The thesis deals with improving location determination when using time of flight of radio signals to determine the location of a radiator. The goal of this project is to enhance an existing wireless data access point to perform an accurate measurement of the time of arrival of a data signal from a transmitter, and to combine this information with information from additional wireless data access points to determine the location of the transmitter. There have been a number of earlier efforts in indoor location determination system using different technologies. Many of which used signal strength analysis and they have low tolerance to moving obstacles such as humans, which frequently are the most usual dynamic obstacles in indoors. In this thesis, the proposed solution utilizes time stamping and sample correlation to utilize properties of the signal waveform, which has not previously been examined by researchers other than the examiner and advisor. The main contribution of the project is a detailed analysis and design of a solution, as well as a comparison with other potential solutions. The main purpose of this solution is to increase the timing accuracy to below the duration of a single symbol. The wireless device that has been analyzed implements the IEEE 802.11b protocol. Several investigations have been done to determine the best way of extracting information from the 802.11b data frame and symbol sequence; here we utilize a correlator to determine the time of arrival of a specific sequence of symbols in a data frame. The time stamping of a stream of samples has been implemented in an Altera FPGA to get a deterministic computation time. Instead of decoding the incoming I&Q signals and mapping them to bits, the correlator is used to detect the unique sequence containing PSK encoded and Barker code spread scrambled ones , as this sequence always appears at the start of each data frame. The advantage of this approach is that using of samples of the waveform instead of bits gives a significant enhancement in timing resolution. The design documents of this work include detailed descriptions, simulations, and plots. A number of simulations have been done to show the timing accuracy and standard deviation, as well as comparisons with several different approaches. Several potential optimizations have also been discussed in the report. Simulation code for MATLAB and implementation code for the FPGA has been included in appendices in the end of this thesis. / Denna rapport beskriver ett examensarbete som utgår ifrån att förbättra noggrannhet av en lokaliseringsteknik som tillämpar flygtiden av radiosignal för att mäta positionen av utsändaren. Målet av detta arbete är att förstärka en befintlig trådlösdata accesspunkt för att utföra en noggrann mätning av signals anländning från sändaren, och kombinera denna information från ytterliga trådlösdata accesspunkter för att lokalisera sändaren. Det har varit ett antal utvecklingar med olika teknologier för att ta fram en lösning för inomhus lokaliseringssystem. Många av de förslag som har kommit fram tillämpa signalstyrka och har en dålig tolerans av rörande hinder så som människor, vilka är det vanligaste fallet inomhus. Denna rapport ger ett förlag att lösa detta problem med att tillämpa tidstämpel och sampelkorrelation för att utnyttja egenskaper av signalens vågform, ett förlag som inte har blivit undersökt mycket av andra forskare. Stor del av denna rapport består av detaljerad analys och lösningsdesign, plus en jämförelse med andra potentiella lösningar. Meningen med denna lösning är att öka noggrannhet till att felmarginal i tid ska ligga under en symboltid. Den trådlösa enhet som har analyserats implementerar IEEE 802.11b protokollen. Flera undersökningar har utförts för att bestämma det bästa sättet att extrahera information från 802.11b dataramer och symbolsekvenser. För att göra det har vi implementerat en korrelator för att bestämma anländningstid av specifika symbolsekvenser i en dataram. En Altera FPGA har använts för att tidstämpla inkommande sampel för att ge en deterministisk beräkningstid. Istället för att avkoda inkommande I&Q signaler och mappa dem till bitar, har vi valt att implementera korrelator så att den opererar direkt på PSK-modulerade och Barkerkod-spridda ettor, eftersom att det visar sig att denna sekvens alltid visar sig i början av varje dataram. Fördelen med denna lösning är att direktanvändning av sampel ger en signifikant ökning på tidsupplösning jämfört med bitar. Designdokumentet av detta examensarbete består av detaljerade beskrivningar, simuleringar och grafer. Ett antal simuleringar har utförts för att visa tidsnoggrannhet och medelfel, plus jämförelser mellan olkia lösningsförslag. Olika möjliga optimeringar har också diskuterats i rapporten. Simuleringskod för MATLAB och implementeringskod FPGA bifogas i appendix slutet av denna rapport.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / In our prior work [1] we proposed that network-centric data telemetry systems offer substantial improvements over traditional serial data telemetry systems. This paper is a follow up to that work and is also a companion to our experimentation paper [2]. In network-centric telemetry systems, there can be many infrastructure sites that form the network’s ad hoc communications paths, and there can be many fast-moving nodes, e.g., munitions, which enter the network, generate telemetry data, and exit the network. As the geographic size of such data telemetry networks grows, constraints on link margin will typically preclude a one-to-one matching of ground-based infrastructure sites to airborne, fast-moving nodes. That is, the fast-moving nodes will traverse distances that will require the mobile node to change which specific ground node it communicates with to transfer telemetry data. This paper describes an analytic model for the generic process of a fast moving node entering a wireless network and the associated handoffs of that node among ground stations as the fast mover traverses the spatial region covered by the wireless network. Our analysis and associated worst-case example demonstrate that wireless networking technology can handle the stress of rapidly managing connectivity to high-speed nodes for effective telemetry data extraction.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 21, 2002 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / A Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) based system called 2-Way Robust Acquisition of Data (2-RAD) is being developed to telemeter data from a number of fast moving airborne platforms to ground collection points distributed over a large test range. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) is analyzing a 2-RAD prototype currently in operation at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG) that uses an IEEE 802.11b WLAN infrastructure. Preliminary analysis efforts at JHU/APL indicate that the Doppler shift from fast movers, and the system radio link margin, do not preclude IEEE 802.11b from being used for 2 -RAD.

Typically a wireless LAN infrastructure is designed and installed by Networking professionals. These individuals are extremely familiar with wired networks, but are often unfamiliar with wireless networks. Thus, Wireless LAN installations are currently handicapped by the lack of an accurate, performance prediction model that is intuitive for use by non-wireless professionals. To provide a solution to this problem, this thesis presents a method of predicting the expected wireless LAN throughput using a site-specific model of an indoor environment. In order to develop this throughput prediction model, two wireless LAN throughput measurement products, LANFielder and SiteSpy, were created. These two products, which are patent pending, allow site-specific network performance measurements to be made. These two software packages were used to conduct an extensive measurement campaign to evaluate the performance of two IEEE 802.11b access points (APs) under ideal, multiuser, and interference scenarios. The data from this measurement campaign was then used to create empirically based throughput prediction models. The resulting models were first developed using RSSI measurements and then confirmed using predicted signal strength parameters. / Master of Science

Wireless network devices, especially in ad hoc networks, are typically battery-powered. The growing need for energy efficiency in wireless networks, in general, and in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs), in particular, calls for power enhancement features. The goal of this dissertation is to extend network lifetime by improving energy utilization in MANET routing. We utilize the ability of wireless network interface cards to dynamically change their transmission power, as well as the ability of wireless devices to read the remaining battery energy of the device to create a table of what we term "reluctance values," which the device uses to determine how to route packets. Choosing routes with lower reluctance values, on average and with time, leads to better utilization of the energy resources of the devices in the network. Our power-aware scheme can be applied to both reactive and proactive MANET routing protocols. As examples and to evaluate performance, the technique has been applied to the Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) protocol, a reactive routing protocol, and the Optimized Link State Routing (OLSR) protocol, a proactive routing protocol. Simulations have been carried out on large static and mobile networks. Results show improvements in network lifetime in static and certain mobile scenarios. Results also show better distribution of residual node energies at the end of simulations, which means that the scheme is balancing energy load more evenly across network nodes than the unmodified versions of DSR and OLSR. Average change in energy over time in the unmodified protocols show a steady increase with time, while the power-aware protocols show an increase in the beginning, then it levels for sometime before it starts to decrease. The power-aware scheme shows improvements in static and in coordinated mobility scenarios. In random mobility the power-aware protocols show no advantage over the unmodified protocols. / Ph. D.

Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN) have proliferated in the last 5 years. The IEEE 802.11b products have become commonplace both in the residential and business places for untethered Internet access. However the end user experience has often been less satisfactory than what the technology can offer. The degradation in the performance of the system is mainly attributed to the poor network design. The current network design is primarily RF centric. There are two factors that need to be in the incorporated in the design. Firstly a clear understanding of the traffic sources in the network such as the peak load of the system is necessary. Secondly the design should account for the limitations of the indoor propagation such as interference and multipath. The goal of this thesis is to develop a simulator which will predict the performance (throughput) of an end user. The throughput is predicted for a given topology and traffic source. The simulator is built on object oriented design. To validate the simulator a measurement campaign was conducted. The campaign was conducted in two different channel conditions, office space and open hall. The channel measurements were also performed at these locations to understand the multipath. Comparative studies indicate that the choice of the rate adaptation algorithm hugely influences the predicted throughput. The simulator results match very well with the measurement results for the open space scenario. For the office space scenario the simulator varied by roughly 20% from the measurement results. This was due to existence of multipath leading to Inter Symbol Interference. / Master of Science

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 20-23, 2003 / Riviera Hotel and Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada / This paper is a follow up to a paper presented at ITC 2002 entitled “Wireless Local Area Network for Data Telemetry from Fast Moving Nodes” by R. J. Bamberger, G. R. Barrett, R. A. Nichols, and J. L. Burbank of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and M. H. Lauss of the Yuma Test Center at the U.S. Army Yuma Proving Ground (YPG). In that paper, network-centric data telemetry systems, specifically those based on commercial off- the-shelf (COTS) technologies such as the IEEE 802.11b Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), were offered as an improvement over traditional frequency modulated (FM) data telemetry systems. The feasibility study of using WLANs for data telemetry considered both the radio frequency (RF) link over extended ranges and the effect due to Doppler shift. This paper describes an experiment designed to test those previous analyses.

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Which security holes and security methods do IEEE 802.11b and Bluetooth offer? Which standard provides best security methods for companies? These are two interesting questions that this thesis will be about. The purpose is to give companies more information of the security aspects that come with using WLANs. An introduction to the subject of WLAN is presented in order to give an overview before the description of the two WLAN standards; IEEE 802.11b and Bluetooth. The thesis will give an overview of how IEEE 802.11b and Bluetooth works, a in depth description about the security issues of the two standards will be presented, security methods available for companies, the security flaws and what can be done in order to create a secure WLAN are all important aspects to this thesis. In order to give a guidance of which WLAN standard to choose, a comparison of the two standards with the security issues in mind, from a company's point of view is described. We will present our conclusion which entails a recommendation to companies to use Bluetooth over IEEE 802.11b, since it offers better security methods.