Roaming Real-Time Applications - Mobility Services in IPv6 Networks

Emerging mobility standards within the next generation Internet Protocol, IPv6, promise to continuously operate devices roaming between IP networks. Associated with the paradigm of ubiquitous computing and communication, network technology is on the spot to deliver voice and videoconferencing as a standard internet solution. However, current roaming procedures are too slow, to remain seamless for real-time applications. Multicast mobility still waits for a convincing design. This paper investigates the temporal behaviour of mobile IPv6 with dedicated focus on topological impacts. Extending the hierarchical mobile IPv6 approach we suggest protocol improvements for a continuous handover, which may serve bidirectional multicast communication, as well. Along this line a multicast mobility concept is introduced as a service for clients and sources, as they are of dedicated importance in multipoint conferencing applications. The mechanisms introduced do not rely on assumptions of any specific multicast routing protocol in use.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

An Adaptive Multimedia-Oriented Handoff Scheme for IEEE 802.11 WLANs

Previous studies have shown that the actual handoff schemes employed in the IEEE 802.11 Wireless LANs (WLANs) do not meet the strict delay constraints placed by many multimedia applications like Voice over IP. Both the active and the passive supported scan modes in the standard handoff procedure have important delay that affects the Quality of Service (QoS) required by the real-time communications over 802.11 networks. In addition, the problem is further compounded by the fact that limited coverage areas of Access Points (APs) occupied in 802.11 infrastructure WLANs create frequent handoffs. We propose a new optimized and fast handoff scheme that decrease both handoff latency and occurrence by performing a seamless prevent scan process and an effective next-AP selection. Through simulations and performance evaluation, we show the effectiveness of the new adaptive handoff that reduces the process latency and adds new context-based parameters. The Results illustrate a QoS delay-respect required by applications and an optimized AP-choice that eliminates handoff events that are not beneficial.Comment: 20 pages, 14 figures, 4 table

Application of the DQCA protocol to the optimization of wireless communications systems in cellular environments

This final career thesis (Master thesis) is a contribution on the enhancement of wireless communications, specifically WLAN multi-cell systems based on the IEEE 802.11 standard. The objectives were to propose and study different Cross-Layer AP selection mechanisms that include single, dual and multiple metric based criteria using PHY-MAC interactions. These mechanisms are designed in order to improve system efficiency through the increase of the utilization of the available transmission resources. The key idea of these mechanisms is to make use of certain PHY and MAC parameters, other than the traditional RSSI measurements, in order to optimize the association to the best AP, specially focusing on the innovative use of MAC level state metrics. In this regard, of special interest is the inclusion of MAC level AP traffic load estimations within these association decisions. All the proposals are based on the use of a high-performance MAC protocol called DQCA (Distributed Queueing Collision Avoidance), which is specially fitted to include the proposed techniques. Computer simulations have been carried out to evaluate and quantify the benefits of the proposed mechanisms and techniques in representative scenarios. Moreover, a completely new handoff procedure has been designed for the DQCA muti-cell operation. This handoff process allows implementing each of the proposed AP selection mechanisms. Furthermore, the interaction between a Cross-Layer scheduling technique at the MAC level and two proposed AP selection mechanisms has also been studied. The performance of these techniques has also been assessed by means of computer simulations. The analysis of the obtained results show that the proposed mechanisms perform differently under the considered scenarios. However, the main conclusion that can be drawn is that AP selection mechanisms that are based on joint multiple metrics considerations (SNR, AP load, delay, etc.) perform significantly better than those that use only single or dual metric based mechanisms. After the study, we can conclude that the proposed techniques and mechanisms provide significant efficiency enhancements for DQCA-based WLAN multi-cell systems so that all of them may be taken into account in future wireless networks

IEEE 802.11 in the Large: Observations at an IETF Meeting

We observed wireless network traffic at the 65th IETF Meeting in Dallas, Texas in March of 2006, attended by approximately 1200 engineers. The event was supported by a very large number of 802.11a and 802.11b access points, often seeing hundreds of simultaneous users. We were particularly interested in the stability of wireless connectivity, load balancing and loss behavior, rather than just traffic.We observed distinct differences among client implementations and saw a number of factors that made the overall system less than optimal, pointing to the need for better design tools and automated adaptation mechanisms

Experimenting with commodity 802.11 hardware: overview and future directions

The huge adoption of 802.11 technologies has triggered a vast amount of experimentally-driven research works. These works range from performance analysis to protocol enhancements, including the proposal of novel applications and services. Due to the affordability of the technology, this experimental research is typically based on commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) devices, and, given the rate at which 802.11 releases new standards (which are adopted into new, affordable devices), the field is likely to continue to produce results. In this paper, we review and categorise the most prevalent works carried out with 802.11 COTS devices over the past 15 years, to present a timely snapshot of the areas that have attracted the most attention so far, through a taxonomy that distinguishes between performance studies, enhancements, services, and methodology. In this way, we provide a quick overview of the results achieved by the research community that enables prospective authors to identify potential areas of new research, some of which are discussed after the presentation of the survey.This work has been partly supported by the European Community through the CROWD project (FP7-ICT-318115) and by the Madrid Regional Government through the TIGRE5-CM program (S2013/ICE-2919).Publicad

MeshScan: a Fast and Efficient Handoff Scheme for IEEE 802.11 Wireless Mesh Networks

As a next generation network solution, Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) provides fast Internet access to a large area, which is from university campus to city scale. In order to provide an uninterrupted Internet experience to a mobile client, a process called handoff is required to maintain the network connection from one Mesh Node (MN) to another MN. Ideally, handoff should be completely transparent to mobile users. A critical application like VoIP will require a handoff capability that transfers a call from one mesh node (MN) to another in less than 50 msec. However the current IEEE 802.11 standards do not address the handoff well. Studies have revealed that standard handoff on IEEE 802.11 WLANs incurs a latency of the order of hundreds of milliseconds to several seconds. Moreover, the discovery step in the handoff process accounts for more than 99% of this latency. The study addresses the latency in the discovery step by introducing an efficient and powerful client-side scan technique called MeshScan which replaces the discovery step with a unicast scan that transmits Authentication Request frames to potential MNs. A prototype of MeshScan has been developed based on the MadWifi WLAN driver on Linux operating systems. The feasibility of MeshScan to support fast handoff in WMNs has been demonstrated through extensive computer simulations and experiments under same given conditions. The results from the simulations and experiments show that the latency associated with handoff can be reduced from seconds to a few milliseconds by using the MeshScan technique. Furthermore, it is shown that MeshScan can continue to function effectively even under heavy traffic loads

Towards the Quality of Service for VoIP traffic in IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networks

The usage of voice over IP (VoIP) traffic in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks is expected to increase in the near future due to widely deployed 802.11 wireless networks and VoIP services on fixed lines. However, the quality of service (QoS) of VoIP traffic in wireless networks is still unsatisfactory. In this thesis, I identify several sources for the QoS problems of VoIP traffic in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks and propose solutions for these problems. The QoS problems discussed can be divided into three categories, namely, user mobility, VoIP capacity, and call admission control. User mobility causes network disruptions during handoffs. In order to reduce the handoff time between Access Points (APs), I propose a new handoff algorithm, Selective Scanning and Caching, which finds available APs by scanning a minimum number of channels and furthermore allows clients to perform handoffs without scanning, by caching AP information. I also describe a new architecture for the client and server side for seamless IP layer handoffs, which are caused when mobile clients change the subnet due to layer 2 handoffs. I also present two methods to improve VoIP capacity for 802.11 networks, Adaptive Priority Control (APC) and Dynamic Point Coordination Function (DPCF). APC is a new packet scheduling algorithm at the AP and improves the capacity by balancing the uplink and downlink delay of VoIP traffic, and DPCF uses a polling based protocol and minimizes the bandwidth wasted from unnecessary polling, using a dynamic polling list. Additionally, I estimated the capacity for VoIP traffic in IEEE 802.11 wireless networks via theoretical analysis, simulations, and experiments in a wireless test-bed and show how to avoid mistakes in the measurements and comparisons. Finally, to protect the QoS for existing VoIP calls while maximizing the channel utilization, I propose a novel admission control algorithm called QP-CAT (Queue size Prediction using Computation of Additional Transmission), which accurately predicts the impact of new voice calls by virtually transmitting virtual new VoIP traffic