each other's radio range. In case all nodes
are closed by within each other's radio range, there are no routing issues to
be addressed.
 In figures raise another issue, that of symmetric and asymmetric
(bidirectional) and asymmetric (unidirectional) links. Consider symmetric
links with associative radio range; for example, if MS1 is within radio
range of MS3, then MS3 is also within radio range of MS1. The
communication links are symmetric. This assumption is not always valid
because of differences in transmitting power levels and the terrain. Routing
in asymmetric networks is relatively hard task. In certain cases, it is
possible to find routes that exclude asymmetric links, since it is
cumbersome to find the return path. The issue of efficient is one of the
several challenges encountered in a MANET.
 The other issue is varying the mobility patterns of different nodes. Some
other nodes are highly mobile, while others are primarily stationary. It is
difficult to predict a node's movement and direction of movement and
numerous studies have been performed to evaluate their performance using
different simulators.

Advantages of MANET
The advantages of an Ad-Hoc network include the following:
 They provide access to information and services regardless of geographic
position.
 Independence from central network administration. Self-configuring
network, nodes are also act as routers. Less expensive as compared to wired
network.
 Scalable—accommodates the addition of more nodes.
 Improved Flexibility.
 Robust due to decentralize administration.
 The network can be set up at any place and time
 93

Characteristics of MANET
Some characteristics of adhoc network are as follows:
 Dynamic topologies: nodes are free to move arbitrarily; thus the network
topology may be changed randomly and unpredictably and primarily
consists of bidirectional links. In some cases where the transmission power
of two nodes is different, a unidirectional link may exist.
 Bandwidth-constrained and variable capacity links: wireless links
continue to have significantly lower capacity than infrastructure networks.
 Energy-constrained operation: some or all of the MSs in a MANET may
rely on batteries or other exhaustible means for their energy. For these
nodes or devices, the most important system design optimization criteria
may be energy conservation.
 Limited physical security: MANETs are generally more prone to physical
security threats than wire line networks. The increased possibility of
eavesdropping, spoofing, and denial of services (DoS) attacks should be
considered carefully. To reduce security threats, many existing link
security techniques are often applied within wireless networks.
Applications of MANET
Some specific applications of ad hoc networks include industrial and commercial
applications involving cooperative mobile data exchange. There are many
existing and future military networking requirements for robust, IP-compliant
data services within mobile wireless communication networks, with many of
these networks consist of highly dynamic autonomous topology segments.
Advanced features of Mobile ad hoc networks, including data rates compatible
with multimedia applications global roaming capability, and coordination with
other network structures are enabling new applications.
 Defense applications: Many defines applications require on the fly
communications set-up, and ad hoc/sensor networks are excellent
candidates for use in battlefield management.
 Crisis management applications: These arise, for example, as a result of
natural disasters in which the entire communication infrastructure is in
disarray. Restoring communications quickly is essential.
 Telemedicine: The paramedic assisting the victim of a traffic accident in a
remote location must access medical records (e.g. X-rays) and may need
video conference assistance from a surgeon for an emergency intervention.
In fact, the paramedic may need to instantaneously relay back to the
 94

hospital the victim's X-rays and other diagnostic tests from the site of the
accident.
 Tele-geoprocessing application: The combination of GPS, GIS
(Geographical Information Systems), and high-capacity wireless mobile
systems enables a new type of application referred to as tele- geo
processing.
 Virtual Navigation: A remote database contains the graphical
representation of building, streets, and physical characteristics of a large
metropolis. They may also "virtually" see the internal layout of buildings,
including an emergency rescue plan, or find possible points of interest.
 Education via the internet: Educational opportunities available on the
internet or remote areas because of the economic infeasibility of providing
expensive last-mile wire line internet access in these areas to all
subscribers.
 Vehicular area network: This a growing and very useful application of
adhoc network in providing emergency services and other information.
This is equally effective in both urban and rural setup. The basic and
exchange necessary data that is beneficial in a given situation.
 95

MANET Properties
 Neighbour discovery─ One of the important characteristics of a MANET
node
 Data routing abilities ─ data can be routed from a source node to a
neighbouring node
 Flexible network architecture and variable routing paths ─ to provide
 communication in case of the limited wireless connectivity range and
resource constraints
 Flexibility─ enables fast establishment of networks
 When a new network is to be established, the only requirement is to provide
a new set of nodes with limited wireless communication range
 A node has limited capability, that is, it can connect only to the nodes
which are nearby and thus consumes limited power
 Peer-to-Peer connectivity
 Decentralization of Computations independent computational, switching
(or routing), and communication capabilities
 Limited wireless connectivity range require that a node should move in the
vicinity of at least one nearby node within the wireless communication
range, else the node should be provided with the access-point of wired
communication
 Weak connectivity and remote server latency
 Unreliable links to base station or gateway ─ failure of an intermediate
node results in greater latency in communicating with the remote server
 Resource constraints─ Limited bandwidth available between two
intermediate nodes
 Node may have limited power and thus computations need to be energy-
efficient
 No need of access-point
 Only selected access-points provided for
 connection to other networks or other MANETs
 Need to solve exposed or hidden terminal problem
 Diversity in nodes─ iPods, palm handheld computers, Smartphones,
PCs,smart labels, smart sensors, and automobile-embedded systems
 Protocol diversity─ Nodes can use different protocols, for example, IrDA,
Bluetooth, ZigBee, 802.11, GSM, or TCP/IP
 Data caching, saving, and aggregation at node
96