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

Performance assessment of open software platforms for 5G prototyping

Given the urgency of standardizing the fifth generation (5G) mobile systems to meet the ever more stringent demands of new applications, the importance of field trials and experimentation cannot be overstated. Practical experimentation with cellular networks has been historically reserved exclusively to operators, primarily due to equipment costs and licensing constraints. The state of play is changing with the advent of open source cellular stacks based on increasingly more affordable software defined radio (SDR) systems. However, comprehensive understanding of the performance, limitations, and interoperability of these tools is lacking. In this article we fill this gap by assessing, by means of controlled experiments, the performance of today's most popular open software eNB solutions in combination with different commodity UE and an SDR alternative, over a range of practical settings. Although these cannot underpin complete 5G systems yet, their development is progressing rapidly, and researchers have employed them for 5G-specific applications including LTE unlicensed and network slicing. We further shed light on the perils of open tools and give configuration guidelines that can be used to deploy these solutions effectively. Our results quantify the throughput attainable with each stack, their resource consumption footprint, and their reliability and bootstrap times in view of automating experimentation. Lastly, we qualitatively evaluate the extensibility of the solutions considered.The work of P. Serrano was partially supported by the European Commission in the framework of the H2020 5G-PPP 5G-MoNArch project (grant agreement no. 761445) and by the Madrid Regional Government through the TIGRE5-CM program (S2013/ICE-2919)

Réseaux sans fil de nouvelle génération : architectures spontanées et optimisations inter-couches

This thesis proposes a new approach to the design of next-generation wireless net- works. It consists of a temporal split between realtime operation, and packet-based operations, the last ones running in the userspace thus enabling crosslayer optimiza- tions. This approach is validated through the study of flexible platforms for imple- menting new access methods, and by introducing PACMAP, a Packet Manipulation tool, which will be used to solve the problem of mobility with the original concept of Virtual AP.Cette thèse propose une nouvelle approche pour la concrétisation des réseaux sans fil de nouvelle génération et de leurs nouveaux usages. Elle privilégie une séparation tem- porelle de la pile réseau, avec une première partie dédiée aux opérations temps réel, et une seconde partie organisée autour d'une architecture de traitement de paquets, construite dans un même espace permettant ainsi des optimisations inter-couches. La faisabilité de cette approche est vérifiée tout d'abord par l'étude des plates-formes flexibles permettant la réalisation de nouvelle méthode d'accès, puis au travers de PACMAP, un outil de manipulation de paquet en espace utilisateur, dont les fonc- tionnalités seront illustrées au travers du prototypage d'une solution originale au pro- blème de la mobilité, Virtual AP

Points d'accès virtuels pour une mobilité transparente

International audienceLa gestion efficace de la mobilité dans les réseaux WiFi est toujours un problème ouvert aujourd'hui : aucune méthode n'a été standardisée, et le déplacement d'un mobile entre les points d'accès d'un réseau local sans fil est soit traité par des protocoles propriétaires, soit par ré-association. Hors, la gestion de cette mobilité dans une infrastructure est cruciale pour plusieurs raisons : maîtrise du délai et de sa variance, contrôle du réseau sur les clients, optimisation de performances. Nous présentons le concept de point d'accès virtuel pour gérer la mobilité des terminaux dans un réseau d'infrastructure. De ce fait, les terminaux n'ont plus conscience de leur mobilité, et toute la complexité est reportée dans le réseau. Il est ainsi possible de contrôler précisément la mobilité, d'optimiser les ressources lors des déplacements, et donc fournir une meilleure qualité de connexion globale, tout en conservant une compatibilité avec les clients existants sans aucune modification matérielle ou logicielle de ceux-ci

Virtual Access Points for Transparent Mobility in Wireless LANs

International audienceMobility management in WiFi networks is still an open issue today: there is no standard method defined, and client station mobility is handled either via proprietary protocols, or simply by re-association. However, managing mobility in an infrastructure network is utterly important for several reasons: controlling delay and jitter in communications, managing clients from the network, optimizing performance. We propose the concept of virtual access points to manage mobile station in infrastructure networks. In this scheme, stations are not aware that they move, and all the complexity is pushed back inside the network. It is then possible to control mobility from a global point of vue, to optimize network resources for mobile stations, hence providing a better quality of service. Finally, this scheme is compatible with existing clients without any hardware nor software modification