Analysis of the link error monitoring protocols in the commonchannel signaling network

Motivated by the excessive link status changes observed in some field operations of the common channel signaling (CCS) network, the authors provide a detailed analysis of the signaling link error monitoring algorithms in the Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) protocol. These algorithms determine when to fail a link due to excessive error rates and when to put a failed link back into service. The analysis shows that, under current SS7 specifications of the error monitoring algorithms, the probability of a signaling link oscillating in and out of service could be high, depending on the traffic load, signal unit size, and the statistical nature of errors (bursty or random). The link oscillation phenomenon could become worse as longer Transaction Capability Application Part (TCAP) messages for transaction-based services (e.g., 800 Service) are carried in the CCS networks. While the risk to the existing network may not be high due to the light loads carried at present, there is still a need to study the error monitoring issues thoroughly     

Threshold-based congestion control for the SS7 signaling network inthe GSM digital cellular network

This paper considers the congestion control scheme for the SS7 signaling network in the group special mobile (GSM) digital cellular network. This congestion control scheme is based on monitoring the SS7 link buffer occupancy. In this scheme, a congestion onset message is sent to the user parts of the SS7 network when the buffer occupancy exceeds a certain threshold, and, subsequently, a congestion abatement message is sent when the buffer occupancy goes below another threshold. Upon receipt of the congestion onset message, the user parts are expected to “intelligently” throttle the user traffic (reduce the traffic rate) so as to yield speedy recovery from congestion. Subsequently, on receipt of the abatement message, the user traffic is restored to precongestion levels. This paper primarily proposes appropriate choice of throttles and an algorithmic procedure to size the thresholds so as to yield good performance during congestion. The paper also addresses some implementation issues related to the throttles. Finally, it considers the effects of delays for the onset and abatement messages in reaching the user parts on the performance and parameters of the congestion control scheme     

ROBUST DATA LINK PROTOCOLS FOR CONNECTION-LESS SERVICE OVER SATELLITE LINKS

The performance of the connection-less network service (CLNS) over a satellite link with features such as high propagation delay and a varying (often high) level of errors, can be improved using the connection oriented data link (CODL) service. However, although existing CODL protocols satisfy the requirements of a connection oriented network protocol (e.g. X.25), they are not optimal for the CLNS over satellite links. The interaction of link error recovery procedures with the error recovery procedures implemented by CLNS users, the unnecessary delay due to link protocol sequencing and recovery procedures, and the interaction between applications with different quality of service (QoS) requirements cause most CODL protocols to have a detrimental impact on the performance of the CLNS. This study presents a new link protocol, which improves the quality of the CLNS (e.g. IP), especially considering the enhancement of the performance of connection-oriented transport protocols (e.g. TCP). The performance improvement using the new link protocols is demonstrated by implementation in a satellite interworking unit.     

Evaluation of a Split-Connection Mobile Transport Protocol

A performance evaluation is presented for a split-connection protocol for wireless Internet access which is denoted Split-Connection Mobile Tranport Protocol (SCMTP). It uses the general approach of the previously introduced Mobile End Transport Protocol (METP) but with differences that include a wireless-link channel-access protocol better matched with current cellular networks and more general ARQ methods for error control in the wireless link. In common with METP, SCMTP uses a standard TCP protocol on the wire-line connection and isolates the data flow in the wire-line network from the effect of wireless packet errors.Performance is considered for the important case of a single SCMTP split connection between a fixed host and a mobile host with heavy downlink traffic from the fixed host to the mobile host. It is shown for these conditions that if the wire-line packet-error rate is small, a steady state is reached in which the connection's data flow in the wire-line network remains under the control of the receiver-advertised window of the TCP entity at the base station. Performance is evaluated for the steady-state operation of the SCMTP protocol, and relationships are established between the key properties of the split connection and the end-to-end performance of the connection.It is shown that for heavy downlink traffic, the delay in the wire-line part of the connection does not affect steady-state throughput if the receiver buffer is sized appropriately. It is also shown that use of the go-back-N ARQ protocol on the wireless link yields better performance than the stop-and-wait ARQ protocol, although the performance with go-back-N ARQ is more sensitive to the characteristics of the wireless channel. It is shown that under a broad range of conditions, SCMTP with go-back-N ARQ provides nearly optimal utilization of the capacity of the wireless link.     

Design and Implementation of a QoS Oriented Data-Link Control Protocol for CBR Traffic in Wireless ATM Networks

This paper presents a QoS oriented Data Link Control (DLC) framework for transporting Constant Bit Rate (CBR) traffic over wireless ATM links. Data link control is usually omitted in fixed ATM networks because cell corruption due to channel error is extremely rare for reliable media like copper wire and optical fiber. However, for wireless, higher bit error rates are quite common due to shadowing and other fading effects. The purpose of DLC in wireless is to provide error-free transport to the higher layers by recovering corrupted cells at the link layer. A selective reject (SREJ) automatic repeat request (ARQ) based DLC protocol is used for CBR error recovery. For an ARQ based scheme, higher recovery rates can be achieved with larger cell transfer delay, caused by cell retransmissions. Since cell transfer delay and DLC recovery rate both translate to user-perceivable Quality-of-Service (QoS), it is important for the DLC to strike a balance between these two, depending on the application's requirements. To achieve this in our protocol, the retransmission procedure for a CBR cell is constrained to complete within a recovery time interval which is specified by the application at call-setup time. Also, a novel jitter removal scheme that reduces the cell delay variation caused by cell loss and retransmissions, is incorporated as a part of the DLC protocol. The proposed protocol is implemented on NEC's WATMnet prototype system. The implementation and its experimental results are reported for illustrating the performance and feasibility of the presented CBR DLC protocol. The experimental results show that the DLC protocol can be successfully applied for QoS-constrained error recovery of CBR traffic on a per-connection basis. These also indicate that the DLC can be programmed to attain a desirable tradeoff between cell transfer delay and cell recovery rate.     

Traffic routing and link dimensioning in the common channel signaling networks

Signaling can be defined as the exchange of information specifically concerned with the establishment and control of connections, and with network management, in a telecommunications network. It constitutes the command/control infrastructure of the modern telecommunications networks. The Common Channel Signaling (CCS) network not only forms the foundation for control and management in the modern telecommunications environments but also provides database transaction processing capability for special services such as the 800 Service and Alternate Billing Service (ABS). The CCS network is the backbone for providing the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) signaling, the Advanced Intelligent Network (AIN) services, and the Personal Communications Service (PCS). It is therefore critical to provide adequate switching and transmission (link) capacities so that performance of CCS networks can be ensured. This paper describes a flexible link set dimensioning algorithm for supporting CCS network and traffic engineering. We first show that increasing a link set by one or more links may not always increase the link set capacity accordingly because of the current routing procedure defined in the Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) protocol. We then demonstrate a theorem that enables us to construct the number of all possible meaningful links in a CCS link set. Based on the theorem, an efficient and flexible procedure for implementing the link dimensioning algorithm in software is devised to support the mechanization of the CCS network planning traffic engineering functions. Finally, we show an approach to improve the CCS link utilization efficiency and its sufficient and necessary conditions.     

A spread slotted CDMA/ALOHA system with hybrid ARQ for satellitemultiple access

We propose and investigate a new type of satellite multiple access protocol that combines the characteristics of the spread slotted (SS)-ALOHA protocol, code division multiple access (CDMA), and the hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) error controlling and retransmission scheme, in order to increase the throughput by reducing the number of retransmissions and to keep the bit error rate (BER) of the satellite link low when the channel experiences heavy traffic. The main feature of our proposed system is the utilization of two different fields in the analysis of the satellite multiple access problem. Since the hub now possesses the forward error correction (FEC) capability to correct errors that appear after the CDMA despreading of the packets, the satellite does not need to ask so often for the retransmission of erroneous packets and will ask for retransmission only when the FEC error correcting capability is exceeded. This paper also presents the adaptive optimization of the balance between the CDMA processing gain and FEC coding gain in order to obtain a better throughput for the SS-CDMA/ALOHA with hybrid ARQ protocol for satellite multiple access. The optimization is made with the constraint of keeping the bandwidth of the transmitted packets constant during all times. According to this, the effective throughput of the protocol (information bits over total transmitted bits ratio) is improved by adaptively changing the CDMA and FEC codes used in the transmission. This adaptive optimization is done by observing the channel status or load and increasing or decreasing both coding schemes' gains. Computer simulations show the performance of the proposed multiple access scheme     

Complete architecture and demonstration design for a new combined WiMAX/DSRC system with improved vehicular networking efficiency

This paper provides a detailed architecture and demonstration system for a new combined Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) and Dedicated Short Range Communications (DSRC) network layer design for providing Internet access to vehicles. The overall design consists of subscriber station (SS) vehicles, cluster head relay station (RS) vehicles, WiMAX base stations (BSs), and Internet access gateways (IAGs). Here RSs serve as intermediate relays for serving virtual WiMAX connections to SS vehicles, relying on a WiMAX backend network for Internet connectivity. Simulation results show that our proposed system significantly improves the overall system efficiency as compared to the conventional WiMAX-only system, motivating a design of a complete WiMAX/DSRC Internet access architecture. The first main focus of this paper is on the layer 3 network protocol (L3NP) operating between the access concentrator (AC) in the SS instances and the Network Server (NS) component of an IAG, which provides Internet service to user applications. The second main focus of this paper is on the WiMAX backend network protocol (WBNP) and backend connection networking for handling traffic between the BS nodes and the IAG node providing the L3NP service to the vehicles. Finally, the third main focus of this paper is on the demonstration system design which takes all of the above mentioned elements, namely SS, RS, BS, and IAG modules, network entry functionality, to network protocol settings and behaviour, and implements them in an object-oriented design for accurate scenario performance and feasibility testing. The demonstration system implements tunnelling of protocols in the same way as an actual implementation, but uses virtual network devices for each module to facilitate communications. We provide example use cases for using our proposed architecture design with our provided demonstration system to serve as a useful tool to vehicular communications and networking engineers/researchers, that can be reconstructed and adapted as needed for derivative designs and scenarios.     

A REASSEMBLY STRATEGY FOR REDUCING IN/PCS SIGNALLING TRAFFIC

This paper proposes a simple assembly/disassembly part (ADP) for the signalling system no. 7 (SS7) protocol to reduce the signalling traffic loads in intelligent networks (IN) and personal communication service (PCS) networks. The ADP combines two or more messages with the same destinations into a single message, thereby reducing signalling traffic without affecting SS7 protocol operations. The numerical results show that the proposed method can reduce traffic among signalling points 9∼17%.     

Safe and effective error rate monitors for SS7 signaling links

This paper describes SS7 error monitor characteristics, discusses the existing SUERM (signal unit error rate monitor), and develops the recently proposed EIM (error interval monitor) for higher speed SS7 links. A SS7 error monitor is considered safe if it ensures acceptable link quality and is considered effective if it is tolerant to short-term phenomena. Formal criteria for safe and effective error monitors are formulated. This paper develops models of changeover transients, the unstable component of queue length resulting from errors. These models are in the form of recursive digital filters. Time is divided into sequential intervals. The filter's input is the number of errors which have occurred in each interval. The output is the corresponding change in transmit queue length. Engineered EIMs are constructed by comparing an estimated changeover transient with a threshold T using a transient model modified to enforce SS7 standards. When this estimate exceeds T, a changeover will be initiated and the link will be removed from service. EIMs can be differentiated from SUERM by the fact that EIMs monitor errors over an interval while SUERMs count errored messages. EIM offer several advantages over SUERMs, including the fact that they are safe and effective, impose uniform standards in link quality, are easily implemented, and make minimal use of real-time resources     

A profile-based location strategy and its performance

Future microcellular personal communications systems (PCSs) will be characterized by high user density and high mobility. It is expected that registrations will incur a large amount of the radio link signaling traffic. A profile-based strategy (PBS) is proposed to reduce the signaling traffic on the radio link by increasing the intelligence within the fixed network. The system maintains a sequential list of the most likely places where each user is located. The list is ranked from the most to the least likely place where a user is found. When a call arrives for a mobile, it is paged sequentially in each location within the list. When a user moves between location areas in this list, no location update is required. The list may be provided by the user or may be based on each user's past calling history. The method for doing this is outside the scope of this work. This work focuses on the potential performance improvements that can result from maintaining such a list. This paper compares the performance of the proposed strategy to the typical geographic-based location-tracking schemes being implemented in evolving digital cellular and cordless standards. Key performance measures for the comparison are radio bandwidth, fixed network SS7 traffic, and call setup delay. We investigate the conditions under which the PBS performs better than the traditional scheme. Results indicate that over a wide range of parameters, it may be possible to reduce both the radio bandwidth and fixed network signaling load for a modest increase in call setup delay     

A control mechanism to prevent correlated message arrivals fromdegrading Signaling No. 7 network performance

Signaling System No. 7 (SS7) is designed to provide a connectionless transfer of signaling messages of reasonable length. Customers having access to user signaling bearer capabilities as specified in the ANSI T1.623 and CCITT Q.931 standards can send bursts of correlated messages (e.g., by doing a file transfer that results in the segmentation of a block of data into a number of consecutive signaling messages) through SS7 networks. These message bursts with short interarrival times could have an adverse impact on the delay performance of the SS7 networks. A control mechanism, credit manager, is investigated in this paper to regulate incoming traffic to the SS7 network by imposing appropriate time separation between messages when the incoming stream is too bursty. The credit manager has a credit bank where credits accrue at a fixed rate up to a prespecified credit bank capacity. This paper presents simulation results showing delay performance of the SS7 ISUP and TCAP message traffic with a range of correlated message traffic, and control parameters of the credit manager (i.e., credit generation rate and bank capacity) are determined that ensure the traffic entering the SS7 network is acceptable. The results show that control parameters can be set so that for any incoming traffic stream there is no detrimental impact on the SS7 ISUP and TCAP message delay, and the credit manager accepts a wide range of traffic patterns without causing significant delay     

D-RMA: a dynamic reservation multiple-access protocol for thirdgeneration cellular systems

A dynamic reservation multiple access (D-RMA) protocol for third generation cellular mobile radio systems is proposed and its behavior is investigated under variable multimedia traffic conditions. D-RMA is a protocol which is explicitly designed to support multimedia traffic. Its structure is based on traditional PRMA++ protocol, but in addition to what PRMA++ provides, it introduces a flexible dynamic approach in the choice of the percentage of bandwidth to be used for reservation. Separation between reservation and information channels, along with dynamic adaptation of the percentage of reservation bandwidth within a frame to traffic condition, guarantee the required QoS to multimedia services. Results obtained show that the performance of D-RMA are superior when compared to a traditional “nondynamic” protocol, in terms of both the offered quality of service (QoS) and number of connections which can be activated in a microcell at one time     

Delivery of low bit rate isochronous streams over the DOCSIS 1.0cable television protocol

The Data Over Cable Systems Interface Specification (DOCSIS) 1.0 protocol enables the delivery of Internet Protocol (IP) traffic over cable TV networks with significantly higher data rates when compared to analogue modems and integrated services digital network (ISDN) links. The availability of greater bandwidth enables the delivery of high quality audio and video services. Such services require bounded delay characteristics. This paper evaluates the capacity and performance characteristics of the DOCSIS 1.0 protocol for the delivery of isochronous streams given the limited quality of service (QOS) features of the protocol and a modem population of up to 500 nodes. Stream rates of up to 64 Kbps with different packet size were considered, suitable for compressed audio, voice and low quality video. Packet concatenation for upstream traffic was also considered. Simulation results indicated that such streams, within the given protocol limitations, can be supported for a particular system population with tradeoffs in terms of system throughput and channel utilisation of up to 50%. The network capacity, in terms of the number of simultaneous streams supported and link utilisation, is significantly affected by packet size. Support for concatenation has limited advantages. Performance benefits from concatenation are more evident when delivering higher rate bitstreams     

A near-optimum MAC protocol based on the distributed queueingrandom access protocol (DQRAP) for a CDMA mobile communication system

This paper presents and analyzes a new near-optimum medium access control (MAC) protocol. The proposed access scheme is suitable for a CDMA mobile communication environment, and keeps under control and upper bounded the number of simultaneous transmissions. It has a delay performance approaching that of an ideal optimum M/M/K system, where K is the number of spreading codes being used (maximum number of simultaneous transmissions). The protocol is a free random access protocol when the traffic load is light, and switches smoothly and automatically to a reservation protocol when traffic load becomes heavier. It is based on distributed queues and a collision resolution algorithm. Moreover, a physical receiver structure is proposed and analyzed in order to preserve the robustness of the protocol in a wireless link. The results obtained show that the protocol outperforms other well known medium access protocols in terms of stability and delay, even when taking into account the loss caused by channel propagation conditions     

Comparison of MANET Routing Protocols Using a Scaled Indoor Wireless Grid

Predicting the performance of ad-hoc networking protocols has typically been performed by making use of software based simulation tools. Experimental study and validation of such predictions is vital to obtaining more realistic results, but may not be possible under the constrained environment of network simulators. This paper presents experimental comparisons of routing protocols using a 7?×?7 grid of closely spaced WiFi nodes. It firstly demonstrates the usefulness of the grid in its ability to emulate a real world multi-hop ad-hoc network. It specifically compares hop count, routing traffic overhead, throughput, delay and packet loss for three protocols which are listed by the Internet Engineering Task Force Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANET) working group. These are the Ad-hoc on demand distance vector routing protocol (AODV), the optimized link state routing protocol (OLSR) and the dynamic MANET on demand routing protocol (DYMO).     

基于链路层反馈的DYMO性能分析

DYMO协议是一种新兴的无线移动自组织网络路由协议,但DYMO协议草案并没有规定如何实现链路的监测;而有一部分的丢包是由于路由协议对断路反应迟钝造成。针对以上两个问题,文章提出将链路层反馈机制作为DYMO协议链路监测机制,并通过仿真验证了在小流量场景下,链路层反馈机制使DYMO协议大大降低了对断路的感知时延,及早地通知网络中使用该断路的节点,降低了因节点使用失效路由而导致丢失的分组数量。     

Spread-Spectrum Access to Mixed Voice-Data Local Area Networks

The various issues relating to the use of direct-sequence (DS) spread-spectrum (SS) modulation as access protocols for a local computer network are investigated. Voice and data messages having different traffic characteristics are packetized and the information bits DPSK modulated, after which spreading by the DS gives the waveform to be transmitted. Each node within the network will have a SS modem, to which all kinds of voice and data sources of different rates can be connected. Each node will be characterized by a certain DS code, thus getting security as a fringe benefit. Except for the code circuit, all SS modems will look the same; moreover, all the DS signals transmitted will have the same spectral properties, thus achieving uniformity and modularity of signals and equipments throughout the network. Among the performance criteria, we choose the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the demodulator, the packet delay, the probability of correct packet detection, and the useful throughput. A new definition is suggested for the network efficiency and all performance criteria for the proposed network are compared to those of a classic FDMA/ALOHA-type network under the same circumstances.     

Performance Evaluation of Multireject, Selective Reject, and Other Protocol Enhancements

This study compared the effects on performance of four features of the LAPB and LAPD protocols. LAPB is the link level for the X.25 protocol, and LAPD is the link level for the ISDN "D" signaling channel. The features were: multireject in which additional reject or selective reject frames can be retransmitted under certain conditions, selective reject in which an entity can request selected frames to be retransmitted, the null information frame (NIF) with which additional control frames are sent to help detect missing frames, and multiple service access points (SAP's) in which several link-level protocol handlers are multiplexed on the same physical link (a feature unique to LAPD). Results indicate that the current standard LAPB/D protocol with multireject is the preferred protocol. Selective reject generally performed worse than the standard protocol, and offered improvement only with complex and expensive enhancements. The NIF feature yielded a virtually unnoticeable performance improvement. Multi-SAP introduced a virtually unnoticeable impairment when it was used to carry the same traffic load as a single SAP.     

Performance analysis of SS7 congestion controls under sustainedoverload

Congestion controls are a key factor in achieving the robust performance required of common channel signaling (CCS) networks in the face of partial network failures and extreme traffic loads, especially as networks become large and carry high traffic volume. The CCITT recommendations define a number of types of congestion control, and the parameters of the controls must be well set in order to ensure their efficacy under transient and sustained signalling network overload. The objective of this paper is to present a modeling approach to the determination of the network parameters that govern the performance of the SS7 congestion controls under sustained overload. Results of the investigation by simulation are presented and discussed