2016

Aim

This course will give both practical and general knowledge concerning wireless and mobile network architectures. After this course you should have some knowledge of these architectures and understand the basic priciples behind them.

Learning Outcomes

Following this course a student should be able to:

  • Understand the architecture of existing mobile and wireless networks at a sufficient level to recognize the common features of such networks in any mobile or wireless network.
  • Based upon recognition of common features, the student should be able to compare and contrast one network architecture with another.
  • Describe differences between different types of mobility (such as user mobile, terminal mobility, session mobility) and understand how each type of mobility can be supported.
  • Understand the core network protocols and applications in 3rd and 4th generation mobile networks.
  • Read the current literature at the level of conference papers in this area.
    • While you may not be able to understand all of the papers in journals, magazines, and conferences in this area - you should be able to read 90% or more of them and have good comprehension. In this area it is especially important that develop a habit of reading the journals, trade papers, etc. In addition, you should also be aware of both standardization activities, new products/services, and public policy in the area.
  • Demonstrate knowledge of this area both orally and in writing.
    • By writing a paper suitable for submission to conferences and journals in the area.

This course should prepare you for starting an exjobb in this area (for undergraduate students) or beginning a thesis or dissertation (for graduate students).

Contents

This course will focus on the network architectures that are used in wireless and mobile networks. In some cases we will dig deeper into the protocols used by such networks. The course should give both practical and more general knowledge concerning the these network architectures.

Examination Requirements

  • An assigned paper requiring roughly 50h of work by each student
  • Registration: Tuesday 9-Feb. 2016, to maguire@kth.se with the "Subject: IK2555 topics" giving:
    • Group members, leader.
    • Topic selected
  • Written report
    • The length of the final report should be ~10 pages (roughly 5,000 words) for each student; it should not be longer than 12 pages for each student - papers which are longer than 12 pages per student will be graded as "F".
    • The paper style should be that of a conference paper.
    • Papers should not focus on physical and link layer issues as this is not a course in radio communication systems, but rather the papers should look at things which have an impact on the architecture or upon which the architecture has an effect.
    • If there are multiple students in a project group, the report may be in the form of a collections of papers, with each paper suitable for submission to a conference or journal.
    • Contribution by each member of the group - must be clear (in the case where the report is a collection of papers - the role of each member of the group can be explain in the overall introduction to the papers.
    • The report should clearly describe: 1) what you have done; 2) who did what; if you have done some implementation and measurements you should describe the methods and tools used, along with the test or implementation results, and your analysis.
    • Each final report should include an extra page (which does not count in the length of your report) with a one paragraph summary of each of your two reviewers' comments and a paragraph in response to each of these paragraphs. You should identify each reviewer by name and indicate their e-mail address.
    • Final Report: written report due Sunday 13-Mar. 2016 at 23:59 + oral presentations scheduledduring week 12 (21-24 March 2016) at a location to be announced.
    • Send email with URL link to maguire@kth.se
    • Late assignments will not be accepted. Papers which are submitted after the deadline will be graded, but the grading might not be completed before the end of the term.
    • Note that it is pemissible to start working well in advance of the deadlines!
    • Language: the report can be written in Swedish or English (NB: I can provide better feedback if the report is written in English.)
    • For your document, you should be sure to use A4 sized paper rather than US letter.
    • For those using LaTeX, you can improve the look of the document by:
      • switching to using PostScipt fonts (instructions)
      • You can also turn off hyphenation or at least limit its use with "\hyphenpenalty=5000 \tolerance=1000"
      • Gilles Bertrand has some nice LaTeX tutorials, for example how to draw call flows andMarkov chains using the xy package
  • Oral presentations: Each group should present their results in 15 minutes or less. The presentation should not be more than 15 minutes, given the 20 minute timeslot this gives time for a couple questions and changing presenters. if there are multiple days of presentations, you only need to attend the day you present.

Code of Honor and Regulations

It is KTH policy that there is zero tolerance for cheating, plagiarism, etc. - for details see KTH Student's rights and obligations See also the KTH Ethics Policy (in Swedish)

Grades

For ECTS grading:

  • To get an "A" you need to write an outstanding or excellent paper and give an outstanding or excellent oral presentation. (Note that at least one of these needs to be excellent.)
  • To get a "B" you need to write a very good paper, i.e., it should be either a very good review or present a new idea; and you have to give a very good oral presentation.
  • To get a "C" you need to write a paper which shows that you understand the basic ideas underlying mobile and wireless networks and that you understand one (or more) particular aspects at the level of an average masters student. In addition, you must be able to present the results of your paper in a clear, concise, and professional manner - and answer questions (as would be expected at a typical international conference in this area.)
  • To get a "D" you need to demonstrate that you understand the basic ideas underlying mobile and wireless networks, however, your depth of knowledge is shallow and you are unable to orally answer indepth questions on the topic of your paper.
  • If your paper has some errors (including incomplete references) or you are unable to answer any indepth questions following your oral presentation the grade will be an "E".
  • If your paper has serious errors or you are unable to answer basic questions following your oral presentation the grade will be an "F".
  • If your paper or oral presentation are close to passing, but not at the passing level, then you will be offered the opportunity for "komplettering", i.e., students whose written paper does not pass can submit a revised version of their paper (or a completely new paper) - which will be evaluated; similarly students whose oral presentation is unacceptable may be offered a second opportunity to give their oral presentation. If a student fails the second oral presentation, they must submit a new paper on a new topic in order to give an oral presentation on this new topic.

Suggestions when writing your report

Suggestions when writing your report

  • For students who are looking for examples of papers - see the ACM SIGCOMM 2005 proceedings - which are in the Computer Communication Review, Volume 35, Number 4, October 2005.
  • For your document, you should be sure to use A4 sized paper rather than US letter.
  • For those using LaTeX, you can improve the look of the document by:
    • switching to using PostScript fonts (instructions)
    • You can also turn off hyphenation or at least limit its use with "\hyphenpenalty=5000 \tolerance=1000"

Some common flaws in reports (from other courses)

  • Using the KTH logotype on your report or presentation is not permitted. see Who is allowed to use the logo?
  • Incomplete references
  • Missing important citations
  • Statements made without justification or supporting citations
  • Poor (or no) editing
  • Failure to spell check the document
  • Documents which it is clear that no one looked at after formatting - often these have breaks in the middle of sentences, missing phrases, ... .
  • Using figures from others without the copyright owner's permission
  • Lack of page numbers
  • Unreadable text in figures
  • Failure to label elements of figures adequately
  • Use of contractions - you should avoid using contractions in a formal report
  • Use of acronyms or abbreviations without properly introducing them; often failure to use these acronyms and abbreviations consistently through the rest of the paper
  • Redundant text
  • Using too few references, often the paper looks like simply a cut and paste edit of these references.
  • Single sentence paragraphs
  • Lack of vertical white space between paragraphs, which in some cases makes it hard to understand where new paragraphs begin
  • Lack of a date - every document should have a date, in addition to title and author(s), and most references should have more information - keep in mind that the goal is to enable someone (perhaps even yourself) to find the reference at a later point in time
  • Sections and subsections are not numbered - hiding both the structure of the document and making cross references difficult

Literature

Main Text-Book

The textbook will be: Yi-Bing Lin and Ai-Chun Pang, Wireless and Mobile All-IP Networks, John Wiley & Sons; 2005, ISBN: 0-471-74922-2. (some notes about the book)

The course was formerly (prior to 2008) mainly based on the book Wireless and Mobile Network Architectures by Yi-Bing Lin and Imrich Chlamtac, John Wiley & Sons; 2001 ISBN: 0-471-39492-0 (a version published in Singapore is ISBN 9971-51-366-8).

Additional Reference Books

  • Mobile IP: Design Principles and Practices by Charles E. Perkins, Addison-Wesley, 1998, ISBN 0-201-63469-4.
  • Mobile IP: the Internet Unplugged by James D. Solomon, Prentice Hall, 1998, ISBN 0-13-856246-6.
  • Pervasive Computing: Technology and Architecture of Mobile Internet Applications by Jochen Burkhardt, Dr. Horst Henn, Stefan Hepper, Klaus Rintdoff, and Thomas Schäck, Addison-Wesley, 2002, ISBN 0-201-72215-1. This is a book about writing Java server applications for PDA, WAP devices, PCs, ... .
  • Wireless Internet Applications and Architecture: Building Professional Wireless Applications Worldwide by Mark Beaulieu, Addison-Wesley, 2002, ISBN 0-201-73354-4. This book gives provides some good descriptions of why mobile applications are not like desktop applications.
  • William C.Y. Lee, Mobile Cellular Telecommunications: Analog and Digital Systems, Second Edition, 1995, ISBN 0-07-038089-9; all the usual radio topics
  • Ellen Kayata Wesel, Wireless Multimedia Communications: Networking Video, Voice, and Data, Addison-Wesley, 1998, ISBN 0-201-63394-9. (This book is really about signal processing and means to over come problems. Written by someone who works with satellite systems.)
  • David J. Goodman, Wireless Personal Communication Systems, Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-63470-8. Greate coverage about the link layer details and general architectures of AMPS, IS-41, North American TDMA and CDMA, and GSM. Only very brief coverage of CT2, DECT, PHS, and PACS. This is an exteremely well written book.
  • Theodore S. Rappaport, Wireless Communications: Principles and Practice, 2nd edition, Prentice-Hall, 2002, 736 pp., ISBN: 0-13-042232-0.
  • H. Peter Alesso and Craig F. Smith, The Intelligent Wireless Web, Addison-Wesley, 2002, ISBN 0-201-73063-4.
  • K. Pahlavan and P. Krishnamurthy, Principles of Wireless Networks, Prentice Hall PTR, 2002, ISBN 0-13-093003-2.
  • Magnus Olsson, Shabnam Sultana, Stefan Rommer, Lars Frid, and Catherine Mulligan, SAE and the Evolved Packet Core: Driving the Mobile Broadband Revolution, Academic Press, 2009, ISBN 978-0-12-374826-3.
  • WLAN
    • Håkan Lindberg, Trålösa nätverl - WLAN, WEP och WiFi, Studentlitterature, Lund, 2002, ISBN-91-44-02696-X
    • Harold Davis and Richard Mansfield, The Wi-Fi Experience: Everyone's Guide to 802.11b Wireless Networking, Que, Book and CD-ROM edition (December 21, 2001), 176 pages, ISBN: 0789726629
    • Matthew S. Gast, 802.11 Wireless Networks: The Definitive Guide, O'Reilly & Associates, 1st edition (April 2002), 464 pages, ISBN: 0596001835
    • Jim Geier, Wireless LANS - Implementing High Performance IEEE 802.11 Networks, Sams, 2nd edition (July 9, 2001), 360 pages, ISBN: 0672320584
    • Lawrence Harte (Editor), Nancy Campbell, R. Dreher, Richard Dreher (Illustrator), Steve Kellogg (Editor), Steven Kellogg, Tom Schaffnit, Lisa Gosselin, Judith Rourke-O'Briant, The Comprehensive Guide to Wireless Technology, APDG Publishing; 1st edition (January 1, 2000), 278 pages, ISBN: 0965065847
    • James LaRocca, Ruth Larocca, and Judy Bass, 802.11 Demystified: Wi-Fi Made Easy, McGraw-Hill Professional, 1st edition (June 10, 2002), 291 pages, ISBN: 0071385282
    • Daniel Minoli, Hotspot Networks: WiFi for Public Access Locations, McGraw-Hill Professional, (September 4, 2002), 435 pages, ISBN: 0071409785
    • Bob O'Hara and Al Petrick, The IEEE 802.11 Handbook: A Designer's Companion, IEEE, 1 edition (December 1999), ISBN: 0738118559
    • E. Ouellet, R. Padjen, A. Pfund, R. Fuller (Ed.), and T. Blakenship (Ed.), Building a CISCO Wireless LAN, Syngress Media Inc., 1st edition (June 15, 2002), 520 pages, ISBN: 192899458X
    • Ron Seide, Neil P. Reid, Lyssa Wald (Illustrator), and Dave Molta, Wi-Fi (802.11) Network Handbook, McGraw-Hill Osborne Media, (December 5, 2002), 363 pages, ISBN: 0072226234
    • James Trulove (Editor), Build Your Own Wireless LAN (with Projects), McGraw-Hill Professional, 1st edition (May 29, 2002), 351 pages, ISBN: 0071380450 Also as an e-book.
    • Jeffrey Wheat, Randy Hiser, Jackie Tucker, Alicia Neely, and Andy McCullough, Designing a Wireless Network, Syngress Media Inc., 1st edition (June 15, 2001), 379 pages, ISBN: 1928994458
    • IETF BoF Control and Provisioning of Wireless Access Points (CAPWAP)
    • WRAPIis a Microsoft Windows XP software library that allows applications to query/set information about an IEEE 802.11 network.
    • Enrico Pelletta, Maximum Throughput of IEEE 802.11 Access Points: Test Procedure and Measurements, Masters Thesis, Department of Microelectronics and Information Technology, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), 10th August 2004.
  • WLAN security
    • Christian Barnes, Tony Bautts, Donald Lloyd, Eric Ouellet, Jeffrey Posluns, David M. Zendzian, Neal O'Farrell (Editor), Erif Ouellet, Hack Proofing Your Wireless Network, Syngress Media Inc., 1st edition (February 28, 2002), 512 pages, ISBN: 1928994598
    • Jahanzeb Khan and Anis Khwaja, Building Secure Wireless Networks with 802.11, John Wiley & Sons, 1 edition (January 10, 2003), 320 pages, ISBN: 0471237159
    • Stewart S. Miller, Wi-Fi Security, McGraw-Hill Professional, (January 22, 2003), 309 pages, ISBN: 0071410732
    • Randall K. Nichols and Panos C. Lekkas, Wireless Security: Models, Threats, and Solutions, McGraw-Hill Professional, 1st edition (December 13, 2001), 657 pages, ISBN: 0071380388
    • Cyrus Peikari and Seth Fogie, Maximum Wireless Security, Sams, Book and CD-ROM edition (December 18, 2002), 408 pages, ISBN: 0672324881
    • Bruce Potter and Bob Fleck (Editor), 802.11 Security, O'Reilly & Associates, 1st Edition edition (December 2002), 208 pages, ISBN: 0596002904
    • Russell Dean Vines, Wireless Security Essentials: Defending Mobile Systems from Data Piracy, John Wiley & Sons, 1st edition (July 15, 2002), 320 pages, ISBN: 0471209368
    • Bernard Aboba's "Unofficial 802.11 Security Web Page"
  • Community WLANs
    • Rob Flickenger, Building Wireless Community Networks, O'Reilly & Associates, 1st edition (December 15, 2001), 150 pages, ISBN: 0596002041
  • Bluetooth
    • Jennifer Bray and Charles F. Sturman, Bluetooth, Prentice Hall PTR; 1st edition (December 15, 2000), ASIN: 0130898406
    • Brent A. Miller and Chatschik Bisdikian, Bluetooth Revealed: The Insider's Guide to an Open Specification for Global Wireless Communications, Prentice Hall PTR; (September 25, 2000), ISBN: 0130902942
  • 802.16
  • low-power wireless sensor networks
  • John Meurling and Richard Jeans, "The Mobile Phone Book: The invention of the mobile telephone industry, Published by CommunicationsWeek International on behalf of Ericsson Radio Systems, 1994, ISBN 0-9524031-0-2
  • SIM related
  • "linear 4G vision" vs. "concurrent 4G vision" is described in Erik Bohlin, Sven Lindmark, Joakim Björkdahl, Arnd Weber, Bernd Wingert, and Pieter Ballon, The Future of Mobile Communications in the EU: Assessing the Potential of 4G, Carlos Rodriguez Casal, Jean-Claude Burgelman, Gérard Carat (IPTS editors). Foresight on Information Technologies in Europe (FISTE), The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS) EUR No: EUR 21192 EN, Year: 2004, ISBN: 92-894-7872-1

Lecture notes

Lecture slides for 2016 (~20MB)

Lecture slides for 2016 with notes (~18MB)

Supplementary readings

  • Joseph Mitola III, "Software Radio Architecture: Object-Oriented Approaches to Wireless Systems Engineering", John Wiley & Sons, October 20, 2000, 568 pages, ISBN: 0-471-38492-5
  • Joseph Mitola and Zoran Zvonar (eds.) "Software Radio Technologies: Selected Readings", IEEE, 1st edition, 2001, 544 pages ISBN: 0780360222.
  • Markus Dillinger, Kambiz Madani, and Nancy Alonistioti (eds.), "Software Defined Radio: Architectures, Systems and Functions", Wiley, 2003, ISBN 0-470-85164-3.
  • Richard Blum, Network Performance Open Source Toolkit: Using Netperf, tcptrace, NIST Net, and SSFNet, Wiley Publishing, 2003, ISBN: 0-471-43301-2

Useful URLs

Other on-line Course related Material

An example of a paper from the course that became a conference paper:
Flutra Osmani and Adriaan Slabbert, A scalable distributed security infrastructure for industrial control and sensor networks, Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing: Connecting the World Wirelessly, IWCMC '09, ACM, New York, NY, USA, 2009, ISBN 978-1-60558-569-7, 84-89, DOI: http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1582379.1582399,

An example of an excellent paper on IEEE 802.21, it appears here with permission of the author.

An example of an outstanding paper on Intrusion Detection in Wireless Sensor Networks, it appears here with permission of the author.

An example of an outstanding paper on imode, it appears here with permission of the author.

An example of a paper examing the much lower layer issues of Handover Considerations in the Design of Multi-Standard Transceiver Front Ends, it appears here with permission of the author.

Another example paper: Wireless VPN: IPSec vs. SSL/TLS by Åsa Pehrson. It appears here with permission of the author.

An example of a paper examining multimedia messaging is that of Max Loubser, " User created content with MMS", it appears here with permission of the author.

An example of a paper and slides from the oral presentation (on 2006.03.14) concerning bypassing access control in semi-open wireless networks. The link to this paper appears with permission of the author.

Sources for Further Information

Most GSM standards can be accessed from ETSI

Two papers about MANETs:

Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte's podcasts about WiFi security

http://vowlan.wifinetnews.com/

Mobilepipeline mobile related on-line news

For further information related to communications (especially conferences, publications, ...) contact one of the professional societies, such as the IEEE Communications Society, vendors, or use the WWW! [For access to the electronics library see KTHB e-library.]

Handsets poised to be commodities: "Microsoft, Intel Aim for High-End Phone", Wall Street Journal Europe, Tuesday, 19 Feb. 2002, page 1 and pg. A6, features an article, which describes how they are attempting to provide a platform for high-end phones so that they will be commodities just like PCs. The figure on A6 shows the basic components of a handset and lists the prices for the components and for licensing the design "framework":

color screen 17 euro
printed circuit board 9 euro
flash memory 2 euro
radio chip and related electronics 40 euro
baseband chip 34 euro
battery 29 euro
license for reference design for phone 7.50 euro
license of user interface software 3.40 euro
license for operating system software 5.70 euro

An footnote indicates that the last three items could be developed in house, but typically cost 15 euros from outside suppliers.

IEEE 802.15 Working group:
802.15.3 high performance requirements (upto 55Mbps)
802.15.4 low bandwidth (~250kbps), extra-low power MAC and physical devices

Working group IEEE P802.20, Mobile Broadband Wireless Access Systems

Near Field Communication Forum

For those looking at power measurements, as useful reference is Joe Bardwell, Converting Signal Strength Percentage to dBm Values, Executive Summary, WildPackets, November 2002.

For information about the structure of the SIM file system see chapter 8: Pocket PC Phone Edition, in Steve Makofsky, "Pocket PC Network Programming", Addison-Wesley, 2004, ISBN 0-321-13352-8.

Georg Eidenschink, Elatic, Smart Card solutions for everyone, Elatec Vertriebs GmbH - a very nice introduction to smart cards and there use as SIM and USIM cards

Cisco has just made the source code for a number of GSM signalling protocols publically available - see their GSM Source Module Library (GSML)

A excellent introduction to why heterogeneous networks are going to be increasingly popular is contained in the dissertation of Klas Johansson, " Cost Effective Deployment Strategies for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks", December 2007

Dongwoo Kim, "Overview of WiBro and Its Evolution", slides from his talk at Wirless@KTH on November 30, 2007. An excellent introduction - with lots of details and performance data.

Mehmet Unsoy, "Perspectives on IP-based services: Road to Web 2.0, VoIP 2.0 & Mobile Web 2.0", 17 November 2006

H. Stewart Cobb, Gpspseudolites:Theory,Design, and Applications, Doctoral Dissertation, Stanford University, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, SUDAR707, September 1997

Breaking of GSM encryption using open source and open hardware: Karsten Nohl and Chris Paget, GSM - SRSLY?, 26th Chaos Communication Congress, 27 December 2009. See also the related A5/1 Cracking Project.

Ata Elahi and Adam Gschwender, Zigbee Wireless Sensor and Control Network, Prentice Hall, 1 edition (November 8, 2009), copyright year 2010, 288 pages ISBN-10: 0137134851 and ISBN-13: 978-0137134854.

A collection of URLs to a number of white papers about LTE can be found at 3g4g.co.uk's 3GPP LTE/SAE (Long Term Evolution / Service Architecture Evolution)

A paper concerning implementing IEEE 802.11b, IEEE 802.11a, and 3GPP LTE Physical Uplink Shared Channel via multi-core add-in board is:
Kun Tan, Jiansong Zhang, Ji Fang, He Liu, Yusheng Ye, Shen Wang, Yongguang Zhang, Haitao Wu, Wei Wang, and Geoffrey M. Voelker, "Sora: High Performance Software Radio Using General Purpose Multi-core Processors", Communications of the ACM, Volume 54, Number 1, January 2009, pp. 99-107.

Brian J. Love, David J. Love, and James V. Krogmeier, "Like Deck Chairs on the Titanic: Why Spectrum Reallocation Won't Avert the Coming Data Crunch but Technology Might Keep the Wireless Industry Afloat", Commentaries, Law Review, Washington University in St. Louis, School of Law, Vol. 89:6, 2 March 2012.

Ruth Guerra, Carrier Wi-Fi: the next generation, Ericsson Review, 90th Anniversary, 2014, pp. 48-54.

Martin Fransman, The New ICT Ecosystem: Implications for Policy and Regulation, Cambridge University Press, March 2010, 276 pages, ISBN-10: 0521191319, ISBN-13: 978-0521191319 (a useful source to understand some of the policy and regulatory issues - it includes some discussion of the Telecom boom and bust)

Donald N. Sull with Yong Wang, Made In China: What Western Managers Can Learn from Trailblazing Chinese Entrepreneurs, Harvard Business Review Press, 9 June 2005, 231 pages, ISBN-13: 978-1591397151 ISBN-10: 1591397154 (see the discussion about PAS)

Acronyms and Abbreviations useful for IK2555.

IK2555_Lecture-acronyms

Videos from class:

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