UNIT – IV

Wireless Local Loop (WLL)

Introduction to Wireless Local Loop (WLL)
Local loop is a circuit line from a subscriber’s phone to the local central office (LCO). But
the implementation of local loop of wires is risky for the operators, especially in rural and
remote areas due to less number of users and increased cost of installation. Hence, the
solution for it is the usage of wireless local loop (WLL) which uses wireless links rather
than copper wires to connect subscribers to the local central office.
WLL Architecture:

WLL components:
1. PSTN:
It is Public Switched Telephone Network which is a circuit switched network. It is a
collection of world’s interconnected circuit switched telephone networks.
2. Switch Function:
Switch Function switches the PSTN among various WANUs.
3. WANU:
It is short for Wireless Access Network Unit. It is present at the local exchange
office. All local WASUs are connected to it. Its functions includes: Authentication,
Operation & maintenance, Routing, Transceiving voice and data. It consists of
following sub-components:
• Transceiver: It transmits/receives data.
• WLL Controller: It controls the wireless local loop component with WASU.
• AM: It is short for Access Manager. It is responsible for authentication.
• HLR: It is short for Home Location Register. It stores the details of all local
WASUs.
 4. WASU:
It is short for Wireless Access Subscriber Units. It is present at the house of the
subscriber. It connects the subscriber to WANU and the power supply for it is
provided locally.
Advantages of WLL:
• It eliminates the first mile or last mile construction of the network connection.
• Low cost due to no use of conventional copper wires.
• Much more secure due to digital encryption techniques used in wireless
communication.
• Highly scalable as it doesn’t require the installation of more wires for scaling it.
Features of WLL:
• Internet connection via modem
• Data service
• Voice service
• Fax service

WLL technologies
Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN)
A wireless personal area network (WPAN) is a type of personal network that
uses wireless communication technologies to communicate and transfer data
between the user’s connected devices. It allows an individual to connect all or
most of his or her devices together and access the Internet or a local network
using any of the native/supported wireless communication techniques.
WPAN is also known as a short wireless distance network.
WPAN works much like a standard personal area network (PAN) except that it uses a
wireless communication medium instead of a wired connection. Typically, the devices in
WPAN include peripheral and hand-held devices such as PDAs, smart phones and
tablet PCs. A WPAN's range depends on the wireless router's capabilities, access point
or the device itself, but it is usually restricted to a house or small office. WPAN can be
created using Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, infrared, Z-wave or any similar wireless technologies. In
some cases, one of the Internet enabled/powered devices acts as an access point and
provides network and Internet access to other devices.
For example, a laptop can be connected to the Internet wirelessly by creating a
Bluetooth WPAN with a cell phone. The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) Internet
connectivity of the cell phone can be shared with the laptop, and all data packets to and
from the laptop are sent over the Bluetooth-powered WPAN.

Bluetooth Technology

Bluetooth technology allows you to connect a variety of different electronic devices

wirelessly to a system for the transfer and sharing of data and this is the main function of
Bluetooth. Cell phones are connected to hands-free earpieces, wireless keyboard, mouse
and mike to laptops with the help of Bluetooth as it transmits information from one device
to other device. Bluetooth technology has many functions, and it is used most commonly
in wireless communications’ market.

Bluetooth Technology

Features

• Bluetooth technology uses radio waves to communicate between devices. Most of these
radio waves have a range of 15-50 feet.
• According to the official Bluetooth website, Bluetooth uses a low-power signal with a
maximum range of 50 feet with sufficient speed to enable transmission of data.
• The pairing process identifies and connects any two devices to each other. It also
prevents interference from other non-paired Bluetooth devices in the area.
• It uses maximum power only when it is required, thus preserving battery life.
IEEE 802.15 is a working group of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) IEEE 802 standards
committee which specifies wireless personal area network (WPAN) standards. There are 10 major areas of
development, not all of which are active.

The number of Task Groups in IEEE 802.15 varies based on the number of active projects.

IEEE 802.15.1: WPAN / Bluetooth

Task group one is based on Bluetooth technology. It defines physical layer (PHY) and Media Access
Control (MAC) specification for wireless connectivity with fixed, portable and moving devices within
or entering personal operating space. Standards were issued in 2002 and 2005.[1][2]

IEEE 802.15.2: Coexistence

Task group two addresses the coexistence of wireless personal area networks (WPAN) with other
wireless devices operating in unlicensed frequency bands such as wireless local area networks
(WLAN). The IEEE 802.15.2-2003 standard was published in 2003[3] and task group two went into
"hibernation".[4]

IEEE 802.15.3: High Rate WPAN

IEEE 802.15.3-2003
IEEE 802.15.3-2003 is a MAC and PHY standard for high-rate (11 to 55 Mbit/s) WPANs. The
standard can be downloaded via the IEEE Get program,[5] which is funded by IEEE 802 volunteers.

IEEE 802.15.3a
IEEE P802.15.3a was an attempt to provide a higher speed Ultra wideband PHY enhancement
amendment to IEEE 802.15.3 for applications which involve imaging and multimedia. The members
of the task group were not able to come to an agreement choosing between two technology
proposals, Multi-band Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) and Direct Sequence
UWB (DS-UWB), backed by two different industry alliances and was withdrawn in January
2006.[6] Documents related to the development of IEEE 802.15.3a are archived on the IEEE
document server.[7]

IEEE 802.15.3b-2006
IEEE 802.15.3b-2005 amendment was released on May 5, 2006. It enhanced 802.15.3 to improve
implementation and interoperability of the MAC. This amendment include many optimizations,
corrected errors, clarified ambiguities, and added editorial clarifications while preserving backward
compatibility. Among other changes, the amendment defined the following new features:[8]

• a new MAC layer management entity (MLME) service access point (SAP)
• implied acknowledgment policy that allow polling
• logical link control/subnetwork access protocol (LLC/SNAP) headers
• multicast address assignment
• multiple contention periods in a superfame
• a method for relinquishing channel time to another device in the PAN
• faster network recover in the case when the piconet coordinator (PNC) abruptly disconnects
• a method for a device to return information about signal quality of a received packet.
IEEE 802.15.3c-2009
IEEE 802.15.3c-2009 was published on September 11, 2009. The task group TG3c developed a
millimeter-wave-based alternative physical layer (PHY) for the existing 802.15.3 Wireless Personal
Area Network (WPAN) Standard 802.15.3-2003. The IEEE 802.15.3 Task Group 3c (TG3c) was
formed in March 2005. This mmWave WPAN is defined to operate in the 57–66 GHz range.
Depending on the geographical region, anywhere from 2 to 9 GHz of bandwidth is available (for
example, 57–64 GHz is available as unlicensed band defined by FCC 47 CFR 15.255 in North
America). The millimeter-wave WPAN allows very high data rate, short range (10 m) for applications
including high speed internet access, streaming content download (video on demand, HDTV, home
theater, etc.), real time streaming and wireless data bus for cable replacement. A total of three PHY
modes were defined in the standard:[9]

• Single carrier (SC) mode (up to 5.3 Gbit/s)

• High speed interface (HSI) mode (single carrier, up to 5 Gbit/s)
• Audio/visual (AV) mode (OFDM, up to 3.8 Gbit/s).

IEEE 802.15.4: Low Rate WPAN

Protocol stack for 802.15.4

Main article: IEEE 802.15.4

IEEE 802.15.4-2003 (Low Rate WPAN) deals with low data rate but very long battery life (months or
even years) and very low complexity. The standard defines both the physical (Layer 1) and data-link
(Layer 2) layers of the OSI model. The first edition of the 802.15.4 standard was released in May
2003. Several standardized and proprietary networks (or mesh) layer protocols run over 802.15.4-
based networks, including IEEE 802.15.5, ZigBee, Thread, 6LoWPAN, WirelessHART,
and ISA100.11a.

WPAN Low Rate Alternative PHY (4a)

Main article: IEEE 802.15.4a
IEEE 802.15.4a (formally called IEEE 802.15.4a-2007) is an amendment to IEEE 802.15.4
specifying additional physical layers (PHYs) to the original standard. The principal interest was in
providing higher precision ranging and localization capability (1 meter accuracy and better), higher
aggregate throughput, adding scalability to data rates, longer range, and lower power consumption
and cost. The selected baselines are two optional PHYs consisting of a UWB Pulse Radio (operating
in unlicensed UWB spectrum) and a Chirp Spread Spectrum (operating in unlicensed 2.4 GHz
spectrum). The Pulsed UWB Radio is based on Continuous Pulsed UWB technology (see C-UWB)
and will be able to deliver communications and high precision ranging.[10]

Revision and Enhancement (4b)

IEEE 802.15.4b was approved in June 2006 and was published in September 2006 as IEEE
802.15.4-2006. The IEEE 802.15 task group 4b was chartered to create a project for specific
enhancements and clarifications to the IEEE 802.15.4-2003 standard, such as resolving ambiguities,
reducing unnecessary complexity, increasing flexibility in security key usage, considerations for
newly available frequency allocations, and others.

PHY Amendment for China (4c)

IEEE 802.15.4c was approved in 2008 and was published in January 2009. This defines a PHY
amendment adds new rf spectrum specifications to address the Chinese regulatory changes which
have opened the 314-316 MHz, 430-434 MHz, and 779-787 MHz bands for Wireless PAN use within
China.

PHY and MAC Amendment for Japan (4d)

The IEEE 802.15 Task Group 4d was chartered to define an amendment to the 802.15.4-2006
standard. The amendment defines a new PHY and such changes to the MAC as are necessary to
support a new frequency allocation (950 MHz -956 MHz) in Japan while coexisting with passive tag
systems in the band.

MAC Amendment for Industrial Applications (4e)

The IEEE 802.15 Task Group 4e is chartered to define a MAC amendment to the existing standard
802.15.4-2006. The intent of this amendment is to enhance and add functionality to the 802.15.4-
2006 MAC to a) better support the industrial markets and b) permit compatibility with modifications
being proposed within the Chinese WPAN. Specific enhancements were made to add channel
hopping and a variable time slot option compatible with ISA100.11a. These changes were approved
in 2011.

PHY and MAC Amendment for Active RFID (4f)

The IEEE 802.15.4f Active RFID System Task Group is chartered to define new wireless Physical
(PHY) layer(s) and enhancements to the 802.15.4-2006 standard MAC layer which are required to
support new PHY(s) for active RFID system bi-directional and location determination applications.

PHY Amendment for Smart Utility Networks (4g)

IEEE 802.15.4g Smart Utility Networks (SUN) Task Group is chartered to create a PHY amendment
to 802.15.4 to provide a standard that facilitates very large scale process control applications such
as the utility smart grid network capable of supporting large, geographically diverse networks with
minimal infrastructure, with potentially millions of fixed endpoints. In April 2012 they released the
802.15.4g radio standard.[11] The Telecommunications Industry Association TR-51 committee
develops standards for similar applications.[12]

IEEE 802.15.5: Mesh Networking

IEEE 802.15.5 provides the architectural framework enabling WPAN devices to promote
interoperable, stable, and scalable wireless mesh networking. This standard is composed of two
parts: low-rate WPAN mesh and high-rate WPAN mesh networks. The low-rate mesh is built
on IEEE 802.15.4-2006 MAC, while the high rate mesh utilizes IEEE 802.15.3/3b MAC. The
common features of both meshes include network initialization, addressing, and multihop unicasting.
In addition, the low-rate mesh supports multicasting, reliable broadcasting, portability support, trace
route and energy saving function, and the high rate mesh supports multihop time-guaranteed
service.
Mesh networking for IEEE 802.15.1 networks is beyond scope of IEEE 802.15.5 and is carried
within Bluetooth mesh working group.

IEEE 802.15.6: Body Area Networks

Main article: IEEE 802.15.6
In December 2011, the IEEE 802.15.6 task group approved a draft of a standard for Body Area
Network (BAN) technologies. The draft was approved on 22 July 2011 by Letter Ballot to start the
Sponsor Ballot process.[13] Task Group 6 was formed in November 2007 to focus on a low-power and
short-range wireless standard to be optimized for devices and operation on, in, or around the human
body (but not limited to humans) to serve a variety of applications including medical, consumer
electronics, and personal entertainment.

IEEE 802.15.7: Visible Light Communication

As of December 2011, The IEEE 802.15.7 Visible Light Communication Task Group has completed
draft 5c of a PHY and MAC standard for Visible Light Communication (VLC). The inaugural meeting
for Task Group 7 was held during January 2009, where it was chartered to write standards for free-
space optical communication using visible light.[14]

IEEE P802.15.8: Peer Aware Communications

IEEE P802.15.8 received IEEE Standards Board approval on 29 March 2012 to form a Task Group
to develop a standard for Peer Aware Communications (PAC) optimized for peer to peer and
infrastructureless communications with fully distributed coordination operating in bands below
11 GHz. The proposed standard is targeting data rates greater than 100 kbit/s with scalable data
rates up to 10 Mbit/s. Features of the proposed include:

• discovery for peer information without association

• discovery of the number of devices in the network
• group communications with simultaneous membership in multiple groups (typically up to 10)
• relative positioning
• multi-hop relay
• security

IEEE P802.15.9: Key Management Protocol

IEEE P802.15.9 received IEEE Standards Board approval on 7 December 2011 to form a Task
Group to develop a recommended practice for the transport of Key Management Protocol (KMP)
datagrams. The recommended practice will define a message framework based on Information
Elements as a transport method for key management protocol (KMP) datagrams and guidelines for
the use of some existing KMPs with IEEE Std 802.15.4. The recommended practice will not create a
new KMP.[15]
While IEEE Std 802.15.4 has always supported datagram security, it has not provided a mechanism
for establishing the keys used by this feature. Lack of key management support in IEEE Std
802.15.4 can result in weak keys, which is a common avenue for attacking the security system.
Adding KMP support is critical to a proper security framework. Some of the existing KMPs that it may
address are IETF's PANA, HIP, IKEv2, IEEE Std 802.1X, and 4-Way-Handshake.

IEEE P802.15.10: Layer 2 Routing

IEEE P802.15.10 received IEEE Standards Board approval on 23 August 2013 to form a Task
Group to develop a recommended practice for routing packets in dynamically changing 802.15.4
wireless networks (changes on the order of a minute time frame), with minimal impact to route
handling. The goal is to extend the coverage area as the number of nodes increase.[16] The route
related capabilities that the recommended practice will provide include the following:

• Route establishment
• Dynamic route reconfiguration
• Discovery and addition of new nodes
• Breaking of established routes
• Loss and recurrence of routes
• Real time gathering of link status
• Allowing for single hop appearance at the networking layer (not breaking standard L3
mechanisms)
• Support for broadcast
• Support for multicast
• Effective frame forwarding

WiMAX

There are wireless broadband systems that offer fast Web surfing without being getting connected
through cable or DSL (Example of wireless broadband is WiMAX). Although WiMAX can
potentially deliver data rates of more than 30 Megabits per second, yet the providers offer average
0 data rates of 6 Mbps and often deliver less, making the service significantly slower than the hard-
wired broadband. The actual cost of the data available using WiMAX widely varies with the
distance from the transmitter. WiMAX is also one of the versions of 4G wireless available in
phones as Sprint’s 4G technology.
Introduction of Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET)
MANET stands for Mobile adhoc Network also called as wireless adhoc network or adhoc
wireless network that usually has a routable networking environment on top of a Link
Layer ad hoc network.. They consist of set of mobile nodes connected wirelessly in a self
configured, self healing network without having a fixed infrastructure. MANET nodes are
free to move randomly as the network topology changes frequently. Each node behave as
a router as they forward traffic to other specified node in the network.

MANET may operate as standalone fashion or they can be the part of larger internet.
They form highly dynamic autonomous topology with the presence of one or multiple
different transceivers between nodes. The main challenge for the MANET is to equipped
each devices to continuously maintain the information required to properly route traffic.
MANETs consist of a peer-to-peer, self-forming, self-healing network MANET’s circa
2000-2015 typically communicate at radio frequencies (30MHz-5GHz). This can be used
in road safety, ranging from sensors for environment, home, health, disaster rescue
operations, air/land/navy defense, weapons, robots, etc.

Characteristics of MANET –
• Dynamic Topologies: Network topology which is typically multihops, may change randomly
and rapidly with time, it can form unidirectional or bi-directional links.
• Bandwidth constrained, variable capacity links: Wireless links usually have lower reliability,
efficiency, stability and capacity as compared to wired network.The throughput of wireless
communication is even less than a radio’s maximum transmission rate after dealing with
the constraints like multiple access, noise, interference conditions, etc.
 • Autonomous Behavior: Each nodes can act as a host and router, which shows its
autonomous behavior.
• Energy Constrained Operation: As some or all the nodes rely on batteries or other
exhaustible means for their energy.Mobile nodes are characterized with less memory,
power and light weight features.
• Limited Security: Wireless network are more prone to security threats. A centralized firewall
is absent due to its destributed nature of operation for security, routing and host
configuration.
• Less Human Intervention: They require minimum human intervention to configure the
network, therefore they are dynamically autonomous in nature.
Pros and Cons of MANET –
Pros:
1. Seperation from central network administration.
2. Each nodes can play both the roles ie. of router and host showing autonomous nature.
3. Self configuring and self healing nodes, does not require human intervention.
Cons:
1. Resources are limited due to various constraints like noise, interference conditions, etc.
2. Lack of authorization facilities.
3. More prone to attacks due to limited physical security.

Global Mobile Satellite System

GMSS stands for Global Mobile Satellite System. An artificial body which is placed in an
orbit around the earth for the purpose of communication is known as Communication
satellite. GMSS is a system which consists of various artificial communication satellites
orbiting around the earth for the purpose of communication.

Uplink and downlink frequencies must be different to avoid interference. Now, stations at
the earth have greater power sources than that of satellite as it has only solar power.
Also, higher frequency results in higher attenuation and to compensate with it more
power is required. So, uplink uses higher frequency to penetrate the environment.
Satellite Orbits:

1. LEO:
LEO stands for Low Earth Orbit. The communication satellites in this orbit operates at a
distance of about 500 to 1200 km above the earth’s surface and their orbital time period
generally ranges between 95 to 120 minutes. Low Orbit Satellites makes global radio
coverage possible.
2. MEO:
MEO stands for Medium Earth Orbit. The communication satellites in this orbit operates at a
distance of about 5000 to 12000 km above the earth’s surface and their orbital time period
is about 6 hours. Medium Orbit Satellites are used for land and sea navigation, for example
Google Maps.
3. GEO:
GEO stands for Geostationary Earth Orbit. The communication satellites in this orbit
operates at a distance of about 36000 km above the earth’s surface and their orbital time
period is about 24 hours. Geostationary Orbit Satellites are used for radio broadcasting.
Case Studies:
• IRIDIUM:
Iridium satellite constellation contains 77 satellites. It was the first satellite constellation to
 offer satellite based Personal Communication Services (PCS). It provides voice and data
services all over the globe. It is named after the element IRIDIUM whose atomic number is
77 and features the 77 satellites as electrons revolving around the earth as nucleus. Actually
only 66 satellites are active orbiting in 6 orbital planes. Each plane is 30 degrees apart and
contains 11 satellites.
• GlobalStar:
GlobalStar satellite constellation contains 24 LEO satellites and was set up by an American
satellite company, GlobalStar Inc. It is a 2nd generation satellite constellation and is used
for satellite phone and low-speed data communication. The 24 LEO satellites are orbiting in
the planes which are inclined at an angle of 52 degrees and they doesn’t cover pole areas. It
provides voice and data services.