Unguided Transmission Media (Wireless)

• Sends/transport electromagnetic waves without using a physical conductor

• Unguided/wireless signals can travel from the source to destination in several ways: ground propagation, sky
propagation, and line-of-sight propagation
 Unguided Transmission Media (Wireless)

• Radio Waves
• Electromagnetic waves ranging in frequencies between 3 kHz and 1 GHz are normally called radio waves
• When an antenna transmits radio waves, they are propagated in all directions (omni directional)
• the sending and receiving antennas do not have to be aligned.
• radio waves transmitted by one antenna are susceptible to interference by another antenna that
may send signals using the same frequency or band.
• Applications
• Useful for multicasting, in which there is one sender but many receivers.
• AM and FM radio, television, maritime radio, cordless phones, and paging are examples of
multicasting.
 Unguided Transmission Media (Wireless)

• Mircowaves
• Electromagnetic waves having frequencies between 1 and 300 GHz are called microwaves.
• Microwaves are unidirectional
• sending and receiving antennas need to be aligned.
• A pair of antennas can be aligned without interfering with another pair of aligned antennas
• Applications
• used for unicast communication such as cellular telephones, satellite networks, and wireless LANs
 Unguided Transmission Media (Wireless)

• Infrared
• frequencies from 300 GHz to 400 THz (wavelengths from 1 mm to 770 nm)
• can be used for short-range communication
• having high frequencies, cannot penetrate walls
• prevents interference between one system and another; a shortrange communication system in one
room cannot be affected by another system in the next room
• we cannot use infrared waves outside a building because the sun's rays contain infrared waves that can
interfere with the communication
• Applications
• Infrared signals can be used for short-range communication in a closed area using line-of-sight
propagation
Switching
• A switched network consists of a series of interlinked nodes, called switches (‘Switch’ is used here in a
more general sense, actual device can be different kinds).
• Switches are devices capable of creating temporary connections between two or more devices linked to
the switch.
• Some of these nodes are connected to the end systems (computers or telephones, for example).
• Others are used only for routing.
 Switching: Circuit Switched Networks
• consists of a set of switches connected by physical links.
• connection between two stations is a dedicated path made of
one or more links
• each connection uses only one dedicated channel on each link.
• Each link is normally divided into n channels by using FDM
(Frequency Division Multiplexing) or TDM (Time Division
Multiplexing)
• resources need to be reserved during the setup phase
• resources remain dedicated for the entire duration of data
transfer until the teardown phase
• Three Phases • Switching at the physical layer in the
• Setup Phase traditional telephone network uses the
• a dedicated circuit (combination of channels in links) circuit-switching approach.
needs to be established. • Efficiency: not as efficient as the other two
• Data Transfer Phase types of networks because resources are
allocated during the entire duration of the
• the two parties can transfer data.
connection.
• Teardown Phase • Delay: the delay in this type of network is
• When one of the parties needs to disconnect, a signal minimal (presence of dedicated resource)
is sent to each switch to release the resources.
 Switching: Datagram network (Packet Switched Networks)
• no resource reservation; resources are allocated on demand.
• allocation is done on a first come, first-served basis.
• When a switch receives a packet, no matter what is the source
or destination, the packet must wait if there are other packets
being processed.
• This lack of reservation may create delay.
• In a datagram network, each packet is treated independently of
all others. • Efficiency: efficiency of a datagram network is
better than that of a circuit-switched network;
• Packets in this approach are referred to as datagrams. • resources are allocated only when there are
• datagram networks are sometimes referred to as packets to be transferred.
connectionless networks. • Delay: greater delay in a datagram network than
• There are no setup or teardown phases. network with dedicated resource
• Each packet is treated the same by a switch regardless of • since not all packets in a message necessarily
its source or destination. travel through the same switches, the delay is
not uniform for the packets of a message.
• switch in a datagram network uses a routing table (or switching
table) that is based on the destination address.
• Switching in the Internet is done by using the
datagram approach to packet switching at the
network layer.
 Switching: Virtual-circuit network (Packet Switched Networks)
• A virtual-circuit network is a cross between a circuit-switched
network and a datagram network.
• It has some characteristics of both.
• There are setup and teardown phases in addition to the data
transfer phase (similar to Circuit switched)
• Resources can be allocated during the setup phase or on
demand.
• data are packetized and each packet carries an address in the
header. However, the address in the header has local
jurisdiction, not end-to-end jurisdiction. • Efficiency: all packets belonging to the same
source and destination travel the same path
• all packets follow the same path established during the
• but the packets may arrive at the destination
connection. (similar to Circuit switched)
with different delays if resource allocation is
on demand.
• A virtual-circuit network is normally implemented in the data
link layer, while a circuit-switched network is implemented in • Delay: there is a one-time delay for setup and a
the physical layer and a datagram network in the network one-time delay for teardown.
layer. • If resources are allocated during the setup
phase, there is no wait time for individual
packets