ITT400

Introduction To Data Communication

and Networking

Chapter 11
Wireless LANs

Mazlan Osman, FSKM, UiTM (Terengganu) 2014

 LEARNING OUTCOMES

Upon completion of this chapter, students should be

able to:

10.2
 11-1 INTRODUCTION
• Wireless communication is one of the fastest growing
technologies.
• Wireless LANs are found on college campuses, office
buildings and public areas.
• There are two popular wireless technologies for LANs:

IEEE 802.11 Bluetooth

(wireless Ethernet)

10.3
 11-2 IEEE 802.11
• IEEE 802.11 covers the physical and data link
layers.
• The standard defines two kinds of services:

1. Basic Service Set (BSS)

2. Extended Service Set (ESS)

10.4
 Basic Service Set (BSS)
• BSS is made of stationary or mobile wireless station and possible central
base station known as access point (AP).
• A BSS without an AP is called an ad hoc network; a BSS with an AP is
called an infrastructure network

10.5 Figure 11.1 Basic service sets (BSSs)

 Extended Service Set (ESS)
• An ESS is made up of two or more BSSs with APs. The BSSs are
connected through a distribution system which is usually a wired LAN.
• It uses two types of stations: mobile and stationary. The mobile are normal
stations inside BSS and stationary station are AP stations.

10.6 Figure 11.2 Extended service sets (ESSs)

 Station Types in IEEE 802.11
• IEEE 802.11 defines three types of stations based
on their mobility in a wireless LAN
1.No-Transition Mobility
A station is either stationary (not moving) or
moving only inside a BSS.
2.BSS-Transition Mobility
A station can move from one BSS to another
but the movement is confined inside one ESS
3.ESS-Transition Mobility
A station can move from one ESS to another
ESS.
10.7
 MAC SUBLAYER
• IEEE 802.11 defines two MAC sublayers: the distributed
coordination function (DCF) and point coordination function
(PCF)

Figure 11.3 MAC layers in IEEE 802.11 standard

10.8
 Distributed Coordination Function (DCF)
• DCF uses CSMA/CA as the access method.
• Wireless LANs cannot implement CSMA/CD for three
reasons:
1. For collision detection a station must be able to
send data and receive collision signals at the same
time. This can mean costly stations and increased
bandwidth requirements.
2. Collision may not be detected because of the hidden
station problem.
3. The distance between stations can be great. Signal
fading could prevent a station at one end from
hearing a collision at the other end.
10.9
 Point Coordination Function (PCF)
• The point coordination function (PCF) is an optional
access method that can be implemented in an
infrastructure network (not in an ad hoc network).
• It resides in a point coordinator also known as access
point (AP), to coordinate the communication within the
network.
• Point Coordinators are only found in AP (Access Point)

10.10
 Fragmentation
• The wireless environment is very noisy; a corrupt
frame has to be retransmitted. The protocol, therefore,
recommends fragmentation - the division of a large
frame into smaller ones. It is more efficient to resend a
small frame than a large one.

10.11
 Frame Format

• MAC layer frame consist of nine field

Figure 11.4 Frame format

10.12
 Frame Format
Table 11.1 Subfields in FC field

10.13
 Frame Types
• IEEE 802.11 defines three categories of frames:
• Management frames used for the initial
communication between stations and access points
• Control frames used for accessing the channel and
acknowledging frame
• Data frame used for carrying data and control
information

Figure 11.5 Control frames

10.14
 ADDRESSING MECHANISM
• The IEEE 802.11 addressing mechanism specifies four
cases, defined in the FC field, To DS and From DS.
• Address 1 is address of next device. Address 2 is address of
previous device. Address 3 is address of final destination
station if it is not defined by address 1. Address 4 is address
of original source station if it is not same as address 2.

Table 11.2 Addresses

10.15
 • Case 1 : 00 (To DS = 0 and From DS = 0)
The frame is going from one station in a BSS to another.
The ACK frame should be sent to the original sender
• Case 2 : 01 (To DS = 0 and From DS = 1)
The frame is coming from an AP and going to a station.
The ACK should be sent to AP

Figure 11.6a Addressing mechanism for Case 1 and Case 2

10.16
 • Case 3 : 10 (To DS = 1 and From DS = 0)
The frame is going from a station to an AP. The ACK is
sent to the original station
• Case 4 : 11 (To DS = 1 and From DS = 1)
The frame is going from one AP to another AP in a
wireless distribution system.

Figure 11.6b Addressing mechanism for Case 3 and Case 4

10.17
 Hidden and Exposed Station Problems

• Hidden station
– some stations in an area cannot hear
transmissions from others
• Exposed station
– some (but not all) stations can hear
transmissions from stations not in the local
area

10.18
 Hidden Station
• B can send and receive directly from A.
• However, B does not have the signal strength to send or receive any
data directly from C.
• B and C cannot hear each other.
• B sends to A, C cannot receive B.
• C wants to send to A, C senses a “free” medium (CS fails)
• Collision occurs at A.
• B cannot receive the collision (CD fails).
• B is “hidden” for C.

Figure 11.7 Hidden Station Problem

10.19
 Exposed Station
– B starts sending to A.
– C senses carrier, finds medium in use and has to wait for
B -> A to end.
– D is outside the range of A, therefore waiting is not
necessary.

Figure 11.8 Exposed Station Problem

10.20
 PHYSICAL LAYER

Table 11.3 Physical layers

10.21
 11-3 BLUETOOTH (IEEE 802.15)
• Bluetooth is a wireless LAN technology
designed to connect devices of different
functions such as telephones, notebooks,
computers, cameras, printers, coffee makers, and
so on.
• A Bluetooth LAN is an ad hoc network, which
means that the network is formed
spontaneously.
• In Bluetooth LAN, the devices, called gadgets.
• A Bluetooth LAN, by nature, cannot be large.
10.22
 ARCHITECTURE
• Bluetooth defines two types of network:

Piconet

Scatternet

10.23
 PICONETS
• Piconets can have up to 8 stations, one of which is called
primary and the rest are called secondary
• Although a piconet can have a maximum of seven slaves, an
additional eight slaves can be in the parked state.
• The communication between the primary and the secondary can
be one-to-one or one-to-many.

10.24 Figure 11.9 Piconet

 SCATTERNET
• Scatternet is a combination of piconets.
• Secondary station in one piconet can be primary in
another piconet

Figure 11.10 Scatternet

10.25
 BLUETOOTH LAYERS
• Bluetooth uses several layers that do not exactly match those of the
Internet model. The layers are radio, baseband, L2CAP and others

Figure 11.11 Bluetooth layers

10.26
 RADIO LAYER
• Roughly equivalent to the physical layer of the Internet
model
• Bluetooth devices are low-power and have a range of
10 m
• Bluetooth uses the frequency-hopping spread spectrum
method
• Each device uses a frequency for only 625 us before it
hops to another frequency
• Bluetooth uses a sophisticated version of FSK called
GFSK (FSK with Gaussian bandwidth filtering)

10.27
 BASEBAND LAYER
• This layer is roughly equivalent to the MAC sublayer in
LANs
• The primary and secondary communicate each other
using time slots
• The length of a time slot is 625 us and the
communication is only between the master and a slave
• Bluetooth uses a form of TDMA that called TDD-TDMA
(time-division duplex TDMA)
• TDD-TDMA is a kind of half-duplex communication in
which the secondary and receiver send and receive data,
but not at the same time.

10.28
 Single-Secondary Communication
• If the piconet has only one secondary, the time is divided into slots of
625 us. The primary uses even-numbered slots and the slave uses odd-
numbered slots.
• In slot 0, the primary sends, the secondary receives. In slot 1, the
secondary sends, the primary receives. The cycle is repeated.

10.29 Figure 11.12 Single-secondary communication

 Multiple-Secondary Communication
• If the piconet has more than one secondary, the process is little more
complex
• Again, the primary uses the even-numbered slots, but a secondary sends
in the next odd-numbered slot if the packet in the previous slot was
addressed to it.
• All secondaries listen to on even-numbered slots, but only one secondary
sends in any odd-numbered slot
• Figure 10.23
1. In slot 0, the primary sends a frame to secondary 1
2. In slot 1, only secondary 1 sends a frame to primary because the previous
frame was addressed to secondary 1; other secondaries are silent
3. In slot 2, the primary sends a frame to secondary 2
4. In slot 3, only secondary 2 sends a frame to the primary because the
previous frame was addressed to secondary 2; other secondaries are silent
5. The cycle continues

10.30
 Figure 11.13 Multiple-secondary communication

10.31
 Physical Links
• Two types of links can be created between primary and secondary:
SCO links and ACL links
• SCO
A synchronous connection-oriented (SCO) link is used when
avoiding latency (delay in data delivery) is more important than
integrity (error-free delivery)
• ACL
An asynchronous connectionless link (ACL) is used when data
integrity is more important than avoiding latency

10.32
 Frame format
• A frame in the baseband layer can be one of three types: one-slot, three-
slot or five-slot
• In one-slot, 259 us is needed for hopping and the length of the
frame is 366 bits.
• In three-slot frame and five-slot, 259 us is also needed for hopping
but the length is 1616 bits and 2866 bits respectively
• The format of the three frame types consist of three fields: access code,
header and payload

10.33 Figure 11.14 Frame format types

 L2CAP
• The logical link control and adaptation protocol (L2CAP) is roughly
equivalent to the LLC sublayer in LANs.
• The format of data packet consist of three fields: length (defines size of
data), channel ID (defines a unique identifier) and data and control
field.
• The L2CAp has several specific duties: multiplexing, segmentation
and reassembly, quality of service and group management

Figure 10.25 L2CAP data packet format

10.34
 EXERCISE
1. What is the difference between a BSS and an ESS?
2. Discuss the three types of mobility in a wireless LAN.
3. What is the access method used by wireless LANs?
4. Compare a piconet and a scatternet.
5. What are the two types of links between a Bluetooth
primary and a Bluetooth secondary?
6. In multiple-secondary communication, who uses the
even-numbered slots and who uses the odd-numbered
slots?
7. How much time in a Bluetooth one-slot frame is used for
the hopping mechanism? What about a three-slot frame
and a five-slot frame?
10.35