<p>Communicating over a wireless channel poses many unique challenges not found in wired communication because of the special characteristics of the wireless channel. The capacity in a wireless network is typically scarce as a result of the limited bandwidth and many distinct phenomenons, like attenuation and interference, that work destructively on the received signals.</p><p>The Medium Access Control (MAC) layer is responsible for sharing this limited resource among the users. This allocation problem should be handled by considering the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of each user as to maximize the utility. Efficient MAC algorithms are crucial in minimizing collisions between transmissions and thus achieving high utilization of the channel.</p><p>This thesis focuses on conflict resolution and service differentiation algorithms for wireless local area networks, where there is no central control of the channel and each sender independently contends for access.</p><p>In part I, we study three approaches to improve the IEEE 802.11(e) standards with focus on QoS. In the first approach, utility functions are considered, that model application preferences, to achieve service differentiation and maximize the aggregated utility. We provide algorithms for two subsidiary problems that arise from the maximization problem, and show that a near--optimal solution is found. In the second approach a collision detection algorithm for multicast transmissions is proposed, that increases the reliability for multicast compared to the protected unicast traffic. The third approach is an improved MAC algorithm for the QoS standard IEEE 802.11e. The improved algorithm outperforms the standard and achieves close to optimal performance for large number of scenarios, which significantly reduces the need of adjusting the contention parameters.</p><p>In part II, we focus on channel bursting protocols that use noise bursts to resolve channel conflicts. These protocols is capable of achieving very low collision probability. We propose two new bursting protocols, that achieve very high channel utilization, and show that the bursting technique has good fairness properties and provides efficient support for service differentiation. We also show that it is possible to reduce the number of bursts without loosing performance.</p><p>In part III, the optimal backoff distribution that minimizes the collision probability is derived. We then propose a heuristic backoff distribution with similar properties that yields high channel utilization. An extension for service differentiation is provided where the sizes of the backoff windows are adjusted.</p>

Communicating over a wireless channel poses many unique challenges not found in wired communication because of the special characteristics of the wireless channel. The capacity in a wireless network is typically scarce as a result of the limited bandwidth and many distinct phenomenons, like attenuation and interference, that work destructively on the received signals. The Medium Access Control (MAC) layer is responsible for sharing this limited resource among the users. This allocation problem should be handled by considering the Quality of Service (QoS) requirements of each user as to maximize the utility. Efficient MAC algorithms are crucial in minimizing collisions between transmissions and thus achieving high utilization of the channel. This thesis focuses on conflict resolution and service differentiation algorithms for wireless local area networks, where there is no central control of the channel and each sender independently contends for access. In part I, we study three approaches to improve the IEEE 802.11(e) standards with focus on QoS. In the first approach, utility functions are considered, that model application preferences, to achieve service differentiation and maximize the aggregated utility. We provide algorithms for two subsidiary problems that arise from the maximization problem, and show that a near--optimal solution is found. In the second approach a collision detection algorithm for multicast transmissions is proposed, that increases the reliability for multicast compared to the protected unicast traffic. The third approach is an improved MAC algorithm for the QoS standard IEEE 802.11e. The improved algorithm outperforms the standard and achieves close to optimal performance for large number of scenarios, which significantly reduces the need of adjusting the contention parameters. In part II, we focus on channel bursting protocols that use noise bursts to resolve channel conflicts. These protocols is capable of achieving very low collision probability. We propose two new bursting protocols, that achieve very high channel utilization, and show that the bursting technique has good fairness properties and provides efficient support for service differentiation. We also show that it is possible to reduce the number of bursts without loosing performance. In part III, the optimal backoff distribution that minimizes the collision probability is derived. We then propose a heuristic backoff distribution with similar properties that yields high channel utilization. An extension for service differentiation is provided where the sizes of the backoff windows are adjusted.

In this thesis, we propose a power saving strategy based on tree splitting algorithm in wireless sensor network with multiple packet reception. We concentrate on the case that maximum queue size is 1. We derive both analytical results and simulation results. We use theory of Markov chain to analyze the evolution of the system state. In addition, we propose to use Renewal theory to calculate the throughput. Furthermore, we obtain the average system size, the packet blocking probability, and the average packet delay. Because the network model is distributed, we can¡¦t understand the state of network all the time. So we use the length of last collision resolution cycle to predict the length of next cycle, and determine the sleeping time by the predicted length of next cycle to implement power saving. At last we will use the simulation result to show the performance of our power saving strategy.

Emerging technologies such as wireless local area networks and cellular telephones have dramatically increased the use of wireless communications services within the last 10 years. The shortage of available spectrum exists due to increasing demand for wireless services and current spectrum allocation regulations. To alleviate this shortage, Research aims to improve spectral efficiency and to allow spectrum sharing between separately managed and non-coordinating communications systems. This thesis explores the feasibility of spectrum sharing between airborne weather radar and wireless local area networks at 9.3 GHz – 9.5 GHz. Characteristics of flight paths of aircraft using airborne weather radar and the low duty cycle of radar transmissions offer unique opportunities for spectrum sharing. But it was found that the extremely sensitive receivers provide challenges for designing a communications system meant for widespread use. The probability of causing harmful interference to airborne weather radar is too great for most types of wireless local area networks, but a direct sequence spread spectrum scheme could share spectrum with airborne weather radar. Bit errors in wireless local area network links caused by airborne weather radar interference do not significantly decrease the performance of the wireless local area network system. The distribution of interference outside of the airborne weather radar receiver by using direct sequence spread spectrum combined with the acceptable bit error rates indicate that while spectrum sharing between airborne weather radar and wireless local area network at 9.3 GHz – 9.5 GHz is not feasible, direct sequence spread spectrum systems can share spectrum with airborne weather radars under more limited assumptions. / Master of Science

IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs operating in the infrastructure mode are extremely popular and have seen widespread deployment because of their convenience and cost efficiency. A large number of research studies have investigated the performance of DCF, the default MAC protocol in 802.11 WLANs. Previous studies have pointed out several performance problems caused by the interaction of DCF in infrastructure-based WLANs. This thesis addresses a few of these issues. In the first part of the thesis, we address the issue of head-of-line (HOL) blocking at the Access Point (AP) in infrastructure WLANs. We use a cooperative ARQ scheme to resolve the obstruction at the AP queue. We analytically study the performance of our scheme in a single cell IEEE 802.11 infrastructure WLAN under a TCP controlled file download scenario and validate our analysis by extensive simulations. Both analysis and simulation results show considerable increase in system throughput with the cooperative ARQ scheme. We further examine the delay performance of the ARQ scheme in the presence of both elastic TCP traffic and delay sensitive VoIP traffic. Simulations results show that our scheme decreases the delay in the downlink for VoIP packets significantly while simultaneously providing considerable gains in the TCP download throughput. Next, we propose a joint uplink/downlink opportunistic scheduling scheme for maximising system throughput in infrastructure WLANs. We first solve the uplink/downlink unfairness that exists in infrastructure WLANs by maintaining a separate queue and a backoff timer at the AP for each mobile station (STA). We also increase the system throughput by making the backoff timer a function of the channel gains. We analyse the I performance of our scheme under symmetric UDP traffic with i. i. d. channel conditions. Finally, we discuss several opportunistic scheduling policies which aim to increase the system throughput while satisfying certain Quality of Service (QoS) objectives. The standard IEEE 802.11 DCF protocol only offers best-effort services and does not provide any QoS guarantees. Providing QoS in 802.11 networks with time varying channel conditions has proven to be a challenge. We show by simulations that by an appropriate choice of the scheduling metric in our opportunistic scheduling scheme, different QOS objectives like maximizing weighted system sum throughput, minimum rate guarantees and throughput optimality can be attained.

Frequency domain techniques have been widely used in indoor radio propagation measurements and modeling for telecommunication applications. This work addresses measurement of the time of arrival (TOA) of the first path for geolocation applications using results of frequency domain channel measurements. First, we analyze the effect upon TOA measurement accuracy due to: sampling period of the radio channel in the frequency domain, sampling period in the time domain used for detection of the TOA and the windowing filter used before transformation to the time domain. Then, we provide some results of measurement made in line of sight (LOS) and Obstructed LOS (OLOS) indoor environments in order to compare the characteristics of the measured TOA in these two important scenarios for indoor geolocation applications. Finally, we compare the measurement results with the ray tracing based model that had been developed previously for indoor geolocation applications.

A vantagem das redes locais sem fios, as quais permitem que uma estação móvel possa deslocar-se livremente dentro da área de abrangência da rede, possui uma contrapartida em termos de segurança. A possibilidade dos sinais de microondas atravessarem paredes e sofrerem atenuação, reflexão, refração, difração e dispersão, dependendo dos obstáculos, torna a definição dos limites da área de abrangência da rede sem fios uma tarefa difícil. Sem o conhecimento dos limites de abrangência, o administrador não tem como delimitar fisicamente o acesso à rede. Além disso, o padrão IEEE 802.11 não define um mecanismo capaz de localizar a posição física de estações móveis. Sem a possibilidade de localização de estações, é impossível restringir o acesso à rede baseando-se em limitações físicas definidas pelo administrador. Quando a rede sem fios é utilizada em ambientes internos, os diversos obstáculos e seu comportamento dinâmico (como pessoas em movimento, por exemplo), fazem com que os sinais de microondas alterem as características da área de abrangência da rede. Este trabalho propõe uma nova abordagem para localização de estações sem fios em ambientes internos, baseada no comportamento dinâmico dos obstáculos e conseqüentes alterações na rede, e, de acordo com este comportamento, tenta ampliar a eficiência da localização de estações. Por fim, é proposto um novo sistema de autenticação de estações baseado na sua localização. / The advantage of wireless local area networks, giving the mobile stations the possibility of moving free inside the network access range comes with a security drawback. The fact that microwave signals can cross walls and behave with attenuation, reflections, refraction, diffraction and dispersion, depending of the obstacles, makes very difficult to define the network access range. Without the knowledge of the network boundaries, the network administrator cannot define a physical delimiter to network access. Besides this issue, there is no default user-location mechanism in the IEEE 802.11 standard. Without the user-location, it is impossible to restrict the network access based on the physical access boundaries defined by the administrator. When the wireless network operates indoor the many obstacles and the dynamic behavior of these obstacles (some people moving around, for instance) make the microwave signal behavior change the range and aspect of the network. This work proposes a new approach to indoor user-location mechanism, based on the dynamic behavior of the obstacles and consequent changes on network range. This approach focus on the dynamic obstacles behavior analysis and according to this behavior tries to increase the user-location system efficiency. Finally a new authentication system based on the user location is proposed.

A vantagem das redes locais sem fios, as quais permitem que uma estação móvel possa deslocar-se livremente dentro da área de abrangência da rede, possui uma contrapartida em termos de segurança. A possibilidade dos sinais de microondas atravessarem paredes e sofrerem atenuação, reflexão, refração, difração e dispersão, dependendo dos obstáculos, torna a definição dos limites da área de abrangência da rede sem fios uma tarefa difícil. Sem o conhecimento dos limites de abrangência, o administrador não tem como delimitar fisicamente o acesso à rede. Além disso, o padrão IEEE 802.11 não define um mecanismo capaz de localizar a posição física de estações móveis. Sem a possibilidade de localização de estações, é impossível restringir o acesso à rede baseando-se em limitações físicas definidas pelo administrador. Quando a rede sem fios é utilizada em ambientes internos, os diversos obstáculos e seu comportamento dinâmico (como pessoas em movimento, por exemplo), fazem com que os sinais de microondas alterem as características da área de abrangência da rede. Este trabalho propõe uma nova abordagem para localização de estações sem fios em ambientes internos, baseada no comportamento dinâmico dos obstáculos e conseqüentes alterações na rede, e, de acordo com este comportamento, tenta ampliar a eficiência da localização de estações. Por fim, é proposto um novo sistema de autenticação de estações baseado na sua localização. / The advantage of wireless local area networks, giving the mobile stations the possibility of moving free inside the network access range comes with a security drawback. The fact that microwave signals can cross walls and behave with attenuation, reflections, refraction, diffraction and dispersion, depending of the obstacles, makes very difficult to define the network access range. Without the knowledge of the network boundaries, the network administrator cannot define a physical delimiter to network access. Besides this issue, there is no default user-location mechanism in the IEEE 802.11 standard. Without the user-location, it is impossible to restrict the network access based on the physical access boundaries defined by the administrator. When the wireless network operates indoor the many obstacles and the dynamic behavior of these obstacles (some people moving around, for instance) make the microwave signal behavior change the range and aspect of the network. This work proposes a new approach to indoor user-location mechanism, based on the dynamic behavior of the obstacles and consequent changes on network range. This approach focus on the dynamic obstacles behavior analysis and according to this behavior tries to increase the user-location system efficiency. Finally a new authentication system based on the user location is proposed.

A vantagem das redes locais sem fios, as quais permitem que uma estação móvel possa deslocar-se livremente dentro da área de abrangência da rede, possui uma contrapartida em termos de segurança. A possibilidade dos sinais de microondas atravessarem paredes e sofrerem atenuação, reflexão, refração, difração e dispersão, dependendo dos obstáculos, torna a definição dos limites da área de abrangência da rede sem fios uma tarefa difícil. Sem o conhecimento dos limites de abrangência, o administrador não tem como delimitar fisicamente o acesso à rede. Além disso, o padrão IEEE 802.11 não define um mecanismo capaz de localizar a posição física de estações móveis. Sem a possibilidade de localização de estações, é impossível restringir o acesso à rede baseando-se em limitações físicas definidas pelo administrador. Quando a rede sem fios é utilizada em ambientes internos, os diversos obstáculos e seu comportamento dinâmico (como pessoas em movimento, por exemplo), fazem com que os sinais de microondas alterem as características da área de abrangência da rede. Este trabalho propõe uma nova abordagem para localização de estações sem fios em ambientes internos, baseada no comportamento dinâmico dos obstáculos e conseqüentes alterações na rede, e, de acordo com este comportamento, tenta ampliar a eficiência da localização de estações. Por fim, é proposto um novo sistema de autenticação de estações baseado na sua localização. / The advantage of wireless local area networks, giving the mobile stations the possibility of moving free inside the network access range comes with a security drawback. The fact that microwave signals can cross walls and behave with attenuation, reflections, refraction, diffraction and dispersion, depending of the obstacles, makes very difficult to define the network access range. Without the knowledge of the network boundaries, the network administrator cannot define a physical delimiter to network access. Besides this issue, there is no default user-location mechanism in the IEEE 802.11 standard. Without the user-location, it is impossible to restrict the network access based on the physical access boundaries defined by the administrator. When the wireless network operates indoor the many obstacles and the dynamic behavior of these obstacles (some people moving around, for instance) make the microwave signal behavior change the range and aspect of the network. This work proposes a new approach to indoor user-location mechanism, based on the dynamic behavior of the obstacles and consequent changes on network range. This approach focus on the dynamic obstacles behavior analysis and according to this behavior tries to increase the user-location system efficiency. Finally a new authentication system based on the user location is proposed.

Real-time voice measurements were performed to assess whether there are significant problems with 802.11b wireless networks regarding real-time voice communication. We present an analysis of how the 802.11b MAC protocol and diverse environmental conditions affect the quality of real-time voice in terms of loss, delay, and jitter. We also reveal practical issues of wireless monitoring with passive sniffers for this type of analysis. The results obtained in our measurements show that in the majority of the experiments the quality was good, but under some circumstances the requirements for an acceptable voice communication were not met. / Realtidsröstmätningar gjordes för att testa om det finns problem med 802.11b trådlösa nätverk beträffande realtidsröstkommunikation. En analys presenteras av hur 802.11b MACs protokoll och olika tillstånd i omgivningen påverkar kvaliteten på realtidsrösten i form av förluster, fördröjningar och jitter. Även praktiska angelägenheter om trådlös övervakning med passiva sniffers visas. De erhållna resultaten visar att i en majoritet av fallen var kvaliteten acceptabel, men under vissa förhållanden blev inte kraven för röstkommunikation uppfyllda.