WiFiRE: Wireless Boradband Access for Rural Area

First Stage Report

Submitted in partial fullment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Technology by Sameer Kurkure (Roll No. 05239025)

Under the guidance of Prof. Anirudha Sahoo Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology

Kanwal Rekhi School of Information Technology Indian Institute of Technology, Powai, Mumbai 2006-2007

Abstract The report covers the background knowledge of WiFiRE with basic working of protocol including detail discussion of initial ranging and framing formats. It also describes the issues involved in deplyoment of the system in rural areas, physical layers (multiple PHYs used and maintained), architecture, its problems and solutions. Addressing subscriber terminal and connection identication along with bandwidth allocation and request grant mechanism for subscriber termnial is also included as a part of the report.

Introduction

In modern communications users are becoming more and more demanding in terms of services they require. Multimedia and high-speed internet has become common now a days. Major population in developing countries resides in remote areas where access to basic aminities like telephony, internet etc. are dicult to provide. Broadband wireless access (BWA) can become the best way to meet escalating business demand for rapid Internet connection and integrated data, voice and video services. BWA can extend ber optic networks and provide more capacity than cable networks or digital subscriber lines (DSL). But deployment of BWA (WiMAX) compatible devices are much complex and costlier compared to that of WiFi technology. Wireless Fidelity - Rural Extension (WiFiRE) made the mid way out which uses the WiFi IEEE 802.11b physical layer (PHY) and WiMAX IEEE 802.16 MAC layer. 802.11b PHY has better availability of low cost chipsets which operates on unlicensed 2.4GHz frequency band. WiMAX systems are more complex than their WiFi counterparts and thus a WiMAX Base Station will cost more than its equivalent WiFi node. The support of 802.16 MAC layer helps WiFiRE to perform on larger area with support for greator number of subscriber terminal (ST). In 802.11 based networks, contention algorithm like Distributed Coordination Function (DCF) mechanism does not provide any delay guarantees and are more distributed in nature, while the Point Coordination Function (PCF) mechanism is ecient only for small number of nodes. While 802.16 MAC has more provisions for Quality of Service (QoS) and various synchronization mechanism to perform successful communication between distant subscriber termials.

Architecture

WiFiRE broadband is basically for establishing conectivity between xed stations in rural areas within 18-20Km around a ber point of presence (PoP). It comprises of Base Stations (BS) which is WiFi 802.11b PHY enabled transceiver connected with a System (S) shared by multiple Subscriber Terminals (ST). Both BS and ST are xed where as users with in ST (e.g. building, house, small campus etc) can be either xed or mobile depending upon the internal network being used. ST is linked to various end users with dierent broadband bandwidth requirement and communicates with

BS through exterior antennas, which is nally connected with public network like ber PoP. Figure 1 gives a general architecture of WiFiRE.

Figure 1: WiFiRE Overview

Figure 2: WiFiRE System Architecture The system uses a frequency band of 2.4GHz (unlicensed) for both line of sight (LOS) and non LOS communication with help of directional antennas for dierent sectors which follows communication to ST. One base station setup can serve an area of about 20Km of radius which could cover few hundreds of villages.

Physical Layer

The PHY specication is basically targeted for operation in the 2.4GHz frequency band, which requires a base station of about 40m high tower connected with backhaul service and a 12m high pole at ST to maintain the system gain of about 150dB for signal to travel around 30Km with better quality of reception. Figure 3 [2] shows PHY of WiFiRE shared by dierent directional sectorized antennas for signal to cover a larger dictance. 2

Figure 3: WiFiRE PHY Network Conguration Directional antennas covering each sector divides the cell into multiple PHYs and can operate independently from the other. But an ST may receive signals from multiple BS, in order to prevent interference due to side lobes of antennas no two adjacent antennas are permitted to trasmit/receive at same time. BSs in the system (S) are congured as star topology which can operate alternatively or diagonally opposite BS for non-overlapping transmission. WiFiRE supports time division duplex (TDD) over single channel with multi-sector TDM (MSTDM) mechnism, which supports about 25Mbps (for both uplink and downlink) for a cell. In TDD, the uplink (ST to BS) and downlink (BS to ST) share the same frequency but are activated at different time. BS and ST operate with synchronization with each other. Basic frame structure in case of TDD is shown in Figure 4 [1].

Figure 4: TDD frame structure

Basic MAC Mechanism and Framing

WiFiRE MAC comprises of three sublayers (Figure 5 [2]): 3

 The Service-Specic Sublayer (SSS) provides any transformation of external network data to user equipment (UE) received through service access point (SAP). It provides service access points for higher layer for creating and maintaining higher layer peer-to-peer connections between a ST and BS. SSS perform classication of PDUs from higher layer and maps to MAC service data units (MSDU) and vice versa. The MAC Link Control Sublayer (LCS) is responsible for creation and termination of connections and classies the data received from SSS and associate it to various service ows. It also provides management services for conguration of various default and power-on values. Security Sublayer provides authentication of end-points and performs secure transmission for the connection.

Figure 5: WiFiRE protocol layering WiFiRE MAC is time division duplexed, where time is divided into frames and each frame comprises of uplink (UL) subframe and downlink (DL) subframe. Each subframe is again divided in time slots called mini-slots. The downlink communication is from BS to ST happens on point to multipoint basis and the uplink communication is from ST to BS happens on point to point basis. DL subframe is generally 4

greator than UL subframe, their partition point is adaptive but the ratio DL to UL should be xed during the time of initialisation (default 2:1). Each ST is associated to some BS of system S statically and is periodically granted transmission opportunities by the BS. The BS accepts bandwidth requests from the STs and grants them time-slots on the uplink channel. These grants are made based on the service agreements, which are negotiated during connection setup. The BS may also reserve certain time slots on the uplink that are available to all STs for contention. The STs may use these slots to transfer data or to request for dedicated transmission opportunities. The downlink subframe includes a frame control section that contains the beacon (Figure 6 [2]) which include Operator ID, System ID, BS ID, downlink MAP (DLMAP) for the current downlink frame as well as the uplink MAP (UL-MAP) for a frame in future. The DL-MAP informs all STs when to listen for transmissions destined for them in the current frame. The UL-MAP informs STs of their transmission opportunities as a response to their dynamic bandwidth requests, or on the basis of prior service agreements. Due to the dynamic allocation of bandwidth according to the demands for the variety of services that may be active, duration of burst proles and the presence or absence of a TDMA portion (used for synchronization of BS and SS) vary dynamically from frame to frame.

Figure 6: WiFiRE Timing Diagram A subscriber terminal that desires to transmit on the uplink requests transmission opportunities in units of mini-slots. The BS accepts requests over a period of time and compiles an allocation map (MAP) message describing the channel allocation for a certain period into the future called the MAP time. The MAP is then broadcast on the downlink to all subscriber terminals. In addition to dedicated transmission 5

opportunities for individual subscriber terminal, a MAP message may allocate a certain number of open slots for contention based transmission. These transmission opportunities are prone to collisions.

4.1

Protocol Working

Whenever a subscriber terminal powers on following steps are performed by BS and ST in order to start successful data communications: 1. ST fetches Operator ID and System ID from conguration le installed at the time of establishment of ST. 2. ST listens for beacons messages. 3. ST notes BS ID, its signal strength and ranging slots (allocated in ULMAP) for each beacon received. 4. ST transmit a ranging request to the BS with beacon received with highest signal strength. 5. ST waits for start of ranging slot in the corresponding uplink subframe. 6. Further ST transmits the ranging request messsage in the ranging slot prescribed in ULMAP. 7. ST waits for ranging response and monitors DLMAP in all beacons of the subsequent frames. (ST can initiate backo mechanism and again repeats from step 5 in case of no reponse. This process is cyclic in nature.) 8. System S receives the ranging request and selects an appropriate BS for further communication with the ST. 9. S construct ranging response and scheduler arranges it into next or other subsequent downlink subframe and makes an entry in DLMAP. S transmits ranging response in appropriate DL slot through the selected BS. 10. After getting the ranging response from S, ST determines basic connection ID and primary connection ID for further communication. Here it should be noted that the ranging response is received only from the selected BS. (Here the BS and ST are in synchronisation with each other in terms of PHY and Time) 11. ST constructs a registration request and transmit in UL slot (if allocated by S) or in contention slots and wait for response. (ST can initiate backo mechanism and again repeats registration process in case of no reponse.) 12. On reception of registration request, S contructs registration response and assigns IP address and secondary connection ID for further data communication.

Figure 7: Initial Ranging and Registration of an ST 13. Now ST has its own IP address and can dynamically request a connection to S. ST or S issues MAC CREATE CONNECTION.request in the form of Dynamic Service Addtion Request message to S or ST respectively. 14. At the received end S constructs MAC CREATE CONNECTION.response in the form of Dynamic Service Addition Response message to ST. 15. Upon receiving response message from S, ST performs MAC DATA transmission/reception. As ST can only communicate with S (and not directly with any other ST) it continuously monitors DLMAP and ULMAP for reception and transmission of data respectively. In between ST or S can generate MAC CHANGE CONNECTION.request/response in form of Dynamic Service Change Request/Response message. 16. MAC TERMINATION CONNECTION.request is transmitted in the form of Dynamic Service Deletion Request message after completion of data transfer. 17. MAC TERMINATION CONNECTION.response is given back as a Dynamic Service Deletion Response message to requester. The basic working of the protocol is divided into three major procedures: (1) Network Initialization which includes ranging and registration of ST with system S. Basic communication parameters are exchanged like basic CID and primary CID 7

Figure 8: Connection Provision and Data Delivery Services (explained in later part) to initiate further data communication and register an ST as an authenticated terminal. Network initialization along with message exchanges are shown in Figure 7. (2) Connection Management procedure includes messages in form of dynamic service requests like creation, change and deletion of a connection and associating this connection with various service ows. (3) Data Transport handles the data tranfers between S and ST with functionality of packing/unpacking MAC SDUs/PDUs respectively. Figure 8. shows the exchange of the messages above types.

4.2

Initial Ranging

For uplink transmission , times are measured at BS and when ST starts up, it send RNG-REQ message in a ranging window in uplink which made know to ST in ULMAP. BS measures arrival time and signal power and calculte the required timing advance and power adjustment and sends this information in RNG-RSP message. ST adjust its timing advance and power level and sends new RNG-REQ message for vercation. This process is repeated until ST get synchronized with BS. The partition between the DL and UL in Figure 6. gives the notion of guard band usually is to make considerable gap between the DL and UL subframe for non interfering transmission and reception (usually 3.5 slots for S). This also provide a range of about 20Km taking into account for propagation delays and turn-around times at BS radios. The duration of gaurd band is such as to cover the farthest ST, so that the signal can travel back and forth from BS to ST. 8

Ranging Mechanism Ranging is process of acquring the correct timing oset, and PHY parameters, such as, Tx power level, frequency oset, etc. so that ST can communicate with BS properly. BS performs measurement and give feedback, ST performs necessary adjustments. Here it is assumed that the signal from S transmitted in last DL slot reach the farthest ST in n/2 slots where n is number of slots in gaurd band and UL subframe starts with ranging slots equal to n. The idea is to delay the transmission of ranging request (RNG-REQ) of ST for n slots after receiving the last DL slot such the RNG-REQ may fall in ranging slot duration of S. Suppose S receive the RNG-REQ in k th slot of ranging slots of UL segment. Now S will inform ST to wait for n k slots in ranging response (RNG-RSP) for next round. In Figure 9. an ST sends the RNG-REQ after a delay of n slots through which S calucates the timing correction and sends to ST. In next round Figure 10. the ST transmit after new calculated timing advance.

Figure 9: Initial Ranging Request by an ST

Figure 10: Transmission after new timing advance

Let t be the number of slots to reach signal from BS to ST (or ST to BS) and W be the delay at ST after which transmission can occur, then 2t + W n Also 0 < t < n/2 n/2 W n Therefore 2t + W 2n (2) (1)

Minimizing the delay W to n/2 in (1), t comes out to be always greator than n/4. This is the reason why the value of W and number of ranging slots is chosen to be n.

Figure 11: Initial Ranging Request by farthest ST

Figure 12: Transmission after new timing advance

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Considering processing time of an SDU at ST is negligible the schenario changes for an ST situated at the farthest point. After timing advance correction, ST starts transmitting as soon as it receive the last DL slot. Figure 11,12 gives the graphical look to the process. Ranging can be done twice or thrice for precise timing advances and power control, and may be repeated periodically (periodic ranging) to dynamically maintain good RF link. Ranging requests (RNG-REQ) received before or after ranging slots in UL segment are rejected and ST may use backo mechanism to wait for the response and re-transmission of RNG-REQ.

4.3

Addressing and Connection Identication

In a setup an ST is uniquely addressed by a 48 bit MAC address at medium access layer which is used during registration for ST with system S. It is also used as part of the authentication process by which the BS and ST verify each others identity. Connections established between S and ST are identied by 16 bit Connection Identier (CID) within each downlink and uplink. At ST initialization, two management connections basic CID and primary CID are establish between the ST and the BS. Basic CID is used by BS MAC and ST MAC to exchange shorter urgent MAC management messages (e.g. ranging). Primary CID shared by BS MAC and ST MAC is used to exchange comparitively longer delay tolerant MAC management messages (e.g. creation of data connections). Whenever a request for data connection is made (from higher layer), a data CID is assigned to that connection by S. The format of the CID is shown in Figure 13 [2]. Table 1 [2] and Table 2 [2] describes the required codes for CIDs and Service ows associated with frame formats.

Figure 13: CID format Code 00 01 10 11 Type of CID Basic CID Primary CID Data CID Data CID

Table 1: Connection Type codes

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Code 00 01 10 11

Type of Service Flow UGS rtPS nrtPS BE

Table 2: Service Flow codes

4.4
4.4.1

Framing Structures
Basic MAC PDU

A MAC PDU starts with a xed length generic MAC header followed by payload followed by CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check). The payload information is variable length and can hold zero or more sub-headers and zero or more MAC SDUs (Service Data Units). MAC PDU is bounded by maximum soze payload accepted by WiFiRE in which fragmentation is not supported. MAC PDU format is shown in Figure 14 [2].

Figure 14: MAC PDU format

4.4.2

MAC Headers

MAC headers are dened in following formats: 1. Generic MAC Header consits of HT eld for header type and is set to 0 for generic header, Len eld of 7 bits to represent the length of whole MAC PDU including the header length, T ype eld 1 byte long denes the type of message being contained by PDU (such as Ranging, Registration, Dynamic Service and data payload). Futher details for specic codes are given in [2]. Generic MAC header format is shown in Figure 15.

Figure 15: Generic MAC header 2. Beacon Header is comparatively small in size and transmited whenever a beacon is generated at BS. It has HT eld for header type set to 1 for beacon header 12

followed by Len eld of 7 bits to represent the length of MAC PDU. Figure 16 gives the notion of beacon header.

Figure 16: Beacon Header One byte is kept reserved for future use in both headers. Frame formats of other units like beacon, data and other messages are discussed in detail in [2]. 4.4.3 MAC Management PDU

MAC management messages are sent as a payload of MAC PDU. The type eld in generic MAC header species the type of the management message being carried over. Some of the management messages are describes as follows: 1. Beacon Message contains the beacon header (of 2 bytes) in the start of message followed by Operator ID, System ID, BS ID and UL-MAP and DL-MAP at the end. Ranging slot bit species the presence of ranging slots in UL-MAP. Frame format for beacon message is shown in Figure 17 [2].

Figure 17: Beacon Message 2. Network Management Messages are used to maintain physical link and connections between S and ST. Management messages like ranging, registration, dynamic services etc. are mentioned in the type eld of generic header. Codes for management messages are described in Table 3 [2].

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5.1

Bandwidth Grant Mechanism

Scheduling Services

In order to support the QoS for dierent services by scheduling the uplink access opportunity, dierent scheduling services corresponding to uplink scheduler policy can be categorized as: Unsolicited Grant Service (UGS): UGS is designed to support real-time service ows that generate xed size data packets on a periodic basis, such as Voice

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Code 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1110

Type of Management Message Intial Ranging Request Intial Ranging Request Response Registration Request Registration Response Dynamic Service Addtion Request Dynamic Service Addtion Response Dynamic Service Change Request Dynamic Service Change Response Dynamic Service Deletion Request Dynamic Service Deletion Response MAC PDU with data payload

Table 3: Codes for Management Messages over IP. The service oers xed size unsolicited data grants (transmission opportunities) on a periodic basis. BS allocates xed sized grants to the UGS at periodic intervals without any explicit request from ST. The BS can dynamically allocate additional bandwidth to the ST when the backlog transmission queue is formed [4] [5]. Real Time Polling Service (rtPS): The rtPS is designed to support real-time service ows that generate variable size data packets on periodic basis, such as MPEG video. The BS provides periodic dedicated request opportunities for ST to satisfy ows demand comparatively more request overhead than UGS. ST is prohibited using any contention request opportunities and is allowed to use only unicast requests issued by BS [4]. Non-real time Polling Service (nrtPS): The nrtPS is designed to support nonreal-time service ows that require variable size data grants on a regular basis, such as high bandwidth FTP. The nrtPS connections uses random access transmit opportunities for sending bandwidth request [4] [5]. Best Eort (BE): The BE service ow is designed to support data streams for which no minimum transmission rate is required [4]. The ST uses contention and piggyback requests opportunities [5] for BE service ows like HTTP. Unlike rtPS, ST does not receive periodic polls or periodic data grants from BS.

5.2

Bandwidth Allocation and Request Mechanism

STs use to request bandwidth requirement to BS for the need of upstream bandwidth allocation. For receiving grant of bandwidth requested, it can operate in three modes: Grant per Connection (GPC): The decision of allocating the bandwidth depends on the request of type of connection from ST. Mostly suitable for few numbers of connections per ST. 14

 Grant per Subscriber Terminal mode (GPST): BS grants bandwidth to STs according to the current number of requests made, ST has to take care of the QoS among its connections and is responsible for division of the bandwidth among them (maintaining QoS and fairness). The size of UL-MAP is comparitevely small and all subsequent scheduling decision are taken by the ST. Grant per Service Flow (GPSF): It is an intermediate between GPS and GPST in which bandwidth is collectively granted to all the connections of a service ow type to an ST. This reduces the overhead of sending detailed UL-MAP and complexity of scheduler at ST.

Summary and Conclusion

WiFiRE - A Broadband wireless access for rural areas provides a platform for the development and deployment of standards-based metropolitan area networks in many regulatory environment. This standard is intended to allow for multiple vendors to produce interoperable low cost equipments. However, it also allow for extensive vendor dierentiation. For instance, the standard provides the base station with a set of tools to implement ecient scheduling. However these algorithm would dier from vendor to vendor. The deployment of WiFiRE as a working protocol in rural areas is a dening moment in which broadband wireless access moves to its second generation and begins its establishment as a mainstream alternative for broadband access. It will help in bridging the digitaly separated remote areas and will ensure faster roll out in areas where the low POTS penetration, high DSL costs or poor copper quality have acted as a barrier in providing high speed, broadband internet access. Through the dedicated services of many volunteers, WiFiRE working group will be succeded quickly in designing and forging a standard based on forward-looking technology.

Future Work

WiFiRE is a theoritical concept, needs to develop into a working model. Basic MAC mechanisn works similar to that of IEEE 802.16 still procedures for scheduling and ranging (for revised PHY) is to be designed and developed in association with the QoS parameters. Clever schemes can be introduce to increase the eciency of scheduling and ranging algorithms while maintaining the interoperability with subscriber terminals. Currently we have working procedures for data connections like VoIP (UGS) for WiFiRE but subroutines for other data connections like rtPS, nrtPS and BE are undeveloped today.

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References
[1] IEEE 802.16. IEEE Standard for Local and Metropolitan Area Networks - Part 16: Air Interface for Fixed Broadband Wireless Access Systems 2002. [2] WiFiRe: Medium Access Layer (MAC) and Physical Layer (PHY) Specication - Center of Excellence for Wireless Technology (CEWiT) June 2006 release. [3] Design and Evaluation of a new MAC Protocol for Long-Distance 802.11 Mesh Networks, Bhaskaran Raman and Kameswari Chebrolu, 11th Annual International Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking paper (MOBICOM), Aug/Sep 2005, Cologne, Germany [4] Wang, H.; Li, W.; Agrawal, D.P., Dynamic admission control and QoS for 802.16 wireless MAN, Wireless Telecommunications Symposium, 2005 , vol., no.pp. 60- 66, 6-7 April 2005. [5] Hawa, M.; Petr, D.W., Quality of service scheduling in cable and broadband wireless access systems, Quality of Service, 2002. Tenth IEEE International Workshop on, vol., no.pp. 247- 255, 2002. [6] GuoSong Chu; Deng Wang; Shunliang Mei, A QoS architecture for the MAC protocol of IEEE 802.16 BWA system, Communications, Circuits and Systems and West Sino Expositions, IEEE 2002 International Conference on , vol.1, no.pp. 435- 439 vol.1, 29 June-1 July 2002. [7] Hawa, M.; Petr, D.W., Quality of service scheduling in cable and broadband wireless access systems, Quality of Service, 2002. Tenth IEEE International Workshop on, vol., no.pp. 247- 255, 2002. [8] Supriya Maheshwari and Sridhar Iyer. An Ecient QoS Scheduling Architecture for IEEE 802.16 Wireless MANs. In M Tech Dissertation, 2005. [9] Ahmed Younus. WiMax - Broadband Wireless Access - Technical University of Munich, Germany. [10] Development of IEEE 802.16e Functionality - Dublin City University Thesis work January 2006 [11] Tzu-Ming Lin, Chun-Chieh Tseng,and Wern-Ho Sheen. ITRI, Computer & Communications Research Labs, Wireless Communication Department. [12] Nokia Networks.

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