Wireless ATM networks: technology status and future directions

The concept of “wireless ATM” (WATM), first proposed in 1992, is now being actively considered as a potential framework for new-generation wireless communication networks capable of supporting integrated, quality-of service (QoS) based multimedia services. In this review paper, we outline the technological rationale for wireless ATM, present a system-level architecture, and discuss key design issues for both mobile ATM switching infrastructure and radio access subsystems. The WATM radio access layer issues covered in this paper include: spectrum allocation; spectrum etiquette; modem technology; and medium access/data link control (MAC/DLC) protocols. Mobile ATM aspects such as ATM signaling extensions for handoff control, location management, and mobile QoS control are discussed. A summary of current wireless/mobile ATM technology development and standardization status is given, including an outline of our WATMnet prototype. The paper concludes with a discussion of future directions for wireless ATM technology such as Internet protocol (IP) integration and mobile multimedia terminals/applications     

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.     

A signaling and control architecture for mobility support in wireless ATM networks

This paper presents a signaling and control architecture for mobility support in a wireless ATM network that provides integrated broadband services to mobile terminals. A system level protocol architecture for a wireless ATM network is outlined. The proposed protocol stack incorporates new wireless link MAC, DLC and wireless control sublayers, together with appropriate mobility extensions to the existing ATM network control layer. Wireless control and ATM signaling capabilities required for mobility support are discussed, and preliminary solutions are given for selected major functions. Potential extensions to standard Q.2931 ATM signaling are proposed to support handoff and service parameter/QoS renegotiation required for mobility. An associated wireless control protocol for supporting terminal migration, resource allocation, and handoff is discussed. Preliminary experimental results are given which validate the proposed handoff control protocol on an ATM network testbed.     

Wireless ATM: An enabling technology for multimedia personal communication

An ATM-based wireless network capable of supporting integrated voice, video and data services with Quality-of-Service (QoS) control is proposed as a key element of the future distributed multimedia computing scenario. A specific architecture for wireless ATM is described, and design issues are briefly discussed for each major functional layer of the network. The system approach is based on the incorporation of wireless channel specific medium access, data link and wireless control layers into a mobility-enhanced ATM protocol stack. Selected software emulation results are given for applicable Medium access Control (MAC) and Data Link Control (DLC) protocols. The paper concludes with a brief view of related ongoing prototyping activities aimed at demonstrating a seamless wired plus wireless multimedia networking environment.Presented in part at: Wireless Communications Seminar, Hong Kong IEEE/City U., Jan. 5, 1995, and 2nd Intl. Workshop on Mobile Multi-Media Communications, Bristol, UK, April 11–13, 1995.     

一种无线ATM网络的MAC协议

主要研究了无线ATM网络对MAC的需求，并介绍了适用于无线ATM的一种新的MAC方案。该协议支持不同类型信息传输，比如恒定比特率（CBR），可变比特率（VBR），可用比特率（ABR），未指定比特率（UBR）。另外此协议还提供了对宽带ATM主干网的无缝连接。同时也支持与ATM相关的QoS级别。对于该协议关注的各种情况的主要原理进行了讨论。     

有/无线ATM混合网络传输容量动态分配方案

以往对有/无线ATM混合网络传输容量(带宽)资源管理的研究或是局限于无线网络部分、或是局限于骨干(有线)网络部分,很少有人研究整个网络中涉及越区切换的链路的传输容量资源管理方案。本文将无线系统中越区切换对传输容量管理的影响扩展到骨干网,分别针对基站(BS)与基站控制器(BSC)之间的链路(包括空中接口)和基站控制器间的虚通道(VP),提出了自适应于各小区中各类呼叫业务量状态的传输容量动态分配和越区切换保护容量(Guard capacity)预约算法。通过对其性能的数值模拟分析,结果表明应用该算法时各类业务的阻塞率的比例与其指标要求的比例基本一致,因而可以适用于各类传输容量需求迥异的多媒体业务传输,使传输容量资源得以有效地利用。     

A dynamic transmission capacity allocation scheme for wired/wireless ATM networks

The previous research on administration of the transmission capacity in the wired/ wireless ATM networks only focuses on wired part or wireless part. There are very few people do the work extending to the links associating with handoff in the whole network. This paper develops the algorithms of transmission capacity administration on the link connecting the base station and base station controller (including the air interface of the base station) and the VPs among the base station controllers in the wired/ wireless ATM networks, which adapt to the traffic state of each service in every cellular cell to allocate (provision) transmission capacity and to reserve handoff guard capacity on these links, respectively. By simulating and analyzing the performance of the algorithm, it is found that it does well for the multimedia communication in which the transmission capacity requirement of each service may be widely different, so that the network bandwidth resource can be used efficiently.     

Mobility management in wireless ATM networks

Mobile ATM offers a common wired network infrastructure to support mobility of wireless terminals, independent of the wireless access protocol. In addition, it allows seamless migration to future wireless broadband services, such as wireless ATM, by enabling mobility of end-to-end ATM connections. In spite of the diversity in mobile networking technologies (e.g., cellular telephony, mobile-IP, packet data services, PCS), all of them require two fundamental mechanisms: location management and handoff. This article describes different schemes for augmenting a wired ATM network to support location management of mobile terminals and handoff protocols for rerouting a connection data path when the endpoint moves. A prototype implementation of mobile ATM integrating mobility support with ATM signaling and connection setup, is presented. It shows how mobile ATM may be used to provide mobility support to an IP terminal using non-ATM wireless access     

A nonpreemptive priority-based access control scheme for broadbandad hoc wireless ATM local area networks

The DQRUMA (distributed-queueing request update multiple access) protocol has been considered as an access protocol for the BAHAMA (broadband ad hoc wireless ATM local area network). However, it cannot support the service discipline of integrated multimedia traffic since it does not include any priority and access control policy. In this paper, we propose a nonpreemptive priority-based access control scheme for the DQRUMA protocol. Under such a scheme, modifying the CSMA/CA protocol in the contention period supports many levels of priorities such that user mobility (handoff) can be supported in BAHAMA. Besides, the proposed transmit-permission policy and adaptive bandwidth allocation scheme provide various QoS (quality-of-service) guarantees while maintaining high bandwidth utilization. Simulations show that it provides a good performance in ad hoc wireless ATM LAN environments     

Dynamic reservation TDMA protocol for wireless ATM networks

A dynamic reservation time division multiple access (DR-TDMA) control protocol that extends the capabilities of asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) networks over the wireless channel is proposed in this paper. DR-TDMA combines the advantages of distributed access and centralized control for transporting constant bit rate (CBR), variable bit rate (VBR), and available bit rate (ABR) traffic efficiently over a wireless channel. The contention slots access for reservation requests is governed by the framed pseudo-Bayesian priority (FPBP) Aloha protocol that provides different access priorities to the control packets in order to improve the quality-of-service (QoS) offered to time sensitive connections. DR-TDMA also features a novel integrated resource allocation algorithm that efficiently schedules terminals' reserved access to the wireless ATM channel by considering their requested bandwidth and QoS. Integration of CBR, voice, VBR, data, and control traffic over the wireless ATM channel using the proposed DR-TDMA protocol is considered in this paper. Simulation results are presented to show that the protocol respects the required QoS of each traffic category while providing a highly efficient utilization of approximately 96% for the wireless ATM channel     

Mobility Management for VoIP on Heterogeneous Networks: Evaluation of Adaptive Schemes

The introduction of the IP multimedia subsystem on 3G cellular networks and the integration with other widely deployed wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.11 protocol family require support for both mobility and quality of service. When mobile systems move across heterogeneous networks, ongoing real-time sessions are affected not only by handoff delay but also by different packet delay and bit rate. In this paper, we propose a cross-layer mechanism that takes into account mobility at different layers of the network stack in order to yield better quality for VoIP, videoconferencing, and other real-time applications. We describe our cross-layer architecture, adaptation techniques, a prototype implementation, and experimental results.     

Mobility support for IP over wireless ATM

A wireless ATM system consists of a core network infrastructure that provides mobility support to end terminals and a wireless access link. This article outlines two schemes for supporting mobility of IP terminals in this network. In the first scheme, location management and handoff support is integrated within the ATM signaling and control framework (“mobile ATM”), and mobility is transparently supported at the IP layer by mobile ATM underneath. In the second approach, the IP protocol stack is directly executed on ATM switches (without an intermediate ATM signaling stack) using an IP switching technique called IPSOFACTO (IP Switching Over Fast ATM Cell Transport), and terminal mobility is supported via mobile IP     

The infrastructure for gigabit computer networks

The key features of the synchronous optical network (SONET) and asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) standards for the broadband integrated services digital network (B-ISDN) public network, which is expected to provide a powerful and ubiquitous infrastructure to support the emerging gigabit-per-second data and multimedia applications, are reviewed. The advantages of ATM, the ATM cell format, the B-ISDN protocol reference model and the ATM layer, the ATM adaptation layer, and ATM traffic management and signaling are discussed. An experimental high-performance parallel interface (HIPPI)-ATM-SONET interface is presented as an example to illustrate how the SONET and ATM techniques can be used to provide end-to-end transport for applications requiring a bandwidth of 800 Mb/s and possibly 1600 Mb/s     

On max-min fair congestion control for multicast ABR service in ATM

In the ATM Forum activities, considerable efforts have focused on the congestion control of point-to-point available bit rate (ABR) service. We present a novel approach that extends existing point-to-point (unicast) congestion control protocols to a point-to-multipoint (multicast) environment. In particular, we establish a unified framework to derive a multicast congestion control protocol for an ABR service from a given rate-based unicast protocol. We generalize a known necessary and sufficient condition on the max-min fairness of unicast rate allocation for a multicast service. Using this condition, we show that the resulting multicast protocol derived using our framework preserves the fairness characteristics of the underlying unicast protocol. The practical significance of our approach is illustrated by extending a standard congestion control mechanism for an ABR service to a multicast environment. The performance of the resulting multicast protocol is examined using benchmark network configurations suggested by the traffic management subworking group at the ATM Forum, and simulation results are presented to substantiate our claims     

移动多媒体通信中无线AIM接入和结构

本文讨论移动多媒体通信中无线ＡＴＭ的基本概念和结构，包括无线ＡＴＭ概念，ＡＴＭ无线接入，无线ＡＴＭ网络，协议，信元和传输结构。研究无线信道给移动多媒体通信带来的影响和解决方法。     

Multiple access control protocols for wireless ATM: problemsdefinition and design objectives

The concept of wireless ATM is now being actively considered as a potential framework for next-generation wireless communication networks capable of supporting integrated multimedia services with different QoS requirements. Several key subsystem design issues for wired ATM and wireless networks need to be readdressed in the scope of the wireless ATM. One of the main key subsystem issues is the development of the appropriate medium access control (MAC) protocol, which has the capability to extend the statistical multiplexing of the wired ATM network into the wireless medium. In this article the authors address the problem of a suitable MAC protocol for the specification of a wireless ATM network and outline the design objectives. In addition, the authors address some other challenging key issues that the wireless medium and wireless network architecture impose on the ATM stack protocol     

Performance evaluation of path optimization schemes for inter‐switch handoff in wireless ATM networks

One of the major design issues in wireless ATM is the support of inter‐switch handoff. An inter‐switch handoff occurs when a mobile terminal moves to a new base station connecting to a different switch. Recently, a two‐phase handoff protocol has been proposed to support inter‐switch handoff in wireless ATM networks. With the aim of shortening handoff delay while using the network resources efficiently, the two‐phase handoff protocol employs path extension for each inter‐switch handoff, followed by path optimization if necessary. To implement the two‐phase handoff protocol efficiently, we need to determine when to trigger path optimization. In this paper, we propose and analyze three path optimization schemes, namely: periodic, exponential, and Bernoulli, for the two‐phase handoff protocol. The design objective is to determine the time to invoke path optimization such that the average cost per connection is minimized. We develop a discrete time analytical model and a discrete‐event simulation model for comparing the performance of the three path optimization schemes. Results indicate that the Bernoulli path optimization scheme outperforms the other two schemes by providing a lower average cost per connection. The proposed models can also be adapted to analyze other path optimization schemes in general. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

155Mb／s时分光交换系统

本文介绍了国内第一个１５５Ｍｂ／ｓ时分光交换实验系统。系统以新型半导体光器件－半导体光开关门为核心构成，传输速度为１５５Ｍｂ／ｓ。     

Handoffs in Cellular Wireless Networks: The Daedalus Implementation and Experience

Network protocols in cellular wireless data networks must update routes as a mobile host moves between cells. These routing updates combined with some associated state changes are called handoffs. Most current handoff schemes in wireless networks result in data loss or large variations in packet delivery times. Unfortunately, many applications, such as real-time multimedia applications and reliable transport protocols, adapt to long term estimates of end-to-end delay and loss. Violations and rapid fluctuations of these estimates caused by handoff processing often result in degraded performance. For example, loss during handoff adversely affects TCP performance [4], and high packet loss and variable delays result in poor real-time multimedia performance. In this paper, we describe a multicast-based protocol that eliminates data loss and incurs negligible delays during a handoff. The basic technique of the algorithm is to anticipate a handoff using wireless network information in the form of received signal strengths and to multicast data destined for the mobile host to nearby base stations in advance. This routing, combined with intelligent buffering techniques at the base stations, enables very rapid routing updates and eliminates data loss without the use of explicit data forwarding. We have implemented this protocol using IP Multicast and Mobile IP-like routing. In our implementation, handoffs typically take between 8 and 15 ms to complete and result in no data loss.     

The Zipper prototype: a complete and flexible VDSL multicarrier solution

This article presents the prototype developed to prove the Zipper concept and contribute to VDSL standardization. This solution includes the hardware and software needed to demonstrate that the VDSL multicarrier is a feasible, flexible, high-performance, competitive solution. The prototype provides the network management and telemetry software needed to simplify system setup and performance evaluation, respectively. It includes two interfaces: one to plug a twisted pair cable or a cable simulator, and the other to connect the ATM transport protocol. A 155 Mb/s (OC-3 rate) ATM-SDH/SONET interface is provided too. The first measurements performed between two VDSL modems, with injected noise of 20 VDSL equivalent lines, show that it is possible to transmit (in downstream and upstream directions) payload bit rates up to 48 Mb/s at 300 m and up to 25 Mb/s at 1500 m using 0.5 mm copper cables. The prototype has been designed using a modular and flexible architecture able to allow future VDSL modem extensions. The reuse of this prototype is expected for other applications where OFDM technology applies.