Final Report on Utility of Commercial Wireless Study

5020 users shared this document! click

Final Report on Utility of Commercial Wireless Study A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response













Aaron Budgor Project Chair Ozzie Diaz Principal Author





November 2006 Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 3 Table of Contents 1 Executive Summary ............................................................................................. 5 1.1 Study Background................................................................................................ 5 1.2 Task 1 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 5 1.2.1 Wireless Business and Residential Network Background .......................... 5 1.2.2 What has changed? ..................................................................................... 6 1.3 Technologies under Consideration ...................................................................... 7 1.4 Task 2 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 7 1.5 Task 3 Conclusions.............................................................................................. 9 2 Technologies Under Analysis............................................................................ 14 2.1 Internetworking and Routing ............................................................................. 14 2.1.1 IPv4 and Routing ...................................................................................... 14 2.1.2 Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (MANET) .................................................... 15 2.1.3 IPv6........................................................................................................... 16 2.2 Backhaul or Extended Area Network (EAN) .................................................... 21 2.2.1 Free Space Optics ..................................................................................... 21 2.2.2 Satellite Communications ......................................................................... 21 2.3 Backbone or Quick-Laydown Jurisdiction Area Network (JAN)...................... 23 2.3.1 WiMax ...................................................................................................... 23 2.4 Incident Area Network (IAN) Reach to End Systems ....................................... 27 2.4.1 802.11b...................................................................................................... 27
2.4.2 802.11g...................................................................................................... 28
2.4.3 802.11a...................................................................................................... 29
2.4.4 802.11n...................................................................................................... 30
2.4.5 WPA2 WiFi Security ................................................................................ 31 2.4.6 802.11s (aka mesh networking, ad-hoc networks).................................... 32 2.4.7 CDMA....................................................................................................... 35
2.4.8 UMTS High Speed Packet Access (HSPA)........................................... 37 2.4.9 GSM General Packet Radio System (GPRS)......................................... 42 2.4.10 GSM Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) ..................... 47 2.4.11 802.16-2005 (aka 802.16e, Mobile WiMax) ............................................ 48 2.5 Convergence to Legacy (or Non-routable) Networks........................................ 49 2.5.1 3 rd Generation IP Multimedia Subsystem (3G/IMS) ................................ 49 2.5.2 Unlicensed mobile access (UMA) and 3G-WLAN Inter-working ........... 58 2.5.3 Land Mobile Radio (LMR) over IP .......................................................... 61 2.6 Personal Area Network (PAN) .......................................................................... 64 2.6.1 Bluetooth (802.15.1) ................................................................................. 64 2.6.2 WirelessUSB (802.15.3) ........................................................................... 67 2.6.3 ZigBee (802.15.4) ..................................................................................... 68 3 Technology Recommendations.......................................................................... 69 3.1 Introduction........................................................................................................ 69 3.1.1 Technology Maturity Cycle: 0-3 Years .................................................... 69 3.2 Recommendations.............................................................................................. 80 3.2.1 Trends and Opportunities in the Market ................................................... 80 3.2.2 Hypothetical Disaster Response Scenario Timeline ................................. 81 Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 4 4 Appendix A........................................................................................................ 91 4.1 Terms and Definitions........................................................................................ 91 4.1.1 Hastily Formed Network (HFN)............................................................... 91 4.1.2 General Network Reference Architecture................................................. 91 4.1.3 Stoplight Comparison Criteria .................................................................. 93 4.1.4 Spider Chart Criteria ................................................................................. 94 Project Participants ........................................................................................................ 97 Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 5 1 Executive Summary 1.1 Study Background The Worldwide Consortium for the Grid has conducted a study examining the state of
commercial wireless communications technology, deployment and services infrastructure
to enable government and non-government organizations to reconstitute civil
communications under emergency conditions impacting large areas of the United States
and contiguous countries to which bilateral support agreements exist. In this regard the W2COG has undertaken three tasks that will: Analyze the state of the commercial wireless networking environments to
understand market trends and direction as well as current and future technology
that can provide a capability that can be leveraged to enable fixed/mobile voice
and data connectivity at the edge of the deployed network to provide
interoperability and seamless access to the disaster response collaborative
information environment. Propose technology that is readily available with robust
commercial base and market share that does not rely on government support to
maintain product viability in the market place. Analyze and assess the market research and state of commercial technology for
commercial wireless and networking in reference to the ability and applicability
of increasing the effectiveness of the disaster response mission. Consideration of
interoperable communications, Quality of Service per Class of Service,
information security and frequency and network management will be included.
Analysis criteria should include ability to absorb simply new wireless
communications technology over 10 year life cycles. Provide recommendations and alternatives, to include new developments, test,
and integration of current and new systems, to meet the disaster response mission.
A cost benefit analysis should be included for each recommended system to allow
proper ranking of alternatives (i.e., are the Current and To Be military trunked
radio solutions based on standards that permit interoperability with commercial
wireless?) The organization of this document contains all the results obtained as each Task is
completed, with conclusions from each task. 1.2 Task 1 Conclusions 1.2.1 Wireless Business and Residential Network Background Wireless networks and the business climate driving their adoption have made great
strides since 1990. For the first generation of cellular networks creation of infrastructure
had significant business risk. Sixteen years later, these risks have proven to be very
profitable. During the last five years the changes and upgrades to digital wireless
technology have allowed carriers to become the powerhouses they are known for today. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 6 These carriers are cautious of what they intend to deploy in a geographic region for
revenue reasons. However, once they commit they have rarely committed major errors. In today's modern world, customer usage has significantly impacted historical revenue
models, such as costs + interest + profit margin in determining estimated earnings on a
platform. Revenues per capital dollar spent have drastically changed since 2001, with
earnings per dollar dropping 85% from previous historical levels; in some cases even
more than this figure. 1.2.2 What has changed? Competition and alternative technologies have changed the wireless landscape with
improvements occurring on a 6 month timescale. These improvements are based on what
will sell, be repeatable and be sustainable for a given period of time, normally 5+ years of
life cycle. In 2006, the handset mobile / cellular edge device lifespan is now less than 18
months, with some locations being less than a year. This has created a superheated
market for new products, features and options for mass users to consider when upgrading
or looking for an alternative carrier when a contract term expires or when a customer has
a 'complaint'. This paradigm has also shifted other wireless technologies and the way they have come to
market. Wireless Fidelity (aka WiFi), for example, did not hit its primary stride until
2004; this after 20 months of being in the market and few early adopters. As soon as big
industry players began to see the value in some wireless networks, small residential
market edge equipment providers entered the market and predominantly drove it, along
with significant capital from the investment community. Now that WiFi has saturated the
marketplace, new competitive product enhancements are now hitting the market with the
same rapid pace as did the cellular mobile market noted above. This has created new tools, application layer security and wireless feature set tools that
have come a very long way in a very short period of time. Generally speaking market forces will always work in determining critical mass and end
user acceptance. These factors introduce significant risk to vendors participating in this
space. As critical mass occurs other innovations supporting this industry are brought to
the marketplace (edge devices such as PC Cards, WiFi PDA's, etc). As a result, there are
many WiFi enabled devices today, from dual mode residential phone hand sets, to auto
sensors for basement flood control. The standards invoked are evolutionary and
backwards compatible, thus ensuring manufacturers with a sustained life cycle. However, the reader must be cautioned that beyond 18 months the crystal ball for new
roll-out technologies begins to get murky. Telco / wireless carriers will not share their
specific roll-out strategies for competitive reasons. Instead what one typically encounters
is the open forum IEEE / IETF governance bodies funded by manufacturers so accuracy
and time to market and more importantly acceptance of the standards are years in the
making. And when a standard is proposed, accepted or passed, it does NOT mean that
any one manufacturer is actually going to deploy it. Prime example is 802.20. The Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 7 primary reason that it has been in suspension mode is because two of the three primary
sponsors of the group have serious disagreements on its technical requirements as a result
of alleged overt vendor influence of the specifications. These arguments are not because
it cannot be done, but because the standard often is not to the liking of that submitting
vendor / engineer that's trying to implement what they want (in other words, it's a lot
more political than most people think).

Road mapping 10 years out is something that should be avoided because it will be highly
inaccurate. Political and business requirements will change long before that time and at
best this can be used as indicators, assuming that no new killer application is invented.
However, the notion of future proofing is feasible by employing internetworking
techniques and technologies. New technology can be incorporated as new network
segment(s), but without invalidating the other routable networks in a communications
infrastructure. One example of this is 3G/IMS allowing IP multimedia services to
converge with a legacy cellular infrastructure.

As a result, the primary focus of this study is on existing technology, tentative upgrades
to existing wireless technologies and what is widely accepted by most manufacturers and
carrier / users over a 3 year outlook.

We will also focus on improvements to existing products and what is most cost effective
for a given shelf and deployed lifespan. 1.3 Technologies under Consideration As seen in Section 2 the technologies under consideration in Task 1 included: 1. Internetworking and Routing: MANET and IPv6 (including Mobile IPv6) 2. Backhaul/Extended Area Network (EAN) topology components: Free space
optics and satellite communications 3. Backbone/Quick-laydown Jurisdiction Area Network (JAN) topology
components: WiMax (including mobile multi-hop relay WiMax) in a fixed mode 4. Incident Area Network (IAN) topology components for reach to end systems:
WiFi (including WPA2 and mesh networking), CDMA, UMTS/HSPA,
GSM/GPRS, GSM/EDGE cellular and 802.16 mobile WiMax. 5. Convergence to legacy (or non-routable) network architectures: 3G/IMS, UMA,
and LMR over IP. 6. Personal Area Network (PAN) topology components: Bluetooth, WirelessUSB,
and ZigBee. These identified technologies did not come with a preordained stacking with respect to
their relevance to the disaster response mission; rather they were chosen to satisfy a 10
year horizon for roadmap purposes. Their relative importance to disaster response
community was deferred to Task 2, the conclusions of which are described below. 1.4 Task 2 Conclusions While there appears to be a great deal of uncertainty to long-term projections on wireless
technology deployments, there was consensus within our team that an approach based Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 8 around market survivability biased around least common denominator investment sweet
spots (defined by multiple vendors providing similar or supporting technology) will
probably provide biggest bang for buck to disaster response stakeholder community
whether DoD or NGO organizations need to be interoperable with DoD components or
not.

Thus, while the technology survey identified potential wireless technologies to which
disaster response community might capitalize on during civil support activity, subsequent
tasks will need to winnow out those technologies that are in the near-term (3-5 years)
unsupportable by the commercial sector (service providers, component developers and
edge application providers), but over a longer term might become players. Market
survivability must consider how the technology supports disaster response stakeholder
community needs, capacity (scalability in bandwidth), coverage and cost. Near-term
solutions to disaster response stakeholder community utilization of commercial resources
might include monolithic technology solutions or amalgams of multiple technologies to
achieve similar capability. Regardless of how one achieves solutions to disaster response
stakeholder community requirements, the team was cognizant of the government need to
support its stakeholders regardless of the technologies they deploy. Thus, while WiFi
might not look very promising, if stakeholders use WiFi it must be configured into a
potential near-term solution, especially if interoperability with early responders is as key
as it appears to be using these technologies now and for the foreseeable future.

To accomplish this analysis, the team began with a general reference architecture that
included Extended, Jurisdictional, Incident and Personal Area Networks and created
spider charts that examined, as a function of time slices described above, feature
dimensions that could be used to identify the likelihood that the technologies would
support disaster response stakeholder community missions. These features were then
employed to construct a series of stoplight charts that also were time slice indexed and
could be used to help define the sweet spots in the commercial space. Conclusions for this Task are: There exist mature and pervasive Wireless Wide Area Network (WWAN) cellular
service in practically every perceivable disaster area in the US and Canada.
Assuming that the basic power and site infrastructure remains intact, the service
providers will continue to provide a reliable service and opportunity to utilize a
growing array of devices (handhelds, smartphones, laptops, cellular modem
backhaul on WLAN equipment, etc.) readily available in the commercial sector. A rapidly evolving set of broadband, IP-based wireless technologies are either
available today (WiFi 802.11a/g, fixed WiMax, etc.) or emerging in the standards
and product vendor organizations (WiFi 802.11n, mobile WiMax,
WirelessUSB/UWB, etc.) operating on unlicensed (or lightly regulated
frequencies, i.e., 4.9GHz) and offering rapid deployment capabilities. This
combination of capabilities and current/future economics make it both lucrative
and viable to employ them in a foreseeable emergency response scenario, given
that the applications of the solutions are architected to fulfill the missions. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 9 The ultimate glue and interoperability answer for the future is IP. This is
demonstrated by architectures such as UMA, IMS, or LMRoIP that intend on
enabling IP-based applications and services to/from legacy environments.
Therefore, to ensure true interoperability and compatibility with future
technologies, IP-based products and networks require an increasing emphasis for
all technology and procurement decisions by DoD. Among the many points of
evidence demonstrating this today, the DoDs mandate of IPv6 by 2008
exemplifies the requirement. 1.5 Task 3 Conclusions Communications system interoperability is a vital attribute of the myriad of components
that military, government, state and local agencies, and first responders bring to a disaster
site. After considerable deliberation the W2COG study participants believe that no one
US government agency, no one single vendor and no single program can achieve
communications systems interoperability on its own. Interoperability should be
considered a multi-stakeholder goal requiring an integrated vision and cooperative
strategy. Success requires adoption of two principles understanding the objective and
unity of purpose:

1. Understanding the objective. Just what do we mean by interoperability and how will we know if we've achieved it ... and what technology should be eschewed because it
simply cannot be integrated?

Before we go too far down the path of technology performance as it pertains to durability,
interoperability, costs, evergreen, and next generation capabilities already available, we
do have to stand back and review what is already deployed, under construction and what
disaster response stakeholder community responsibility is when these issues are
considered and implied. The first question that needs to be addressed here is what is a
sufficient level of interoperability? For example, are there specific priority areas or
regions of the U.S. requiring greater emphasis than others? Are large population centers
more important than less populated areas? And even if the answer is the former there is a
great deal of diversity between public safety communications interoperability in the
state of New York and metropolitan Phoenix/Tucson. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 10
As is evident from the above metropolitan case comparisons, the scale and coverage areas
are very different. While interoperable communications technology is scalable in a
variety of technical formats, some scale better than others when bandwidth per user,
frequencies, users per talkgroup, etc. are factored in. There are technologies that can
accomplish the tasks in each region. But to what point do these two geographic regions
weigh disaster response stakeholder community considerations when considering how
long these systems will be in place and the implications on what that community will
eventually procure to effectively couple with their infrastructures? New York claims this
system will be in place for the next 20 years; yet Phoenix / Mesa Arizona system may
only last 5 years (though this is very unlikely). This type of disparity would certainly
limit what disaster response stakeholder community can interoperate with and which
inter-connect technologies it can work with.

The issue illustrated above is common over CONUS. The question that really needs to be
addressed is whether there are systems that can interoperate and what would be the
desired ratio of radio to users per region to inter-connects (ratio of interconnect /
interoperability to the existing platform and edge device handheld radios).
And then we must consider some other aspects of these two case examples. In the field,
given the geographic and technical limitations of first responders, are there alternatives
that should be considered other than what already exists? With New York States massive
roll-out, it is unlikely that WiFi / cellular / WiMax, etc., are going to be technologies
requiring a great deal of focus for US military; rather the traditional VHF/UHF/800 MHz
radio interface technologies that will need to be supported. And yet, WiFi and WiMax
would be of value during a major crisis for the simple reason that they might be put in
deployment rapidly to support data networking requirements.

2. Unity of purpose. The list of government (federal, state and local levels), non- governmental agencies and other stakeholders requiring communications interoperability
is extremely long. Consequently, the number of procurement avenues and potential State of New York Uses non-P-25 Radio system
for public safety (SWN)
Open Sky Four Slot TDMA
system and uses a blend of
700/800 MHz frequencies Covers 49,576 square miles,
65,000 users and 225,000 user
addresses.
Spend is not completed, but not to
"exceed" 2 Billion Dollars
(financed over 20 years...) Phoenix / Mesa, Arizona Uses 800 MHz P-25 compliant
platform with multi-frequency 3-zone
system Additional 5 simulcast and 5 trunked
sites for remote locations using 116
separate frequencies!!! 2,000 Square Miles, 25
Agencies,13,700 radios (4,700
mobiles, 8,750 Portables, 230
Motorcycles, 23 Aircraft) Spent $162M and is completed (1998
- 2003) Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 11 vendors providing components and solutions is potentially also very large. While it is not
practical to rule out use of all proprietary technologies, a recommended way forward is to
strongly inhibit procurement of proprietary solutions. But simply falling back to
'standards-based' recommendations is inadequate. There are multiple standards
organizations dealing with communications and products, adhering (even faithfully) to
these standards will not necessarily create interoperability. Interoperability implies
getting to standards-based routable network solutions.

Part of the communications system interoperability problem on the part of US military
must be addressed by telling all stakeholders what they should be procuring, training with
and using in order to be interoperable in the larger scheme. W2COG believes that US
military should focus on the JAN architecture and establishment of Network Operating
Centers (NOCs) since this is the infrastructure that it has the greatest leverage over. An
explicit migration to an infrastructure made up of IP routable nets allows easy,
incremental, transparent migration from one specific technology to another that remain
interoperable throughout any transition process.

During a disaster all entities that show up bring their own end systems (including the
PAN equipment). Local law enforcement brings what SAFECOM considers the IAN
category gear. It makes no sense to dictate single-technology standardization. Instead
fostering interoperability via the L3 and L2 interoperability definitions in the spider
charts described in Section 3.1.1.2 will enable police department A operating on a P25
LMR network and the Red Cross bringing laptops and perhaps a WiFi AP to interoperate
via a gateway at one or more of the JAN nodes.

What we are describing as a potential solution is to consider the communications
interoperability space as an IP internet. Here all communications (wired and wireless)
are organized into networks (LANs, terrestrial-WANs and radio-WANs) interconnected
together with routers. If the routable network is IPv6 compliant, it also includes IPv4,
OSPF and BGP. From the perspective of the stoplight charts derived under Task 2
(section 3.1), evolutionary technologies should easily phase in as they mature towards
adoption. The caveat is that all the rest of the edge devices coupled to the routable cloud
must obey L3 interoperability for any of this to have any meaning.

Now assuming that the above solution is implementable and SNMP managed then
mandating sound fault management principles to include reliable failover and prompt
failures notification should provide a robust interoperable solution even for circuit-
switched or trunked radio legacy systems. An IP network backbone with legacy systems
at the periphery is entirely practical. Indeed, for many years, this was the way the
backbone of the Internet was built and continues today as legacy systems go through
technology refresh cycles and are being replaced with IP-based systems. This X-over-
IP architecture keeps the circuit-switched legacy system out of the core, but
accommodates it. This internet approach is superior to the isolated trunked radio
approach in a major disaster scenario since the 1) residual surviving connectivity is
readily usable, 2) replacement network segments can be obtained from a variety of
sources, and 3) internet approach is neutral regarding the character of the data that it Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 12 carries such that a converged IP network is capable of supporting all traffic typesvoice,
video, and data.

The technologies necessary to make this routable network a reality includes: 802.3 Ethernet, 802.11 WiFi, 802.16 WiMax, as well as DOCSIS, FDDI, SNMP,
OSPF, IPv6, Mobile IP, etc. Here interoperability and internetworkability are
synonymous. Stable MAC that will not stall under overload. Contention based MACs, such as
802.11 work well in lightly loaded networks as a user access technology but
poorly at the core. Thus they stall under load, are bandwidth inefficient and do not
readily allow any QoS control. Scheduling MACs such as 802.16 solve many of
these problems. Security measures that control access (layer 2). This is enough to keep the
unauthorized out but does not destroy the interoperability requirement. Almost
any other security measures will kill interoperability. SNMP management agents that provide the primitives to manage the network --
the NOC can be anywhere and does not need to be built on the fly, in fact we
recommend against that other than a localized scenario with a limited mobile
operations vehicle. As 802.11 and 802.16 have Management Information Bases
(MIBs) within the standard components can be managed both locally and
remotely.
To ensure true operational and deployment interoperability it is also recommended that
disaster response stakeholder community: Place equipment that complies with the IEEE 802.16-2005 (and subsequent)
standards and specifies WiMax certification on procurement contracts. The
flavor of the contracts should be commercial off the shelf (COTS) with sufficient
packaging (e.g. environmental hardening, soldier-proofing) suitable for typical
deployments. Easy and quick setup of any equipment should be an important
procurement criterion. Place access points and related products conforming to the 802.11 standard on
procurement contracts. While this equipment is unsuitable for the radio-WAN it
is useful to provide fan-out to users in local hot spot areas serviced by 802.16
backbones. The emphasis in the procurements should be on auto- or low-
configuration. Make all equipment and services procurements available to National Guard, and
potentially to DHS, state and local governments (consider use of IDIQ vehicle).
Some backwards compatibility will be required for trunked radio systems both in
the National Guard inventory and in the state/local inventories. These should be
handled by layer 7 gateways. Most of the gateway function will be transforming
circuit-switched voice and signaling into VOIP and back. Procure as necessary,
but encourage the legacy inventories toward packet switched solutions as the
necessity for gateways should decline over time. Integrate with the rest of the National Guard response inventory (e.g. emergency
generators, emergency food/water, etc). Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 13 Establish multiple 802.16 testbeds to demonstrate interoperability at the router
and create a doctrinal handbook (users manual). Establish training, regular joint exercises and operational awareness for use of
routable networks and edge devices. Configure rapidly deployable kits that can be stockpiled (e.g. at National Guard
armories). Expect these kits to need a technological refresh about every two
years. Enhance the existing web, messaging, S/MIME and XML-crypt/sign standards of
the DoD with implementations suitable for use in emergency situations (e.g.,
disaster relief) to provide end-to-end authenticity and confidentiality of data as
required. This capability needs to be extended to state/local authorities and to
NGOs.
In summary of the above, W2COG recommendations described above are offered from
the point of view of enablers. To enable each stakeholder to meaningfully contribute to
communications interoperability, the W2COG team suggests concentration on the
backbone and NOC support portions of the infrastructure leveraging internet technology
in a form that can accommodate a fairly wide variety of technologies at the local/incident
area level. The two great drivers that continue to evolve and are the principle parts of the
solution are:

IP is the glue. IP-based technologies continue to perpetuate throughout all facets of
social, commercial, and government lives and operations. This includes wired, but
wireless represents the greatest momentum as it offers one unique characteristic desired
by all forms of users: mobility. Ultimately technologies such as IPv6 address a broad,
secure base of interoperable end-to-end systems and devices running a multitude of
applications.

Gateways. While IP continues to fan out and perpetuate, there remain a large number of
legacy systems that are not IP-based, such as Land Mobile Radio and cellular. There are
a number of interworking, mediation, or gateway technologies and architectures
emerging that might resolve these incompatibilities. These fall in the same class as the IP
Voice Media Gateway that allowed the migration of voice sessions away from the Class 5
switch to the VoIP network. Technologies such as IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS) and
LMR over IP (LMRoIP) are attempting to provide a similar migration path for legacy
cellular and LMR systems.

With the continued evolution and employment of the above 2 methodologies, there will
come a day when a rapid emergency response from an array of police, fire, EMS, FEMA,
National Guard, and others could come together on a common communications
framework and infrastructure with the freedom to deploy an IP-based application to meet
the needs of the public whom they are serving or saving.
Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 14 2 Technologies Under Analysis 2.1 Internetworking and Routing 2.1.1 IPv4 and Routing The key to the internet and its graceful evolution (incorporation of new communications
technology as it becomes available) is the ability to route datagrams from one subnet (e.g.
an IAN) to another (a JAN).

Without routing, we could not even segment the discussion into IAN/JAN/EAN
categories. At the heart of this internetworking is Internet Protocol, the current version
being IPv4.

IP and the supporting routing information protocols (e.g. OSPF and BGP) have been
supported in specialized computers called routers for several years now and the
technology is mature and well understood.

IPv4 has been in use in the commercial Internet as well as DoD networks since the 1980s
and is essentially unchanged since its inception (one change is redefinition of the TOS
byte as the DS byte and definition of the QoS values in that field).

In the 1990s, it was observed that the existing practices around allocation of IPv4
addresses was inefficient (less than 1% of the addresses allocated were actually being
used) and likely to exhaust the pool of 32-bit address allocations in the foreseeable future.
As a result, the IETF convened the IPng (next generation) working group which made a
number of recommendations (CIDR, NAT, DHCP, ...). Nearly all of these
recommendations have been incorporated into internet technology today; the exception
being IPv6, a complete rework of Internet Protocol. This exception is treated below as a
separate category.
2.1.1.1 Routing Implementations The expansion of the commercial Internet into the home has seen an explosion in small
routers, the so-called SOHO routers, which have very small form factors (typically 6x8
or smaller). These small routers also have low wattage requirements and have steadily
gotten better at low-configuration/auto-configuration features and remote management.
All of which benefits the target environment of this study.

Routers need to know which of several available interfaces that they have to direct
datagrams toward. In a richly (high availability) connected internet, there will always be
more than one correct answer among several incorrect ones. Determining the correct
interface is the task of routing information protocols. And they come in two major
categories. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 15 2.1.1.2 OSPFv4 Interior gateway protocols are exemplified by Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) which
exchanges routing information with its neighbors. The scope of this routing information
extends to all routers within an autonomous system (AS) all routers within an AS will
have identical routing tables when the network is converged and all routers will know
how to reach all other routers within that AS. OSPF is standards-based and has been in
widespread service for many years. It is suitable for routing together several IAN/JAN
network segments. 2.1.1.3 BGPv4 Exterior gateway protocols operate in border routers that function as the linkage between
multiple ASs; in our case between a JAN and EAN. Border Gateway Protocol (v4) is the
ubiquitous protocol for this function today. Unlike interior gateway protocols, the
amount of routing information is much more limited: a border gateway protocol tells
external users 'I can forward your datagrams to n.n.n.n IP address.' But it masks the
details of the interior routing within an AS (e.g. within a JAN) from the external internet
(e.g. EAN). This has the benefit of limiting the volatility of a rapidly changing routing
topology to the relevant AS -- the routing table adjustments don't spill out into the
internet at large.

As the internet has increasingly incorporated radio-based networks, improved
mechanisms to handle routing volatility have been proposed. Most of these fall under the
general label of MANET, treated below. 2.1.2 Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (MANET) A mobile ad-hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring network of mobile routers (and
associated hosts) connected by wireless linksthe union of which form an arbitrary
topology. The routers are free to move randomly and organize themselves arbitrarily;
thus, the network's wireless topology may change rapidly and unpredictably. Such a
network may operate in a standalone fashion, or may be connected to the larger Internet.
Minimal configuration and quick deployment make ad hoc networks suitable for
emergency situations like natural or human-induced disasters, military conflicts,
emergency medical situations etc. The earliest MANETs were called "packet radio" networks, and were sponsored by
DARPA in the early 1970s. BBN Technologies and SRI International designed, built, and
experimented with these earliest systems. Experimenters included Jerry Burchfiel, Robert
Kahn, and Ray Tomlinson of later TENEX, Internet and email fame. It is interesting to
note that these early packet radio systems predated the Internet, and indeed were part of
the motivation of the original Internet Protocol suite. Later DARPA experiments included
the Survivable Radio Network (SURAN) project, which took place in the 1980s. Another
third wave of academic activity started in the mid 1990s with the advent of inexpensive
802.11 radio cards for personal computers. Current MANETs are designed primarily for
military utility; examples include JTRS and NTDR. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 16 The popular IEEE 802.11 ("WiFi") wireless protocol incorporates an ad-hoc networking
system when no wireless access points are present, although it would be considered a
very low-grade ad-hoc protocol by specialists in the field. The IEEE 802.11 system only
handles traffic within a local "cloud" of wireless devices. Each node transmits and
receives data, but does not route anything between the network's systems. However,
higher-level protocols can be used to aggregate various IEEE 802.11 ad-hoc networks
into MANETs.

The purpose of the IETF MANET working group is to standardize IP routing protocol
functionality suitable for wireless routing application for either static and dynamic
topologies with increased dynamics due to node motion or other factors.

Approaches are intended to be relatively lightweight in nature, suitable for multiple
hardware and wireless environments, and address scenarios where MANETs are
deployed at the edges of an IP infrastructure. Hybrid mesh infrastructures (e.g., a mixture
of fixed and mobile routers) should also be supported by MANET specifications and
management features.

Using mature components from previous work on experimental reactive and proactive
protocols, the WG will develop two Standards track routing protocol specifications:

- Reactive MANET Protocol (RMP)
- Proactive MANET Protocol (PMP)

If significant commonality between RMP and PMP protocol modules is observed, the
WG may decide to go with a converged approach. Both IPv4 and IPv6 will be supported.
Routing security requirements and issues will also be addressed.

The MANET WG will also develop a scoped forwarding protocol that can efficiently
flood data packets to all participating MANET nodes. The primary purpose of this
mechanism is a simplified best effort multicast forwarding function. The use of this
protocol is intended to be applied ONLY within MANET routing areas and the WG effort
will be limited to routing layer design issues.

One should place the immaturities of MANET protocols into perspective. The protocols
are implemented in software and loaded into routers (including end systems that are
being dual-tasked to also be routers). Since routers and the protocols on which MANET
are founded are mature, adding one or more MANET protocols to an infrastructure later
is fairly easy to doa software upgrade. Source: Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.com/ ) Source: http://www.ietf.org/html.charters/manet-charter.html 2.1.3 IPv6 Since the early eighties, after the first packet switching experience with ARPANET,
TCP/IP has been changing peoples lives just by providing connectivity between until
then unconnected entities such as different local area networks, workstations, and servers. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 17 Later known as the Internet, the network of networks based on TCP/IP challenged our
creativity paving the way to all sort of applications and services not imagined before.
From the academic community, and leveraged by the telecommunications progress, it
rapidly grew providing connectivity to the rest of the world and thus, bringing new forms
of communicating and doing business. The continuous growth of the Internet community
promptly made us face the possibility of running out of IP addresses. This hindrance has
been effectively overcome by solutions like Network Address Translation (NAT) and
Classless Interdomain Routing (CIDR). However, while NAT suffers inherent
shortcomings such as increased network complexity and impossibility of end-to-end
communications, CIDR is only a temporal solution that must be deemed as the
opportunity to implement a real solution. In addition, the demand for more sophisticated
services such as VoIP, video conferencing, video on demand, gaming, and other real-time
applications demonstrated weaknesses to provide the required quality of services. Lack of
security became another issue when organizations began to depend on the Internet to do
business and individuals required privacy for their personal activities. Finally, the current
temptation to connect every device surrounding us is sharply increasing the necessity for
end-to-end communications over the Internet with the correlated need to increase the IP
address space. IPv6 came to solve the above mentioned issues and make the required and other not
imagined applications a reality. It is progressively being adopted in all the developed and
many developing regions. In the United States, the report IPv6 Economic Impact Assessment [1], prepared by RTI
International for the National Institute of Standards & Technology in October 2005,
provides some estimates about the future penetration of IPv6 in the market. Though, it
explicitly warns that all estimates obtained are preliminary in nature and subject to
significant revision. Based on interviews with stakeholders, Figure 1, Penetration
Estimates of IPv6 in the United States, obtained from the mentioned report, presents
the estimated penetration of IPv6 in four major stakeholder groups: infrastructure
vendors, application vendors, ISPs, and users. For example, 30% of ISPs networks will
be IPv6-enabled by 2010. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 18 Figure 1, Penetration Estimates of IPv6 in the United States
This study is also referenced by [2].

Additionally, other organizations have supported the adoption of IPv6. Among them it is
worth highlighting the Department of Defense of the United States, which has already
stated its complete network must be IPv6-enabled by January 2008. Moreover, 3GPP has
mandated exclusive use of IPv6 for IMS, so we are expected to see IPv6 in future UMTS
core networks. More information can be found in [2].

IPv6 is the standard approved for Internet2. It is defined by a number of RFCs in the
IETF. The principal one is RFC 2460. It is the result of the whole experience gathered
during IPv4 use. Its main advantages are: Larger Address Space. Addresses are 128-bits long. End-to-end communication and related advantages for peer-to-peer. Improved and widely accepted QoS (Quality of Service) support. QoS is
considered for DiffServ (Differentiated Services), with the Type-of-Service field,
and for individual flows with the flow-label field. The use of flow label has not
been defined yet. Native security by adding extension headers for IPsec: Encapsulated Security
Payload and Authentication Header. End-to-end security which allows IPv6 packets to travel over non-secure media
while still maintaining privacy and authentication. Improved processing performance by defining one base header and n extension
headers. Extensibility for other related standards like Mobile IPv6 (RFC 3775). It is easy to
add custom hop-by-hop options, custom destination options, and new extension
headers. Improved support for Multicast. Hierarchical address distribution, which easies router tasks with the possibility of
route aggregation. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 19 Support for autoconfiguration and renumbering, which facilitates network
administrator tasks and allows plug & play capabilities for new devices in the
network. Anycast addresses, which brings capabilities such as load balancing between
different nodes. Fragmentation that can only be carried out at the source node. This alleviates
routers from this task.
According to the IPv6 Forum [2], the core IPv6 specifications are as follows: RFC 1981: Path MTU Discovery. RFC 2460: IPv6 Protocol. RFC 2461: IPv6 Neighbor Discovery. RFC 2462: IPv6 Stateless Auto-Configuration. RFC 2463: Internet Control Message Protocol for IPv6 (ICMPv6). RFC 4291: IPv6 Address Architecture. RFC 4301: Security Architecture for IP (IPsec). IPv6 over XYZ Link Layer (Ethernet, ATM, PPP, etc.)
It is expected that there will be a very long gradual transition from IPv4 to IPv6. During
this time both incompatible protocols will coexist. This can cause interoperability issues
that must be overcome and different complementary solutions have been proposed: All nodes should have dual stack IPv4-IPv6 to be able to communicate with both
types of correspondent. Tunneling to convey IPv6 packets through IPv4-only networks and conversely, to
convey IPv4 packets through IPv6-only networks. Protocol Translators to transform IPv6 packets into IPv4 and the opposite.
Every future application must foresee an ecosystem with IPv4 and IPv6-based devices. 2.1.3.1 Mobile IPv6 Mobile IPv6 (MIPv6) is another protocol that will be enabled for IPv6 nodes. MIPv6 is
far more efficient than MIPv4 mainly because of Route Optimization which is possible in
IPv6. MIPv6 is useful to provide seamless mobility while roaming through heterogeneous
access networks, e.g. a handset with CDMA2000 interface and 802.11g interface would
provide seamless handover from a 3G network to a WiFi one while still maintaining a
session. Figure 2 represents a typical MIPv6 scenario where the Mobile Node is roaming
in a foreign network. MIPv6 will also be useful to take advantage of multihomed nodes
by incrementing availability and bandwidth when more than one access networks are
reachable. The IETF WG Monami is investigating these possibilities.

Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 20 Figure 2, A typical MIPv6 scenario with Route Optimization
It must be noted that IPv6 applications can transparently use MIPv6. Furthermore, unless
they implement specific functionalities, routers do not need to know about MIPv6
because they should not parse MIPv6 extension headers.

In 2004, at the 3G World Congress Convention and Exhibition in Hong Kong, an
experience with a cellular phone with MIPv6 seamless handover took place [3].

The draft document DoD IPv6 Standard Profiles for IPv6 Capable Products Draft v.06 [4]
establishes a Mobility profile that could be required for hosts and servers.

There are several MIPv6 stacks being developed worldwide that can be found in the
Internet. On the other side, IPv6 can be found in all commercially available operating
systems.
[1] http://www.nist.gov/director/prog-ofc/report05-2.pdf [2] IPv6 Forum Roadmap & Vision, http://www.6journal.org/archive/00000261/02/WWC_IPv6_Forum_Roadmap__Vision_2010_v6.pdf [3] http://press.nokia.com/PR/200411/969183_5.html [4] http://roland.grc.nasa.gov/~ivancic/shared/ipv6/DISR%20IPv6%20Product%20Profile%20draft_v.6
%2029Dec05.doc#_Toc123626790 Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 21 2.2 Backhaul or Extended Area Network (EAN) 2.2.1 Free Space Optics Free space optics uses energy in frequencies of light to transmit bits. In this respect it is
identical to fiber optic transmission -- indeed the underlying technology is identical but
without the fiber as a light guide.

Free space optical paths, like those that use fiber, are point-to-point. These paths are
further constrained: Paths are line of sight. No bending or obstructions are permitted. Curvature of the earth and limited heights of eye are constraints. Atmospherics affect the link budgets. Fog, in particular, will greatly hamper free
space optics. In the vacuum of space, distances can range to thousands of miles.
But in earth's atmosphere, practical ranges are much less -- often in the range of a
mile or two. Transmitters and receivers must be precisely aligned. And they must stay
precisely aligned to function. So antenna supports of opportunity such as trees
that wave in the wind are problematic. Most commercial application photographs
show the optical hardware fastened to a building. These constraints are independent of the technology.
Since the technology of light sources and receivers is the same as that in fiber optic
technology, the capacities of free space links are comparable. As the efficiency and
effectiveness of laser diodes and photoreceptors improves for fiber optic, they will also
improve for free space optics. Technologies such as Dense Wavelength Division
Multiplexing are applicable to both. 2.2.1.1 Internetworkability Like any other point-to-point link it is practical to use free space optics to link a pair of
routers. The protocol requirements for point-to-point links are few (a framing protocol
for content such as IP datagrams). And the multivendor interoperability problems are nil
because we can reasonably expect to buy both ends of a free space optics link from the
same vendor. 2.2.1.2 Applicability to disaster relief type of problem Here the intent needs to be to provide communications to an area (a 'footprint') not a
single point. This rules out free space optics as a technology for the fanout to the users.
In backbone or backhaul situations, the range limitations that are not susceptible to
technological improvements are severely limiting. 2.2.2 Satellite Communications Most satellite communications consists of a 'bent pipe' configuration where a large earth
station beams energy (through a large parabolic antenna) to a satellite. At the satellite,
the energy is shifted to a different frequency, but is otherwise unchanged, and beamed Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 22 back to a 'footprint' on the earth's surface. All users under the footprint can then use the
capability.

Within this basic configuration are several variants. The predominant one consists of
satellites in geosynchronous equatorial orbit (remaining at a single point in the sky
relative to earth's surface). Most commercial and defense communications satellites fit
this description. Many satellites have transponders that focus 'spot beams' smaller than
the visible surface of the earth; this spot beam ability improves the gain equation figures
within the spot beam and helps the frequency reuse problem.

A few satellites supplement this capability with cross-links from one satellite to another.
Iridium (commercial) and the proposed TSAT (defense) fall in this category. The cross-
links necessarily participate in the satellite's 'budget' (for real estate on the satellite bus,
for power, for ability to control) and this necessarily detracts from the bandwidth
available to 'shine' on the earth.

Iridium, in addition to being one of the few communications satellite systems with
crosslinks, is one of two 'Big LEO' systems. Originally, five companies were competing
for licenses before the FCC in the early 1990s; three were licensed, two actually launched
satellites ... and both found themselves in deep financial difficulty. Globalstar is the
second system that actually launched and it uses a simple bent-pipe satellite
configuration. The advantage of a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite over a GEO is link
budget -- earth stations, customers and satellite are closer to each other so less power is
needed (in both cases, customer equipment can use omnidirectional antennae). The
disadvantage is that connections must be handed off from one satellite to the next as they
rise and set over the horizon (typically every 20 minutes, depending on orbit). 2.2.2.1 Internetworkability Few satellite systems support media access control protocols and those that do are
proprietary to that particular satellite program -- they are not multi-vendor, open
standards-based. Point to point connections via the satellite are always practical and that is a good way to
interconnect two routers. Like any other point-to-point technology, there is little protocol
issue -- a MAC is not required. This is a situation that is susceptible to technological
development; writer is aware of some protocols within both commercial and defense
satellite programs that effectively constitute a Media access Protocol (although the
language differs). Open standards are feasible; but none exist today. Because satellite technology today primarily delivers point-to-point, not point-to-
multipoint, capability, the technology is good for backhaul, but not scalable to user
fanout. 2.2.2.2 Applicability to emergency deployment situation At a naive level, satellite communications would appear to be a strong player. A user
needs only an earth station and he is in business. But this scenario unfortunately does not Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 23 scale. With thousands of users within a disaster area, the available satellite
communications capacity is quickly saturated. And each individual user competing for
satellite resources places protocol requirements on the satellite communications system
that are not very efficient.

Satellite communications does have a critical role to play in the backhaul component of
an emergency laydown -- connecting the quick setup terrestrial network within the
disaster footprint with the undamaged internet outside. In this case, it is feasible to
provide a dedicated channel to each router within the footprint which can then be used
efficiently. The remainder of the communications network on the other side of the router
is properly a problem for other technologies. 2.2.2.3 Satellite communication prospects Satellite protocols are 1) closed and 2) not very amenable to fitting into internet.
Considerable improvements could be made technically, but they have not happened: satellite communications systems are not configured as overtly routable networks.
Rather they support some independent protocol (often point-to-point) that's
jammed into the internet. the satellite communications community lacks open, multivendor standards compliance assurance usually comes in the form of a standard equipment rather
than equipment conforming to a standard.
This situation could change in the next decade, resulting in satellite systems that are
designed to easily and efficiently constitute a network segment in a larger internet.
Today the fits remain awkward. 2.3 Backbone or Quick-Laydown Jurisdiction Area Network (JAN) 2.3.1 WiMax WiMax is defined as Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access by the WiMax
Forum, formed in April 2001 to promote conformance and interoperability of the
standard IEEE 802.16, also known as WirelessMAN. The Forum describes WiMax as "a
standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access
as an alternative to cable and DSL". This makes WiMax technology appropriate for JAN
applications as a relatively simple way to deploy bridging (i.e., non-routing) technology.
A military equivalent niche is as a battlefield backbone in roughly the brigade to
company level in the hierarchy.

A second business model is emerging, particularly with the advent of the IEEE 802.16-
2005 version (known as 802.16e in the pre-ratification working version). Here the
emphasis is not exclusively on JAN-level backbone networks but on extending the reach
down to end systems (the IAN space).

The WiMax Forum is "the exclusive organization dedicated to certifying the
interoperability of Broadband Wireless Access products, the WiMax Forum defines and Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 24 conducts conformance and interoperability testing to ensure that different vendor systems
work seamlessly with one another." Those that pass conformance and interoperability
testing achieve the "WiMax Forum Certified" designation and display this mark on their
products and marketing materials. Vendors claiming their equipment are "WiMax-ready",
"WiMax-compliant", or "pre-WiMax" are not WiMax Forum Certified, according to the
Forum.

WiMax is a term coined to describe standard, interoperable implementations of IEEE
802.16 wireless networks, in a rather similar way to WiFi being interoperable
implementations of IEEE Wireless LAN standard 802.11. However, WiMax is very
different from WiFi in the way it works.

In WiFi, the media access controller (MAC) uses contention access all subscriber
stations wishing to pass data through an access point (AP) are competing for the APs
attention on a random basis. This can cause distant nodes from the AP to be repeatedly
interrupted by closer nodes, greatly reducing their throughput. And this makes services
such as VoIP or IPTV which depend on a determined level of quality of service (QoS)
difficult to maintain for large numbers of users.

In contrast, the 802.16 MAC is a scheduling MAC where the subscriber station only has
to compete once (for initial entry into the network). After that it is allocated a time slot by
the base station. The time slot can enlarge and contract, but it remains assigned to the
subscriber station, meaning that other subscribers can not use it. This scheduling
algorithm is stable under overload and over-subscription (unlike 802.11). It can also be
more bandwidth efficient. The scheduling algorithm also allows the base station to
control Quality of Service by balancing the assignments among the needs of the
subscriber stations.

The IEEE 802.16 standard exhibits the same kind of evolutionary improvement potential
that we have seen in IEEE 802.3 Ethernet in the past 30 years. It provides great latitude
for improvement and choice of spectra in the PHY layer without any requirements to
change the remainder of the standard.

The original WiMax standard, IEEE 802.16, specified WiMax in the 10 to 66 GHz range.
802.16a, updated in 2004 to 802.16-2004 (also known as 802.16d), added support for the
2 to 11 GHz range. 802.16d was updated to 802.16e in 2005. 802.16e uses scalable
OFDM as opposed to the non-scalable version in .16d. This brings potential benefits in
terms of coverage, self installation, power consumption, frequency re-use and bandwidth
efficiency. .16e also adds a capability for full mobility support.

Most interest will probably be in the 802.16d and .16e standards, since the lower
frequencies suffer from lower attenuation and therefore give improved range and in-
building penetration.

The WiMax specification improves upon many of the limitations of the WiFi standard by
providing increased bandwidth and range and stronger encryption. It provides Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 25 connectivity between network endpoints without direct line of sight in favorable
circumstances. The non-line of sight (NLOS) performance requires the .16d or .16e
variants, since the lower frequencies are needed. It relies upon clever use of multi-path
signals. 2.3.1.1 Uses for WiMax A commonly held misconception is that WiMax will deliver 70 Mbit/s, over 70 miles at
70 mph. Each of these may be true individually, given ideal circumstances, but they are
not simultaneously true. WiMax has some similarities to DSL in this respect, where one
can either have high bandwidth or long reach, but not both simultaneously. The other
feature to consider with WiMax is that the bandwidth is shared between users in a given
radio sector, so if there are many active users in a single sector, each will get reduced
bandwidth.

WiMax presents the possibility for two regimes: the first is equipment that works in licensed bands. In this case, portability is
limited by the licensing requirements. the second is equipment that works in unlicensed bands where spectrum varies
little from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. The drawback to emergency services
networks functioning in unlicensed spectrum is increased likelihood of
interference (same issue as in WiFi).
The bandwidth and reach of WiMax make it suitable for the following potential
applications: Connecting WiFi hotspots with each other and to other parts of the Internet Providing a wireless alternative to cable and DSL for last mile (last km)
broadband access. Providing high-speed mobile data and telecommunications services Long haul access to nearest survivable copper/fiber from telco 2.3.1.2 Spectrum Allocations for WiMax The 802.16 specification applies across a wide swath of RF spectrum. However,
specification is not the same as permission to use! There is no uniform global licensed
spectrum for WiMax. In the US, the biggest segment available is around 2.5 GHz, and is
already assigned, primarily to Sprint Nextel. Elsewhere in the world, the most likely
bands used will be around 3.5 GHz, 2.3/2.5 GHz, or 5 GHz, with 2.3/2.5 GHz probably
being most important in Asia. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 26 Figure 3, WiMax Spectrum Allocations There is some prospect that some of a 700 MHz band might be made available for
WiMax use, but it is currently assigned to analog TV and awaits the complete rollout of
HD digital TV before it can become available, likely by 2009. In any case, there will be
other uses suggested for that spectrum if and when it actually becomes open.

It seems likely that there will be several variants of 802.16, depending on local regulatory
conditions and thus on which spectrum is used, even if everything but the underlying
radio frequencies are the same. WiMax equipment will not, therefore, be as portable as it
might have been - perhaps even less so than WiFi, whose assigned channels in unlicensed
spectrum vary little from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

The actual radio bandwidth of spectrum allocations is also likely to vary. Typical
allocations are likely to provide channels of 5 MHz or 7 MHz. In principal the larger the
bandwidth allocation of the spectrum, the higher the bandwidth that WiMax can support
for user traffic. 2.3.1.3 802.16-2004 (aka 802.16d, fixed WiMax) The first 802.16 standard was approved in December 2001 and was followed by three
amendments 802.16a, 802.16b and 802.16c to address issues of radio spectrum, quality
of service and inter-operability, respectively. In September 2003, a revision project called
802.16REVd commenced aiming to align the standard with aspects of the European
Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) HIPERMAN standard as well as lay
down conformance and test specifications. This project concluded in 2004 with the
release of 802.16-2004 and the withdrawal of the earlier 802.16 documents including the
a/b/c amendments.
Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 27 2.3.1.4 802.16j (aka Mobile Multi-hop Relay WiMax) The mobile multihop relay (MMR) is a promising solution to expand coverage and to
enhance throughput and system capacity to IEEE 802.16 systems. It is expected that the
complexity of relay stations will be considerably less than the complexity of legacy IEEE
802.16 base stations. The gains in coverage and throughput can be leveraged to reduce
total deployment cost for a given system performance requirement and thereby improve
the economic viability of IEEE802.16 systems. Relay functionality enables rapid
deployment and reduces the cost of system operation. These advantages will expand the
market opportunity for Broadband Wireless Access.

The support for relay stations enables extended coverage through their addition to
existing or future networks, and the relay stations with the point-to-multipoint (PMP)
mode can provide wireless relay function with simpler and more compact station
configuration when compared to the base station; thus at lower cost. It is well known that
it is possible to use cost effective relay stations to improve coverage, and probably
increase throughput as an alternative to using more costly base stations. Thus, an MMR
system is a more cost effective solution to accommodate many mobile subscribers,
establishing wide area coverage and providing higher data rates.

One purpose of some wireless relay or mesh systems such as IEEE 802.11, which is
being developed, is to extend coverage areas. Furthermore, the performance of wireless
relay systems has been examined and revealed by theoretical analyses and computer
simulations. In addition, wireless networks employing MMR are already operational
albeit using other physical layer technologies. Wireless ad-hoc networks have been under
development by the military for more than two decades. Source: http://ieee802.org/16/docs/sg/mmr/80216mmr-06_002.pdf Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMax 2.4 Incident Area Network (IAN) Reach to End Systems 2.4.1 802.11b Release
Date Op.
Frequency Data Rate
(Typ) Data Rate (Max) Range (Indoor) 1999 2.4 GHz 6.5 Mbit/s 11 Mbit/s ~30 meters (~100 feet) The 802.11b amendment to the original standard was ratified in 1999. 802.11b has a
maximum raw data rate of 11 Mbit/s and uses the same CSMA/CA media access method
defined in the original standard. Due to the CSMA/CA protocol overhead, in practice the
maximum 802.11b throughput that an application can achieve is about 5.9 Mbit/s over
TCP and 7.1 Mbit/s over UDP.

802.11b products appeared on the market very quickly, since 802.11b is a direct
extension of the DSSS (Direct-sequence spread spectrum) modulation technique defined
in the original standard. Technically, the 802.11b standard uses Complementary code Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 28 keying (CCK) as its modulation technique, which is a variation on CDMA. Hence,
chipsets and products were easily upgraded to support the 802.11b enhancements. The
dramatic increase in throughput of 802.11b (compared to the original standard) along
with substantial price reductions led to the rapid acceptance of 802.11b as the definitive
wireless LAN technology.

802.11b is usually used in a point-to-multipoint configuration, wherein an access point
communicates via an omni-directional antenna with one or more clients that are located
in a coverage area around the access point. Typical indoor range is 30 m (100 ft) at 11
Mbit/s and 90 m (300 ft) at 1 Mbit/s. With high-gain external antennas, the protocol can
also be used in fixed point-to-point arrangements, typically at ranges up to 8 kilometers
(5 miles) although some report success at ranges up to 80120 km (5075 miles) where
line of sight can be established. This is usually done in place of costly leased lines or very
cumbersome microwave communications equipment. Designers of such installations who
wish to remain within the law must however be careful about legal limitations on
effective radiated power (ERP).

802.11b cards can operate at 11 Mbit/s, but will scale back to 5.5, then 2, then 1 Mbit/s
(also known as Adaptive Rate Selection), if signal quality becomes an issue. Since the
lower data rates use less complex and more redundant methods of encoding the data, they
are less susceptible to corruption due to interference and signal attenuation. Extensions
have been made to the 802.11b protocol (for example, channel bonding and burst
transmission techniques) in order to increase speed to 22, 33, and 44 Mbit/s, but the
extensions are proprietary and have not been endorsed by the IEEE. Many companies call
enhanced versions "802.11b+". These extensions have been largely obviated by the
development of 802.11g, which has data rates up to 54 Mbit/s and is backwards-
compatible with 802.11b.
Source: Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.com/ ) 2.4.2 802.11g Release
Date Op.
Frequency Data Rate
(Typ) Data Rate
(Max) Range
(Indoor) 2003 June 2.4 GHz 25 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s ~30 meters (~100 feet) In June 2003, a third modulation standard was ratified: 802.11g. This flavor works in the
2.4 GHz band (like 802.11b) but operates at a maximum raw data rate of 54 Mbit/s, or
about 24.7 Mbit/s net throughput like 802.11a. 802.11g hardware will work with 802.11b
hardware. Details of making b and g work well together occupied much of the lingering
technical process. In older networks, however, the presence of an 802.11b participant
significantly reduces the speed of an 802.11g network. The modulation scheme used in
802.11g is orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) for the data rates of 6, 9,
12, 18, 24, 36, 48, and 54 Mbit/s, and reverts to (like the 802.11b standard) CCK for 5.5
and 11 Mbit/s and DBPSK/DQPSK+DSSS for 1 and 2 Mbit/s. Even though 802.11g
operates in the same frequency band as 802.11b, it can achieve higher data rates because Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 29 of its similarities to 802.11a. The maximum range of 802.11g devices is slightly greater
than that of 802.11b devices, but the range in which a client can achieve full (54 Mbit/s)
data rate speed is much shorter than that of 802.11b.

The 802.11g standard swept the consumer world of early adopters starting in January
2003, well before ratification. The corporate users held back and Cisco and other big
equipment makers waited until ratification. By summer 2003, announcements were
flourishing. Most of the dual-band 802.11a/b products became dual-band/tri-mode,
supporting a, b, and g in a single mobile adapter card or access point. Despite its major
acceptance, 802.11g suffers from the same interference as 802.11b in the already
crowded 2.4 GHz range. Devices operating in this range include microwave ovens,
Bluetooth devices, and cordless telephones.
Source: Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.com/ ) 2.4.3 802.11a Release
Date Op.
Frequency Data Rate
(Typ) Data Rate
(Max) Range
(Indoor) 1999 5 GHz 25 Mbit/s 54 Mbit/s ~30 meters (~100 feet) The 802.11a amendment to the original standard was ratified in 1999. The 802.11a
standard uses the same core protocol as the original standard, operates in 5 GHz band,
and uses a 52-subcarrier orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) with a
maximum raw data rate of 54 Mbit/s, which yields realistic net achievable throughput in
the mid-20 Mbit/s. The data rate is reduced to 48, 36, 24, 18, 12, 9 then 6 Mbit/s if
required. 802.11a has 12 non-overlapping channels, 8 dedicated to indoor and 4 to point
to point. It is not interoperable with 802.11b, except if using equipment that implements
both standards.

Since the 2.4 GHz band is heavily used, using the 5 GHz band gives 802.11a the
advantage of less interference. However, this high carrier frequency also brings
disadvantages. It restricts the use of 802.11a to almost line of sight, necessitating the use
of more access points; it also means that 802.11a cannot penetrate as far as 802.11b since
it is absorbed more readily, other things (such as power) being equal.

Different countries have different regulatory support, although a 2003 World radio
telecommunications conference made it easier for use worldwide. 802.11a is now
approved by regulations in the United States and Japan, but in other areas, such as the
European Union, it had to wait longer for approval. European regulators were considering
the use of the European HIPERLAN standard, but in mid-2002 cleared 802.11a for use in
Europe. In the US, a mid-2003 FCC decision may open more spectrum to 802.11a
channels.

Of the 52 OFDM subcarriers, 48 are for data and 4 are pilot subcarriers with a carrier
separation of 0.3125 MHz (20 MHz/64). Each of these subcarriers can be a BPSK, Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 30 QPSK, 16-QAM or 64-QAM. The total bandwidth is 20 MHz with an occupied
bandwidth of 16.6 MHz. Symbol duration is 4 microseconds with a guard interval of 0.8
microseconds. The actual generation and decoding of orthogonal components is done in
baseband using DSP which is then upconverted to 5 GHz at the transmitter. Each of the
subcarriers could be represented as a complex number. The time domain signal is
generated by taking an Inverse Fast Fourier transform (IFFT). Correspondingly the
receiver downconverts, samples at 20 MHz and does an FFT to retrieve the original
coefficients. The advantages of using OFDM include reduced multipath effects in
reception and increased spectral efficiency.

802.11a products started shipping in 2001, lagging 802.11b products due to the slow
availability of the 5 GHz components needed to implement products. 802.11a was not
widely adopted overall because 802.11b was already widely adopted, because of
802.11a's disadvantages, because of poor initial product implementations, making its
range even shorter, and because of regulations. Manufacturers of 802.11a equipment
responded to the lack of market success by improving the implementations (current-
generation 802.11a technology has range characteristics much closer to those of
802.11b), and by making technology that can use more than one 802.11 standard. There
are dual-band, or dual-mode or tri-mode cards that can automatically handle 802.11a and
b, or a, b and g, as available. Similarly, there are mobile adapters and access points which
can support all these standards simultaneously.
Source: Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.com/ ) 2.4.4 802.11n Release
Date Op.
Frequency Data Rate
(Typ) Data Rate
(Max) Range
(Indoor) expected
mid-2007 2.4 GHz 200 Mbit/s 540 Mbit/s ~50 meters (~160 ft) In January 2004 IEEE announced that it had formed a new 802.11 Task Group (TGn) to
develop a new amendment to the 802.11 standard for wireless local-area networks. The
real data throughput is estimated to reach a theoretical 540 Mbit/s (which may require an
even higher raw data rate at the physical layer), and should be up to 100 times faster than
802.11b, and well over 10 times faster than 802.11a or 802.11g. It is projected that
802.11n will also offer a better operating distance than current networks.

There were two competing proposals of the 802.11n standard: WWiSE (World-Wide
Spectrum Efficiency), backed by companies including Broadcom, and TGn Sync backed
by Intel and Philips.

Previous competitors TGn Sync, WWiSE, and a third group, MITMOT, said in late July
2005 that they would merge their respective proposals as a draft which would be sent to
the IEEE in September; a final version will be submitted in November. The
standardization process is expected to be completed by the second half of 2006.
Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 31 802.11n builds upon previous 802.11 standards by adding MIMO (multiple-input
multiple-output). MIMO uses multiple transmitter and receiver antennas to allow for
increased data throughput through spatial multiplexing and increased range by exploiting
the spatial diversity, perhaps through coding schemes like Alamouti coding.

The Enhanced Wireless Consortium (EWC)[1] was formed to help accelerate the IEEE
802.11n development process and promote a technology specification for interoperability
of next-generation wireless local area networking (WLAN) products.

On January 19, 2006, the IEEE 802.11n Task Group approved the Joint Proposal's
specification, based on EWC's specification as the confirmed 802.11n proposal.

At the March 2006 meeting, the IEEE 802.11 Working Group sent the 802.11n Draft to
its first letter ballot, which means that the 500+ 802.11 voters get to review the document
and suggest bug fixes, changes and improvements.

On May 2, 2006, the IEEE 802.11 Working Group voted not to forward Draft 1.0 of the
proposed 802.11n standard for a sponsor ballot. Only 46.6% voted to accept the proposal.
To proceed to the next step in the IEEE process, a majority vote of 75% is required. This
letter ballot also generated approximately 12000 comments -- much more than
anticipated.

According to the IEEE 802.11 Working Group Project Timelines,[2] the 802.11n
standard is not due for final approval until July 2007.

It has been reported that 802.11n interferes with existing 802.11b and g wireless
networks. It has also been reported that the range of the 802.11n has reached up to 1/4 of
a mile. Interference on this scale is a major setback for 802.11n and all 802.11 interfaces
due to the issues of channel congestion and interference resulting from popular
unlicensed spectrum technology!
Source: Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.com/ ) [1] http://www.enhancedwirelessconsortium.org/ Enhanced Wireless Consortium [2] a b 802.11 Timelines. IEEE 802.11: Working Group for WLAN standards (2006-05-31). Retrieved on
2006-06-14. 2.4.5 WPA2 WiFi Security In 2001, a group from the University of California, Berkeley presented a paper describing
weaknesses in the 802.11 Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) security mechanism defined
in the original standard; they were followed by Fluhrer, Mantin, and Shamir's paper
entitled "Weaknesses in the Key Scheduling Algorithm of RC4". Not long after, Adam
Stubblefield and AT&T publicly announced the first verification of the attack. In the
attack they were able to intercept transmissions and gain unauthorized access to wireless
networks.

The IEEE set up a dedicated task group to create a replacement security solution, 802.11i
(previously this work was handled as part of a broader 802.11e effort to enhance the Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 32 MAC layer). The WiFi Alliance announced an interim specification called WiFi
Protected Access (WPA) based on a subset of the then current IEEE 802.11i draft. These
started to appear in products in mid-2003. IEEE 802.11i (also known as WPA2) itself
was ratified in June 2004, and uses the Advanced Encryption Standard, instead of RC4,
which was used in WEP and WPA.
Source: Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.com/ ) 2.4.6 802.11s (aka mesh networking, ad-hoc networks) 802.11s is the unapproved IEEE 802.11 standard for ESS Mesh Networking. It specifies
an extension to the IEEE 802.11 MAC to solve the interoperability problem by defining
an architecture and protocol that support both broadcast/multicast and unicast delivery
using "radio-aware metrics over self-configuring multi-hop topologies." 2.4.6.1 Task Group TGs The Standard is being defined by the IEEE Task Group TGs, chaired by Donald Eastlake.
The purpose of the project is to provide a protocol for auto-configuring paths between
access points over-configuring multi-hop topologies in a Wireless Distribution System
(WDS) to support both broadcast/multicast and unicast traffic in an ESS Mesh using the
four-address frame format or an extension.

The call for proposals (CFP) for 802.11s ended in June 2005 with 15 proposals received.
In the July 2005 meeting, the number of proposals was pared down to six. As of
September 2005 there were four proposals remaining on the table with TGs. [1] 2.4.6.2 Wi-Mesh Proposal The Wi-Mesh Alliance (WiMA), which includes Accton, ComNets, InterDigital,
NextHop, Nortel, Philips, Extreme Networks, MITRE, Naval Research Laboratory,
Swisscom Innovations and Thomson, has presented a proposal that will enable seamless
communications for wireless users regardless of equipment vendor.[2] According to Bilel
Jamoussi of Nortel, the Wi-Mesh proposal is designed to work for all three major
applications of mesh technology - consumer and small business, metropolitan, and
military.[3] 2.4.6.3 SEEMesh Proposal Another consortium, SEEMesh, is backed by Intel, Nokia, Motorola, NTT DoCoMo and
Texas Instruments. [4][5] As part of their 802.11s proposal, Intel has introduced what
they call Mesh Portals. Mesh portals offer interoperability to mesh networks by allowing
older, and newer, wireless standard technology to be recognized and incorporated into the
network.[6][7] 2.4.6.4 Status The two joint proposals submitted from these two consortiums for consideration for an
802.11s standard received the highest votes at the July 2005, September 2005 and
November 2005 meetings.
Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 33 Not all companies in the space have signed on to the 802.11s standards process. Some of
the largest vendors, including BelAir Networks, Tropos Networks, and Strix Systems are
not part of any of the groups making proposals.

In the January 2006 meeting, proposal selection was suspended and the two proposals,
SEE Mesh and Wi-Mesh were merged. The merged proposal was presented and
confirmed unanimously at the March 2006 meeting. This merged proposal will be used as
the starting point for the 802.11s standard. The standard is targeted to be approved by
2008. 2.4.6.5 Wireless Mesh Networks Wireless mesh networking is mesh networking implemented over a Wireless LAN. This type of Internet infrastructure is
decentralized, relatively inexpensive, and
very reliable and resilient, as each node
need only transmit as far as the next node.
Nodes act as repeaters to transmit data
from nearby nodes to peers that are too far
away to reach, resulting in a network that
can span large distances, especially over
rough or difficult terrain. Mesh networks
are also extremely reliable, as each node is
connected to several other nodes. If one
node drops out of the network, due to
hardware failure or any other reason, its
neighbors simply find another route. Extra
capacity and range of coverage can be
enjoyed by simply adding more nodes.
Mesh networks may involve either fixed
or mobile devices. The solutions are as
diverse as communications in difficult
environments such as emergency
situations, tunnels and oil rigs to battlefield surveillance and high speed
mobile video applications on board public
transport or real time racing car telemetry. The principle is similar to the way packets travel around the wired Internet data will
hop from one device to another until it reaches a given destination. Dynamic routing
capabilities included in each device allow this to happen. To implement such dynamic
routing capabilities, each device needs to communicate its routing information to every
device it connects with, "almost in real time". Each device then determines what to do
with the data it receives either pass it on to the next device or keep it. The routing
algorithm used should attempt to always ensure that the data takes the most appropriate
(fastest) route to its destination. Figure 4, Meshed Community Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 34 The choice of radio technology for wireless mesh networks is crucial. In a traditional
wireless network where laptops connect to a single access point, each laptop has to share
a fixed pool of bandwidth. With mesh technology and adaptive radio, devices in a mesh
network will only connect with other devices that are in a set range. The advantage is
that, like a natural load balancing system, the more devices the more bandwidth becomes
available, provided that the number of hops in the average communications path is kept
low.

To prevent increased hop count from canceling out the advantages of multiple
transceivers, one common type of architecture for a mobile mesh network includes
multiple fixed base stations with "cut through" high-bandwidth terrestrial links that will
provide gateways to services, wired parts of the Internet and other fixed base stations.
The "cut through" bandwidth of the base station infrastructure must be substantial for the
network to operate effectively. However, one feature of wireless mesh networks is that an
operator need only deploy a minimal base station infrastructure, and allow the users
themselves to extend the network.

Since this wireless Internet infrastructure has the potential to be much less expensive than
the traditional type, many wireless community network groups are already creating
wireless mesh networks.

At the publishing of this document, all commercially available mesh networking
implementations and their relevant routing protocols are vendor-specific and proprietary,
therefore there is no interoperability at the mesh protocol level between disparate vendor
networks!
Source: Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.com/ ) 2.4.6.5.1 Mesh Network Topologies The mesh (or multipoint-to-multipoint) topologies employing 802.11 or 802.16 radio
interfaces deserve an additional note since they are relatively new in the commercial
marketplace, but have undergone significant R&D in the defense and military segments
originally known as ad-hoc networks.

The inherent multipath forwarding (or routing, depending on the mesh protocol
implementation) and resiliency, as well as the ability to support hybrid fixed and mobile
subscriber stations makes a mesh networking solution well suited for a Hastily Formed
Network (HFN) application.

The aforementioned 802.11s draft currently in process at the IEEE will ultimately enable
multi-vendor interoperability, but today every mesh networking product implementation
is proprietary. However, practically every vendor has the notion of a gateway or mesh
portal (formal term adopted for 802.11s) to enable single or multiple interconnection of
their respective proprietary mesh networks to a standard networking interface. The most
common network interface supported by all mesh vendors is 802.3 Ethernet at interface Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 35 speeds of 10Mbit/s, 100Mbit/sec, or autonegotiate. Some mesh networking vendors also
support other common technologies as mesh portals.

The following illustration shows a high level example of the types of Backbone or
Reachback technologies that can be employed to connect to one or more mesh portals of
a common mesh network. The rapid deployment, ad-hoc nature of some mesh networking implementations enables
the ability of an Incident Area Network (IAN) responding to an emergency situation to
dynamically attach to a fixed Jurisdictional Area Network (JAN) or Metro Area Network
(MAN) for establishing a broader scope of communications and interoperability. The
same holds true for a Personal Area Network (PAN) attaching to an IAN. Unless a mesh
portal was utilized to connect 2 disparate mesh networks, it is assumed that the dynamic
IAN attachment to the JAN/MAN will be the same vendor equipment (until 802.11s is
ratified and implemented in the mesh networking vendor implementations). 2.4.7 CDMA CDMA, Code Division Multiple Access, is a multiple-access scheme in which each
wireless device uses the whole frequency spectrum to transmit. It is based on the spread
spectrum technique and, specifically, direct sequence spread spectrum is specified for the
commercially predominant CDMA-based wireless systems.
In CDMA each station is assigned a unique code or chip sequence by which the original
bit-stream is multiplied before transmission. The other end uses the same chip sequence
in order to decode the original bit stream. All chip sequences used are orthogonal
allowing many stations transmitting in the same frequency channel at the same time. The
same frequency channel can be reused in all cells. As a result, CDMA provides more
efficiency in the use of the RF spectrum than FDMA and TDMA.
Figure 5, Mesh Portals Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 36 The two dominant IMT-2000 (3G) standards are CDMA2000 and WCDMA. The latter
adopted for UMTS. Both of these standards are based on CDMA.

According to the ITU [3], 3G must support data services at a minimum transmission rate
of 144 kbps in mobile (outdoor) and 2 Mbps in fixed (indoor) environments.

CDMA systems were first developed by Qualcomm which owns a great deal of patents in
this technology. 2.4.7.1 CDMA2000 CDMA2000 comprises a family of 3G wireless standards, each of them providing
improvements a higher data rates over the previous one:

1. CDMA2000 1XRTT. This is a direct evolution of and is backwards compatible with cdmaOne, a 2G technology. It is also known as cdma2000, CDMA2000 1X, 1X, and
1XRTT (1 times Radio Transmission Technology). It can deliver peak data rates of 153
kbps in Release 0 and 307 kbps in Release 1 in mobile environments in a single 1.25
MHz channel [3][2].
2. CDMA2000 1xEV-DO. CDMA2000 1X Evolution Data Optimized. It divides the radio spectrum in separate voice and data channels eliminating the risk that an
increase in voice traffic could cause data speed to drop. CDMA 1xEV-DO is being
deployed in North America since 4Q 2003 [1]. It includes various revisions:
a. CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Release 0. It supports data rates up to 2.4 Mbps; in commercial networks it delivers 300-600 kbps in a single 1.25 MHz channel. It supports
data applications such as MP3 transfer, video conferencing, TV broadcast, and video and
audio downloads [3].
b. CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision A. It delivers peak data speeds of 3.1 Mbps on the downlink (forward) and 1.8 Mbps on the uplink (reverse). It incorporates QoS control
to manage latency on the network. It supports advanced multimedia services, including
voice (VoIP), data and broadcast over All-IP networks. It was approved in April 2004 by
the 3GPP2 Technical specifications group. According to [4], its deployment and
commercial availability will start in Asia and North America at the end of 2006.
c. CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Revision B. Approved for publishing by 3GPP2 TSG-C in March 2006. It increases throughput to 73.5. Mbps on the downlink and 27 Mbps on the
uplink via multiple carriers and 64-QAM scheme.
d. CDMA2000 1xEV-DV. CDMA2000 1X Evolution Data and Voice. Also CDMA 1xEV-DO Revision C. It is assumed to be published in 1 st half of 2007. It will increase the downlink (forward) to 200 Mbps and support flexible and dynamic channel
bandwidth scalability from 1.25 MHz to 20 MHz. It will be backward compatible with
the previous revisions. It is deemed a 4G wireless broadband technology.
e. CDMA 1xEV-DO Revision D. It targets improvements in the reverse link for 1xEV-DV [6] among other enhancements.

Carriers are using 1xRTT and EV-DO Rev 0 at present with EV-DO Rev A upgrade
expected to begin end of calendar year 2006 or 1 st quarter 2007. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 37 So far, all standards approved by 3GPP2 have been backwards compatible and it is
expected that CDMA2000 1xEV-DO Rev C will keep the tradition. With the different
versions CDMA2000 is progressively advancing to an All-IP network involving IMS in
the core network.

CDMA2000 is deployed in the 450, 800, 1700, 1900, and 2100 MHz bands in different
countries throughout the world, in the United States and Canada it is deployed on the 800
and 1900 MHz bands [5].

The wireless network is typically composed by two main parts: Radio Access Network (RAN) Core Network
The RAN comprises the Base Station Subsystem which includes the Base Transceiver
Stations and the Base Stations Controllers.

The Core Network encompasses the circuit switched network and the packet switched
network. In the first one, the Mobile Switching Center provides access to the PSTN and
there is the Inter-working Function (IWF) which provides access to the Internet. In the
packet switched network, the Packet Data Serving Node (PDSN) provides packet services
functionalities along with the Home Agent (HA) and the AAA Broker (Authentication,
Authorization, and Accounting).

The circuit switched network is progressively disappearing in the roadmap to IP-
Multimedia Subsystem (IMS).

IWF is typically used for G3 Fax or a modem pool (dialup) access to the internet for a
circuit switch connection. The PDSN provides the packet access (IP) to the internet. This
is the primary method for connection to the internet or other private data networks with
CDMA2000.
[1] http://www.cdmatech.com/download_library/pdf/QCOM_3G_Overview.pdf [2] http://www.motorola.com/networkoperators/pdfs/cdma-dorb-paper.pdf [3] http://www.cdg.org [4] http://www.cdg.org/news/press/2006/Apr05_06.asp [5] http://www.cdg.org/worldwide/index.asp?h_area=4 [6] http://www.cdg.org/resources/white_papers/files/Overview_of_cdma2000_Revision_D.pdf 2.4.8 UMTS High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) UMTS, Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems, is a 3G integrated solution for
mobile voice and data competing with CDMA2000. Whereas UMTS is standardized by
the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), CDMA2000 is standardized by the
Third Generation Partnership Project Two (3GPP2).

UMTS uses the spectrum in paired and unpaired bands and in its initial phase offered
theoretical bit rates of 144 kbps for vehicle, 384 kbps pedestrian, rising as high as 2 Mbps
in stationary/nomadic user environments.
Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 38 UMTS architecture defines three major parts: The air interface (Uu). Wideband CDMA (W-CDMA) was designated for paired
bands. TD-SCDMA and TD-CDMA was introduced for unpaired bands. The UMTS Terrestrial Radio Area Network (UTRAN). The Core Network.
The first release of UMTS is Release 3 (R3) also known as R99. Whereas it completely
changes the air interface and the Radio Area Network defined by GSM and GPRS, it
maintains the same core network.

The UTRAN is basically composed by the Radio Network Controllers (RNC) and Node
Bs. The Node B is the Base Station. The RNC controls a number of Node Bs; it can
multiplex and demultiplex user packet (Interface Iu-PS) and circuit data (Interface Iu-
CS). All RNCs are connected together through the Iu interface. The RNC and its
controlled Node Bs constitute the Radio Network System (RNS).

The Core Network is divided in the circuit-switched domain and the packet-switched
domain.

The first one, in R99, is basically made of the following elements: Mobile Switching Center (MSC) and Visitor Location Register (VLR). They
handle circuit-switched functionalities such as call set up, mobility management
and Call Detail Record (CDR) generation for billing purposes. Gateway MSC (GMSC). It deals with the connection to the PSTN. Home Location Register (HLR). It contains information about subscribers and
their services.
The packet-switched domain, in R99, encompasses the elements below: Serving GPRS Support Node (SGSN). It is responsible for session management,
participation in the PDP context creation and the setting of QoS parameters. It is
also responsible for producing charging information and routing packets to the
correct RNC. Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN). It connects the packet-switched domain
to the Internet. It creates the PDP context assigning an IP address to a user
terminal, can forward requests to connect to ISPs, and generates charging records. HLR is used by the packet-switched domain as well.
The 3GPP technical specification TS 23.002 specifies the network architecture. Figure 1,
obtained from TS 23.002 version 3.6.0, shows the basic configuration of the UMTS
Public Land Mobile Network Release 1999. It also supports GSM/EDGE Radio Access
Network ( GERAN). The connection to the Public Switched Telephone Network is depicted. The connection to the Packet Data Network, e.g. the Internet, is realized
through the GGSN in the packet-switched domain. Specification TS 23.002 briefly
describes each element in the UMTS Network including the ones not appearing in Figure
1. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 39
From R99, the UMTS network has gradually evolved to an All-IP network through
various releases.

UMTS R4 only modifies the core network part of the circuit-switched domain. In R4 the
Iu-CS interface is connected to a new element called the Circuit-Switched Media
Gateway or just Media Gateway (MGW). Thus, voice is conveyed in IP packets within
the core network. This is not VoIP though. The CS and the PS can use the same IP
backbones. The MGW has vocoding capabilities. The MGW is the result of having split
the MSC in two parts; one of them is the MGW and the other is the MSC Server. The last
one is in charge of the call control and mobility control and also contains the VLR. The
MSC Server controls the MGW using the IETF defined Media Gateway Controller Figure 6, UMTS Network Architecture R99 Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 40 protocol (ITU H248). In R4, the functionalities of the GMSC can be carried out by the
MGW and a new entity called GMSC server. Figure 2 depicts the Public Land Mobile
Network (PLMN) in R4. Further details can be found in TS 23.002 version 4.8.0 Release
4.
Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 41
It is important to mention that R4 is fully backwards compatible with R99.

Release 5 introduces significant changes in the packet-switched core network and the
UTRAN. The first phase of IMS is specified and the GSNs are upgraded to support real-
time services. In the UTRAN, High-Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) is
included improving the downlink for peak data rates of 14 Mbps.

Release 6 provides enhancements in the uplink radio interface with High-Speed Uplink
Packet Access (HSUPA), referred as Enhanced Dedicated Channel (E-DCH) by 3GPP. It Figure 7, UMTS R4 Network Architecture Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 42 also includes the second phase in the evolution to IMS as well as WLAN integration
option, enhanced multimedia support for Multimedia Broadcast/Multicast Services
(MBMS), and performance specifications for advanced receivers.

Release 7 is under development and is expected to be completed by mid 2007. Its key
objectives are: IP Centric VoIP High Peak data rate, up to 50 Mbps Reduced latency with 20 ms to 40 ms of Round Trip Delay.
So far all new releases have been backwards compatible with R99.

IMS is a point of convergence for UMTS and CDMA2000. Nevertheless, some
differences remain between 3GPP and 3GPP2 specifications for IMS. Among them, the
fact that 3GPP mandates IPv6 in the core network (but will allow IPv4) while 3GPP2
allows both IPv6 and IPv4.

In US, UMTS is being deployed since July 2004 by some major carrier providers for
technical test trials (primarily AT&T Wireless), mainly in the 1900 MHz frequency band.
HSDPA is already deployed in some areas of US providing average throughput of 400-
700 kbps with the uplink (HSUPA) still limited to 128 kbps. Recent commercial
deployment in the US by Cingular provides a very limited footprint in few cities.
2.4.9 GSM General Packet Radio System (GPRS) Built upon the 2G GSM technology arose the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) as
an acceptable alternative to provide wireless data services. The first deployment in
United States dates from 2001.

GPRS is regarded as a 2.5G technology and its natural evolution is EDGE (Enhanced
Data Rates for Global Evolution), referred to as 2.75G, and then UMTS. GSM/GPRS and
GSM/EDGE are very different RANs than UMTS requiring an overlay network for
UMTS (WCDMA) to be successfully deployed.


GPRS provides peak data rates of 115 kbps with a theoretical maximum speed of 171.2
kbps without Forward Error Correction. However, the average throughput per user
typically is between 15 and 40 kbps.

EDGE provides peak data rates of 384 kbps and a theoretical maximum speed of 473.6
kbps, without Forward Error Correction, and an average throughput per user between 40
and 100 kbps.

EDGE and GPRS coexist but have different core element requirements. Additionally if a
GPRS user is operating, the EDGE user reverts to the GPRS speed. Typically EDGE or Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 43 GPRS are associated with the BCCH and have 1 or 2 TCHs dedicated for their use and
the rest are shared with voice services that have priority. Additionally EDGE users can
require up to 4 TCHs like a blackberry, although the users are interleaved.

Whereas the modulation used by GPRS is GMSK (Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying),
EDGE uses both GMSK and 8-PSK (Phase Shift Keying), the last one to transmit 3 bits
at a time. Both technologies use the GSM radio interface with 200-KHz channels and
TDMA (Time Division Multiple Access) with 8 slots. GPRS uses two different 200 KHz
channels for the uplink and the downlink.

As a first view of the GPRS network, Figure 1 (obtained from 3GPP TS 23.060)
identifies the main interfaces with the rest of the packet switched world and the Mobile
Stations (MS). Gp defines the message-exchange interface between two different Public
Land Mobile Networks (PLMNs). Gi is the reference point to connection between the
PLMN and one or more Packet Data Networks. Um or Uu represents the radio interface
to a MS.
The GPRS Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) is made of the Radio Area Network,
called GERAN (GSM/EDGE RAN), and the Core Network.

In the GERAN, the Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) provide wireless access to user
equipment. A group of BTSs is controlled by a Base Station Controller (BSC). A BSC
along with its controlled BTSs compose a Base Station Subsystem (BSS). Many BSCs
and their controlled BTSs compose the GERAN.

A BSC is connected both to the SGSN (Serving GPRS Support Node), through the Gb
interface, for the packet-switched domain, and to the MSC (Mobile Switching Center) for
the circuit-switched domain in the Core Network.

The GPRS Core Network packet-domain functionality is logically implemented in two
nodes, the SGSN and the Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN).

Both SGSN and MSC access the data in various databases: the Home Location Register
(HLR), which stores data about subscribers; the Equipment Identity Register (EIR), with Figure 8, GPRS Network Border Interfaces and Reference Points Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 44 data about the equipment, the Visitor Locator Register (VLR), with information about
visiting (roaming) subscribers, and the Authentication Center (AuC), which stores
information for subscriber authentication.

The Gateway GPRS Support Node (GGSN) provides access to a Public Data Network,
like the Internet. It also accesses the HLR for obtaining subscriber services information.
On the other side, the Gateway Mobile Switching Center connects to the Public Switched
Telephone Network (PSTN).

A Border Gateway can connect a PLMN to an inter-PLMN IP network for roaming
GPRS services.

Finally, there is a billing system providing the charging gateway functionalities.

Figure 2 [1] depicts the logical architecture of the GPRS PLMN with all the elements
described above and the interfaces in between. Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 45
The SGSN is responsible for the following major functionalities: Handling authentication and admission control for originating packet sessions.
This is done based on the subscriber information stored in the HLR which
includes the AuC (Authentication Center). Containing information about subscribers currently served. These subscribers
could be visitors roaming or home subscribers. Providing packet switching and routing for GPRS services. Supporting Attach procedures. Supporting PDP (Packet Data Protocol) Context Activation and maintaining
information belonging to PDP Contexts (like PDP Context Identifier, State, Type,
QoS profiles, etc).
The GGSN essentially provides gateway functionality to a Packet Data Network (like the
Internet), it routes incoming packets to the appropriate SGSN. It is connected to many
SGSNs via an IP-based packet domain PLMN backbone network. Its major
functionalities are: Containing routing information about PS-attached users. This information is used
to route packets through a tunnel (GTP: GPRS Tunneling Protocol). Providing the interface to external PDNs. For sessions originating outside the PLMN, accessing the HLR to determine the
SGSN to which packets must be routed to reach the destination mobile. Using statically assigned addresses and assigning addresses using DHCP. Supporting Foreign Agent functionality for Mobile IP. Figure 9, GPRS Logical Architecture Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 46
Figure 1 [1] shows the protocol stacks in a GPRS network from a Mobile System to a
GGSN.
The following protocols are implemented in the MS to communicate at different layers to
different GPRS elements: An application runs over IP (Internet Protocol) or an IP-based protocol. IP provides connectivity to the GGSN which in turns provides gateway
functionalities to the PDN. SNDCP (Subnetwork Dependent Convergence Protocol) communicates with the
SGSN. LLC (Logical Link Control) provides a highly reliable ciphered Logical Link
between the MS and the SGSN independently of the underlying radio interface
protocols. RLC (Radio Link Control) segments LLC PDUs in RLC data blocks that will be
physically transported by the physical channel dynamically allocated by MAC. It
also reassembles them at the other point. The other end of communication at this
layer is the Packet Control Unit (PCU) which is found before the SGSN in the
Base Station Subsystem (BSS). MAC (Medium Access Control) is in charge of efficient multiplexing of data and
control signaling on Uplink and Downlink for several mobile stations. It resolves
contention to access the GSM channels. BSSGP (Base Station System GPRS Protocol) conveys routing QoS related
information between the BSS and the SGSN. GTP is the UDP-based protocol used to transport packets from a SGSN to the
GGSN corresponding to the subscriber. GTP packets travel on an IP network.
A packet transmitted from an application at the MS is packaged in the corresponding
Transport Layer protocol used (like UDP or TCP) which in turn is part of the IP payload.
This packet is passed to the SNDCP layer and undergoes data compression, header
compression and segmentation for delivery to the lower layer. In the SNDCP header Figure 10, User Plane Protocol Architecture Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 47 information for sequencing and multiplexing (Network Services Access Point Identifier)
is included. The SNDCP PDU is passed to the LLC layer to form part of the LLC frame
payload. The LLC adds a Frame Check Sequence (FCS) and encrypts the SNDCP PDU,
it also considers the negotiated QoS. The LLC frames are sent to the RLC/MAC layer
where they are segmented into radio blocks with their corresponding headers. The radio
blocks are transported by the Packet Data Channel slots allocated for their transmission.
The data blocks are received in the BSS where the LLC frames are finally reassembled
and sent to the attached SGSN. At the SGSN, the sent IP packet is obtained from the
SNDCP layer and sent through GTP to the GGSN where it is relayed to the Internet
where it finds its way to the destination node.

Some of the major Wireless providers in the US (Cingular, T-Mobile) offer GPRS
services and have begun a transition to UMTS. However, GPRS can coexist with UMTS
using a common Core Network.
[1] Digital cellular telecommunications system; Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS); General Packet Radio Service (GPRS); Service description; Stage 2 (3GPP TS 23.060 version 6.12.0
Release 6). 2.4.10 GSM Enhanced Data Rates for GSM Evolution (EDGE) Enhanced Data rates for GSM Evolution, or EDGE, is a digital mobile phone technology
which acts as a bolt-on enhancement to 2G and 2.5G General Packet Radio Service
(GPRS) networks. This technology works in GSM networks. EDGE (also known as
EGPRS) is a superset to GPRS and can function on any network with GPRS deployed on
it, provided the carrier implements the necessary upgrades.

EDGE provides Enhanced GPRS (EGPRS), which can be used for any packet switched
applications such as an Internet connection. High-speed data applications such as video
services and other multimedia benefit from EGPRS' increased data capacity. EDGE
Circuit Switched is a possible future development.

In addition to Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK), EDGE uses 8 phase shift keying
(8PSK) for the upper five of its nine modulation and coding schemes. EDGE produces a
3-bit word for every change in carrier phase. This effectively triples the gross data rate
offered by GSM. EDGE, like GPRS, uses a rate adaptation algorithm that adapts the
modulation and coding scheme (MCS) according to the quality of the radio channel, and
thus the bit rate and robustness of data transmission. It introduces a new technology not
found in GPRS, Incremental Redundancy, which, instead of retransmitting disturbed
packets, sends more redundancy information to be combined in the receiver. This
increases the probability of correct decoding.

EDGE can carry data speeds up to 236.8 kbit/s for 4 timeslots (theoretical maximum is
473.6 kbit/s for 8 timeslots) in packet mode and will therefore meet the International
Telecommunications Union's (ITU) requirement for a 3G network, and has been accepted
by the ITU as part of the IMT-2000 family of 3G standards. It also enhances the circuit
data mode called High-Speed Circuit-Switched Data (HSCSD), increasing the data rate of Utility Of Commercial Wireless Study: A Technology Roadmap for Disaster Response 48 this service. EDGE has been introduced into GSM networks around the world since 2003,
initially in North America.

EDGE is

Comments