18-759: Wireless Networking Spring 2012 Midterm, February 29, 2012

Name: _______________________

INSTRUCTIONS: If you find a question ambiguous, be sure to write down any assumptions you make. It is advantageous to partially answer a question rather than to not attempt it at all. Yes/no answers or answers consisting of just numbers will receive zero credit. To receive proper credit, you must explain your answer. Be clear and concise. Limit your answers to the space provided.

Grading: Question 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Total Value 12 11 12 15 6 9 9 11 85 Grade

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Question 1: Short Questions (6 x 2 = 12)

Answer the questions below in 20 words or less. (a) What is the relation between bandwidth and data rate? higher data rates require more bandwidth more bandwidth allows higher data rates to be used Nyquist Theorem; Shannon Capacity (b) Why is modulation needed in wireless communication? easy radiation: modulation may be used to limite the size of the wavelength, hence the size of the antenna multi user: necessary to accommodate for simultaneous users transmitting in the same medium expand/limit the bandwidth used to transmit the signal (c) Give an example of a modulation technique and explain how it works. ASK: Amplitude Shift Keying. Is a modulation technique that represents digital data as variations in the amplitude a carrier wave: one binary digit is represented by the presence of carrier, at constant amplitude other binary digit is represented by the absence of carrier (d) What is Inter-Symbol Interference and when it is likely to occur. Inter-symbol Interference is likely to occur in multi-path scenarios, e.g. urban scenarios. Due to the multi-path, different delayed copies of a primarily transmitted pulse may arrive at almos the same time as a subsequent transmitted pulse, acting then as a form of noise. (e) What is the difference between slow and fast fading, i.e. what is the primary effect causing each? Fading is the time variation of the received signal strength, caused by changes in the transmission medium or path. In fast fading, changes in distance of about half of a wavelength result in big fluctuations in the instantaneous power. In slow fading, changes in larger distances affects the paths, resulting in a change in the average power level around which the fast fading takes place. (f) What is the difference between frequency hopping and direct sequence spread spectrum? In Frequency Hopping SS, the signal is transmitted over a set of frequencies, hopping from frequency to frequency, at fixed intervals, and according to the PN sequence. In Direct Sequence SS, each bit in the original signal is represented by multiple bits in the original signal, using a spreading code. This code spreads the signal across a wider frequency, but the carrier frequency does not change with time.

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Question 2: Bluetooth (4+3+4=11)

(a) A device creating a piconet becomes the Piconet Coordinator (PNC) device. State two of the main responsibilities of a PNC. (2 points per each responsibility) Selects the channel Starts to transmit beacon frames Allocates resources (slots) for devices Authenticate and send association response to the devices that want to join the piconet Decide frequency hopping and timing anchors

(b) Assume that in a multi-hop many-to-one sensor network, the data collection follows a spanning tree. Power consumption due to transmission/reception of messages grows exponentially from the leaves to the root of the tree. How does this situation affect network lifetime? (3 points) Answer: The power sources of the nodes close to the sink deplete faster. Since they relay all of the networks traffic, they pull the network lifetime down. (c) In certain sensor network designs, the information in packets in aggregated before it is forwarded, at the cost of not delivering the packets real time. State two reasons why packet aggregation might be beneficial? (2 points per reason) Relaying packets is expensive, and packet forwarding is reduced by aggregation Reduces the number of transmissions where it matters most, near the root of the tree.

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Question 3: 802.11zzz (4 x 3 = 12)

Your boss asks you to help design the physical layer of a new wireless technology, 802.11zzz, to be used in urban mobile environments. (a) Would you recommend ASK or some ASK based modulation? Hint: A stands for Amplitude No. ASK, or ASK based modulation techniques are very sensible to sudden gain changes, which are very prone in wireless communications, and in urban mobile scenarios, in particular. (b) 802.11a supports different modulation techniques, each allowing for different data rates. This adds complexity and cost to the radio, so your boss suggests 802.11zzz should only support one modulation technique, namely the maximum data rate possible. Do you support this idea? Why or why not? Given that 802.11zzz is to be used in urban mobile environments, and given that typically a higher data rate decreases the communication range (it is more sensible to attenuation), it should support other, slower, data rates, increasing the reliability of the communication and the number of possible applications. (c) We have an available bandwidth of 83.5 MHz, just like in 802.11b. Your boss read about the Nyquist Theorem, and is saying that with a simple binary modulation, we can get 83.5 Mbps, which is more than what 802.11b can support. Is he correct? Why? No. Nyquist theorem considers a noiseless channel, which is not the case of an urban mobile environment. To deal with the noise, redundant bits (coding, error control, etc) have to be added to the original data. Typically, the ratio of total transmitted bits to data bits is 2 two or 3. This means that it is not possible to achieve the 83.5 Mbps with only 83.5 Mhz. (d) In this scenario, multi-path effect is present, and inter symbol interference is likely to occur. Do you think OFDM may be a good option? Why? Yes. With Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, the data rate is reduced by a factor of the number of subcarriers. Thus, this increases the symbol period, which will reduce the effect of ISI. This is so because the time between pulses increases, making it less likely to have delayed copies hitting subsequent transmitted pulses.

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Question 4: Wireless LANs (2+3+4+4+2=15)

(a) Which version of 802.11 standards was designed to provide support for MIMO? (2 points) 802.11n (b) Assume that you are sitting at an airport lounge and your laptop detects multiple wireless networks with different SSIDs? What is the use of employing an SSID mechanism, state two reasons as to why it is necessary? Service Set Identifier SSID It is the mechanism used to segment wireless networks. By the use of SSIDs, multiple independent wireless networks can coexist in the same location. It also effectively names the wireless network which is useful for a user who wants to select a network. (c) Stations can detect access points (AP) based by scanning. Scanning can be active scanning or passive scanning. Describe the working mechanisms of both active and passive scanning at a very high level with one or two sentences for each. Passive Scanning: station simply listens for Beacon and gets info of the BSS Beacons are sent roughly 10 times per second Power is saved Active Scanning: station transmits Probe Request; elicits Probe Response from AP Saves time + is more thorough Wait for 10-20 msec for response (d) 802.11e is a standard that provides support for Quality of Service over 802.11 networks. Describe exactly two technique used by 802.11e to support QoS, and explain how they provide they provide QoS to different flows. Different inter frame spacing intervals. Different congestion window backoff values. (e) How can you achieve interoperability between 802.11a and 802.11b? There is no problem. They operate in different frequency bands, they will not interfere with each other.

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Question 5: Doppler Spread (6)

Assume a stationary GSM transmitter that has a center frequency of 1950 MHz. If the transmitted signal has a bandwidth of 8 kHz, at what speed relative to the base station will a mobile start having significant problems with Doppler shift. You should assume that problems will develop when the Doppler spread is more than 10% of the signal bandwidth. Doppler spread is twice the maximum Doppler shift. Solution: The Doppler spread is more than 10% of the bandwidth. The bandwidth is given by 8KHZ. Hence the Doppler Spread is twice the max. Doppler Shift. Let the Doppler Shift be given by fm. Hence 2* fm = 10/100 * 8KHZ = 400Hz Now trying to find the velocity at which the mobile will start facing issues We will use the following formula for Doppler Effect: Fm = (v/c) * f 400 = (v* 1950 * 10^6)/(3 * 10^8) v = 61.5 m/s

Question 6: Can you Fix Me? (3 x 3)

You are using an 802.11 wireless router at home to access Internet. The performance of your downloads is poor because your neighbor is also has a wireless network that is interfering with your wireless transfers. You want to improve performance, but you do not have any control over your neighbors wireless connection (The only thing under your control is your own wireless router). Discuss the suitability of the following strategies in achieving better performance, e.g.. under what conditions could it help, and when may it not be effective. a) Frequency Assignment - Assigning a different channel to your wireless router. Solution: Yes, this will help in improving performance as orthogonal channels can be used simultaneously.

b) Power Control -- Lowering the transmit power of your wireless router. Solution: This will not improve performance. In fact, performance may go down as the SINR will go down. c) Enable RTS/CTS Solution: maybe depends on whether the problem is a hidden terminal situation

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Question 7: Attenuation (4+3+2 = 9)

Two friends, Bob and Mary, are using wireless communication to stay in touch during classes at their local university. The wireless channel follows the traditional path loss model: Path loss = c x dn Where d is the distance between the transmitter and the receiver, c is constant for a particular radio, and n is a coefficient specific to the environment. For the building in which Bob and Mary take classes, n is equal to 3. Bob measures the noise floor as -90 dBm. The receivers in their equipment need a signal that is at least a factor of 10 stronger than the noise floor to be able to decode the signal. The regular antennas of their wireless devices are perfectly isotropic. When Bob and Mary are in their first class, they are a distance of 10 meters apart. They try their equipment and they can successful communicate. Mary notes the strength of Bobs signal is -65 dBm. (a) During their second class, Bob and Mary try to communicate again. Their class rooms are now 21.6 meters apart. Will the communication work? Need a signal strength of at least -80 dBm. At 10 meters, the signal strength is -65dBm. At 21.6 meter, the distance is a factor of 2.16 longer, so the signal is a factor of 10 (or 10 dB 2.16^3) weaker. This means that the signal strength is -75 dBm, which is strong enough. (b) After lunch they have their third class. Their rooms are now 100 m apart since they are in separate buildings. They cannot communicate. Fortunately, Bob predicted this and he brought a directional antenna, which he connects to his wireless device instead of the isotropic antenna. Mary is still using the regular isotropic antenna. What is the minimum gain that the directional antenna needs to have so Mary and Bob can communicate? Please explain the unit for the antenna gain. 100 m is 10 times further away than during their first class. This results in a path loss of a factor of 1000 of 30 dB. This means that the received signal strength is -95 dBm. Since they need a signal of -80 dBm, they will not be able to communicate This means that the directional antennas should be at least a 15 dBi strength (decibel above isotropic).

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(c) The next day, Bob and Mary are in same class they were in the previous afternoon (100 meter apart). Unfortunately, Bob forgot his directional antenna, but Mary can borrow one from a friend who is sitting next to her in class. What gain does the directional antenna now have to be to allow them to communicate?

The same it is symmetric.

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Question 8: Hidden terminal (2, 2, 3, 4)

T4 R4

R1 T1 T2 R2

T3

R3

A common assumption in many simulators is that the interference range of a transmitter is twice the transmission range. The above topology reflects this: the solid and dashed circles represent the transmission and interference range, respectively. Interference range in the context of this question means both the carrier sense will prevent transmission for any radio within the dashed circle and the reception of any radio in the dashed circle will be corrupted. (a) Identify all the hidden terminal scenarios in this topology Pairs 1 and 4 are hidden.

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(b) Identify all the exposed terminal situations in this topology.

Pairs 1 and 3 are hidden. You decide you do not like this set up so you want to tweak the carrier sense threshold, i.e. the threshold that is used to determine whether to defer (incoming signal above the threshold) or to transmit (incoming signal below the threshold). Specifically, you decide to increase the carrier sense threshold so nodes will defer to fewer transmitters. You assume that this will be better match actual interference thanks to packet capture. (c) How will this affect the circles in the above figure?

The dotted circle will shrink: nodes that were at the edge of the interference range will no longer interfere (trigger carrier sense) if we raise the threshold. Also, packet capture can reduce the effect of interference (collision chance).

(d) Assume your change of the threshold changes the diameter of the appropriate circles by 25% in whatever direction is appropriate. How does this change your answer to parts (a) and (b)? Discuss the changes. The hidden terminal in 1-4 stays, but the exposed terminal 1-3 disappears. You unfortunately add another hidden terminal with 1-2. This is generally true: increasing the carrier sense thresholds tends to reduce exposed terminals but can increase the occurrence of hidden terminals.

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