2009 International Conference on Networks Security, Wireless Communications and Trusted Computing

Wireless Network Technology and Its Applications

Ning Zhang 1, 2
1. Institute of Information Technology Hong Bao
Beijing Union University School of Information
Beijing, China Beijing Union University
zn2004@163.com Beijing, China
2. Faculty of Information and Engineering baohong@buu.com.cn
Flinders University, Adelaide, 5001 Australia
zhan0489@flinders.edu.au

Abstract—In this paper we analyze wireless network and architectural challenge facing the wireless and network
discuss the applications of wireless technology. In wireless research communities is that of either evolving or
network, the wireless devices should be able to operate redesigning the Internet architecture to efficiently
independently of the broader Internet. In particular, there incorporate emerging wireless network elements such as
may be times during which the connection of a wireless mobile terminals, ad-hoc routers and embedded sensors
device or network to the Internet is not available. During and to provide end-to-end service abstractions that
these times, wireless devices should be able to operate stably facilitate application development [7]. Several protocols
in modes disconnected from the rest of the infrastructure, as and mechanisms have been developed to Support inter-
well as be able to opportunistically establish "local" ad-hoc
domain mobility and intra-domain mobility for multimedia
networks using their own native protocols. This will require
that devices are capable of discovering each other without
services in the Internet.
the assistance of the broader network, as well as require that II. WIRELESS NETWORK AND ITS DEVELOPMENT
devices use local addressing and routing schemes.
The wireless scenarios are associated with new
Keywords-wireless network; wireless technology; wireless network service requirements that motivate a rethinking of
device; applications several Internet architecture issues. Mobile IP is the oldest
and probably the most widely known mobility
I. INTRODUCTION management proposal. Mobile IP consists of three major
operations: Agent discovery, Registration, and Tunneling.
Wireless technology is becoming an integral part of our Agent discovery is used to advertise the ability of mobility
everyday lives. Most students have a cellular phone or a agents for services on each link. Registration is for mobile
personal digital assistant (PDA) used for voice node to register with its home agent, and for mobility
communications, checking emails, or organizing personal agents to provide registration service. When a mobile node
information [1]. This is the technology of the 21st century, is away from home, a care-of address is temporarily
which has incredible opportunities and various assigned to the visiting mobile node, either by the foreign
applications. Recent advances in networking technology agent, or by other means such as DHCP. Tunneling is
have enabled portable computing devices to link up with suggested for mobility agents to forward packets destined
servers through wireless networks, such as IEEE802.11b to the mobile node to be routed correctly. Several
and Bluetooth, to access information from them, and to mobile/wireless features may require mechanisms that
delegate heavy tasks to them [2]. A typical IEEE802.11b cannot be implemented through the conventional IP
wireless LAN consists of more than one base station (i.e. framework for the Internet, or if they can, may suffer from
access point), whose typical radio area is within at most a performance degradation due to the additional overhead
few hundred meters, connected through a local area associated with network protocols that were originally
network [3]. The data flows and interactions between designed for static infrastructure computing. Session
mobile users, sensors and their supporting computing Initiation Protocol SIP is an application-level IETF
infrastructure are clearly very different from those of (Internet Engineering Task Force) open standard that
today’s popular Internet applications such as email, instant allows a host attached to a network to locate other
messaging or the world-wide web [4]. When a user moves networked hosts and to negotiate the establishment and
from location to location, his/her mobile computing device termination of network connections with them. It is a
may be disconnected from the current network and signaling protocol and does not provide for the actual
reconnected to another network. Several researchers has transport of information between communicating hosts.
explored mechanisms to transparently mask variations in SIP can be used for telephony, Internet conferencing,
mobility at the network or system level, such as Mobile-IP presence, events notification and instant messaging. SIP
and host mobility [5]. These approaches have been infrastructure can be used as the basis for creating peer-to-
designed to enable packet delivery while a mobile device peer (P2P) applications running on mobile devices. The
is away from its home base. Supporting these requirements concept of super-networking allows many of the
efficiently in an integrated wired-wireless global network complexities of the underlying network structure to be
will require major changes [6]. Thus, the broad hidden from the end-user. SIP is a cornerstone in the

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DOI 10.1109/NSWCTC.2009.255
Internet version of telephony, called Voice over the
Internet Protocol (VoIP). The SIP architecture is similar to
HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol) and has a modular
distributed design. However, while HTTP is designed for a
client-server environment, SIP devices may act as both
servers and clients (i.e. P2P). As illustrated in Fig.1, SIP
integrates well with other layer 3 and 4 Internet standard.
SIP uses SDP (Session Description Protocol) to allow
communicating peers to negotiate session parameters.
Mobile phone is assumed to use open standard operating
systems, have IP stacks and generally have the ability to
use multiple wireless network technologies (e.g. Bluetooth,
IEEE 802.11b, UMTS, etc.). They are generally referred to
as "smart phones" because they can be programmed by the
user or supplier and can perform multiple tasks
simultaneously.
Wireless access points, so-called hotspots, are being
installed in various places, such as airports, hotels, and
cafes. While a wireless device roams among the radio cells
of the base stations within a hotspot, it can continue to
access servers provided within the hotspot as well as
global networks such as the Internet. On the other hand,
when a device moves outside of the area of the current
hotspot, it is disconnected and cannot always enter the area
of another hotspot, because the areas of hotspots are still Figure 2. Wireless technology road
sparse. Such devices must often sleep to save battery life
and avoid the risk of accidental damage while moving.
Wireless and mobile networks represent an active research III. APPLICATIONS OF WIRELESS NETWORK
and new technology development area. The rapid The wireless network should also be robust and
evolution of core radio technologies, wireless flexible enough to ensure the availability of the network in
networks/protocols and application scenarios is the presence of adversarial (intentional or otherwise)
summarized for reference in the technology roadmap given threats. In particular, wireless networks should be able to
in Fig.2 below. adapt to the presence of radio interference (jamming)
attacks. Further, defense mechanisms should be in place in
order to defend against denial-of-service (DoS) attacks
involving message flooding, such as those targeting
various network buffer resources. A well-known problem
with Mobile IP is triangular routing. Route optimization
solves this by sending binding updates to inform the
sending host about the actual location of the mobile node.
But, because of the requirements that are put on the
correspondent hosts, it cannot be expected that route
optimization will be widely employed in a near future. In
addition, there must be mechanisms in place to diagnose
and prevent individual devices from improperly following
resource management protocols (perhaps for the purpose
of achieving their own improved QoS at the expense of
other device’s degraded performance). All security
mechanisms should carefully consider the usage of device
resources, the associated performance tradeoffs, and the
latency involved in achieving security. In wireless
network, agent mobility can enable the transfer of objects
to support host mobility. If only protocol state is
transfered, agents can help to improve the efficiency of a
deployed protocol like Mobile IP. If state and code is
transfered and executed, an active networking approach to
support mobility is realized. The next generation Internet
needs to support communication with end points that are
not always connected. These disconnections can be short
or long-lived. The current approach handles disconnections
above the network layer, as in the email system. This is
Figure 1. Mobile multimedia all-IP protocol stack adequate when most devices are perpetually connected to
the Internet. With mobility, however, disconnections will

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be common. This requires a new solution to avoid every The current Internet was designed for stationary
network service implementing mechanisms or protocols to terminals, thus it does not track node location. In mobile
support disconnection, which would result in a complex wireless systems with localized interaction, however, the
mix of layers. The promise of agent technology in identities of terminals participating in the local network
telecommunications is to be a key vehicle for:1) achieving change so frequently that location becomes a more natural
enriched, higher level communication; 2) enabling more primitive for addressing and scoping the distribution of
intelligence in service provision and network management computing resources relevant to a local area. This trend is
e.g. by personalization and integration of different services further strengthened by improvements to 802.11
to value-added services and negotiation of QoS, dealing localization and global positioning system receivers that
with the enlarging amount of information and functions. increase the availability of precise location information at
Two mobile devices should, by themselves, be able to mobile terminals. Beyond location as an addressing
communicate within a next generation Internet mechanism the architecture must enable the use of location
architecture, as should larger collections of nodes that have information for internal network optimizations at all layers
local, but not global infrastructure. Fully decentralized and support the development of location-aware
infrastructure will expand the architecture from a applications. Specific point solutions such as geographic
monolithic entity to a set of principles, protocols, and routing, mobile-cast, localization, or location fusion
services that operate in all of the edge cases that mobility algorithms have been described. Figure 4 shows the basic
and wireless introduce. Network elements are as shown in scenario we anticipate for “beyond 3G” wireless / mobile
figure 3. networks: various different mobile devices (with different
To be able to fulfil these promises, agents need to processing capabilities) are attached to an access network
communicate to discover their peers, to negotiate and to which in turn interfaces to a core network.
co-operate in open environments where everybody can add
their contribution when and how it is deemed appropriate.
Most importantly, agent systems will need to build on an
interface with a variety of existing and upcoming
developments and standards at the underlying network
systems level. This includes support for a wide range of
devices, but also for the integration of telecommunication,
Internet, TV and power line communication, self-
organization and software defined radio, and, particularly,
intelligent hand-over from local communication channels,
like Bluetooth, to hot-spot coverage (WLAN) and cellular
networks (UMTS and beyond). Thus, agents will only be
widely accepted if they provide a standardized, open and
generic infrastructure.

Figure 4. Seamless network of access systems

A variety of wireline and wireless access network

technologies is used including legacy and novel cellular
technologies, wireless LAN and broadcasting technologies
like DVB-T. While the individual building blocks within
the scenario are not well defined yet, the fact of
heterogeneity of devices and network technologies is
foreseeable. Here, it is believed that agent-based active
networking could be an enabling technology for “beyond
3G” networks (covering all levels of the multi-sphere
model defined. Location information that nodes advertise
must be trustworthy and reliable, but a location service that
Figure 3. Wireless network elements
tracks the position of network nodes also raises significant

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location privacy concerns. Location conveys a rich set of ACKNOWLEDGMENT
potentially private contextual information. Even if devices This work is partially supported by the Scientific
are only identified by pseudonymous addresses, an Research Common Program of Beijing Municipal
adversary could learn the user’s identity if the location is Commission of Education #KM200811417011, Funding
linkable to publicly available, identified location records. Project for Academic Human Resources Development in
For example, if a query originates from a car on a Institutions of Higher Learning Under the Jurisdiction of
suburban driveway, the likely household could be Beijing Municipality, PHR (IHLB), and the Young Key
identified by looking at a public address database. The Teacher Program of Beijing Municipal Commission of
location architecture should incorporate privacy Education. Thanks for the help.
mechanisms across all layers to address location privacy
concerns. REFERENCES
IV. CONCLUSION
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