What is Wifi technology? How does it work?

- Wifi has emerged as a very popular technology. 

- This technology has enabled the electronic devices to exchange information between them and to share the internet connection without using any cables or wires. 

- It is a wireless technology. 

- This technology works with the help of the radio waves. 

- The Wifi is defined as a WLAN (wireless local area network) product by the wifi alliance that is based on the standards defined by IEEE (802.11 standards). 

- Most of the WLANs are based upon these standards only and so this technology has been named as wifi which is the synonymous with the term WLAN. 

- The wifi-certified trademark might be used by only those wifi products which have the complete certification for the wifi alliance inter-operability. 

- A number of devices now use wifi such as the PCs, smart phones, video game consoles, digital cameras, digital audio players, tablet computers and so on. 

- All these devices can connect to the network and access internet by means of a wireless network access point. 

- Such an access point is more commonly known as a ‘hotspot’. 

- The range of an access point is up to 20 m. 

- But it has a much greater range outside.  

- An access point can be installed in a single room or in an area of many square miles. 

- This can be achieved by using a number of overlapping access points. 

- However, the security of the wifi is less compared to the wired connections for example Internet.

- This is so because a physical connection is not required by an intruder. 

- The web pages using SSL have security but the intruders can easily access the non-encrypted files on the internet. 

- It is because of this, that the various encryption technologies have been adopted by the wifi. 

- The earlier WEP encryption was weak and so was easy to break.

- Later, came the higher quality protocols such as the WPA2 and WPA. 

- The WPS or the wifi protected set up was an optional feature that was added in the year of 2007. 

- This option a very serious flaw which is that it allowed the recovery of the password of the router by an attacker.

- The certification and the test plan has been updated by the wifi alliance for ensuring that there is resistance against attacks in all the devices that have been newly certified.

- For connecting to a wifi LAN, a wireless network interface controller has to be incorporated in to the computer system.

- This combination of the interface controller and the computer is often called as the station. 

- The same radio frequency communication channel is shared by all the stations.

- Also, all the stations receive any transmission on this channel. 

- Also, the user is not informed of the fact that the data was delivered to the recipient and so is termed as the ‘best–effort delivery mechanism’. 

- For transmitting the data packets, a carrier wave is used. 

- These data packets are commonly known as the ‘Ethernet frames’. 

- Each station regularly tunes in to the radio frequency channel for picking up the transmissions that are available. 

- A device that is wifi enabled can connect to the network if it lies in the range of the wireless network. 

- One condition is that the network should have been configured for permitting such a connection. 

- For providing coverage in a large area multiple hotspots are required. 

- For example, wireless mesh networks in London. 

- Through wifi, services can be provided in independent businesses, private homes, public spaces, high street chains and so on. 

- These hotspots have been set up either commercially or free of charge. 

- Free hotspots are provided at hotels, restaurants and airports. 

Explain CSMA with collision detection?

- CSMA with collision detection is abbreviated as CSMA/CD. 

- CSMA in itself makes use of the LBT technology i.e., listen or sense before talk. 

- But when incorporated with the ability of collision detection, it gets much better. 

- If the channel is sensed to be idle the data packets or frames are transmitted immediately but if not, the transmitter is bound to wait for some time before it can re-transmit. 

- Sensing the channels prior to transmission is absolutely necessary if the collisions are to be avoided. 

- Sensing the channel is the most effective way of avoiding the collisions. 

- There are two types of CSMA protocols namely persistent and the non-persistent CSMA.

- In CSMA/CD protocol all the hosts have freedom for transmitting and receiving the data frames on one and the same channel. 

- Also, the size of the packets is variable.

CSMA/CD comprises of two processes:

Carrier Sense: In this process the transmitter or the host checks if the channel or the line is not occupied before starting the transmission.

Collision Detection: CSMA/CD tries to detect the collisions in the shortest possible time. If it happens to detect a collision, it stops the transmission then and there and waits for a random amount of time which is equal to the binary exponential back-off. It then again senses the channel.

- For ensuring there occurs no collision during the transmission of a packet, a host must have the capability of detecting the collision before the transmission process is complete. 

- What happens is that the host A sensing the line to be idle starts transmitting a frame. 

- Just before the first unit of this frame reaches host B, it also senses the line to be idle and starts its transmission. 

- Now the host B receives data while its transmission is still in progress and so it detects that a collision is about to occur. 

- A collision occurs close to the host B. the host A also receives data in midst of its transmission and therefore detects the collision. 

- For making the hosts detect collision before transmission, a minimum length has to be decided for the packets that are transmitted via CSMA/CD networks. 

There are 3 states for a CSMA/ CD channel namely:

1. Contention
2. Transmission
3. Idle

- Ethernet is the most popular example of the CSMA/CD networks. 

- A minimum slot time is required for collision detection between the stations.

- This slot time must equal twice the maximum value of the propagation delay. - The host acquires the channel on the basis of the 1 – persistence. 

- Also, a jam signal is transmitted if a case of collision detection occurs. 

- CSMA/CD make use of the binary exponential back-off algorithm. 

- It is obvious that the idle time of the channel will be small if the load is heavy. 

- It normalizes all the packets with respect to the time of the packet transmission.

- CSMA/CD represents a very effective method for media access control. 

- There are different methods available for detecting the collisions. 

- Which method is to be followed depends largely on the transmission medium that exists between the two stations. 

- For example, if the two stations are connected via electrical buses, the collision can be detected by making comparison between the transmitted and the received data. 

- Some other way involves recognition of a signal of higher amplitude than the normal one. 

- The jam signal used in the CSMA/CD networks is constituted of 32 bit binary pattern.

Explain Carrier Sense Multiple Access Protocols - CSMA

- CSMA or Carrier Sense Multiple Access is defined as a probabilistic MAC (media access control) protocol. 

- In this protocol the absence of the traffic is verified by the node prior to start transmitting through a transmission medium that is shared by a number of channels. 

- For example, a band of EM spectrum, electric bus and so on. 

- Feedback from the receiver is used by the transmitter for determining whether the channel is already occupied by some transmission process or not. - This is termed as the carrier sense. 

- The transmitter before starting a transmission starts detecting whether a carrier wave is present their transmitted by some another station. 

- If a carrier wave is present, the transmission has no other option other than waiting for the transmission in progress to end before starting its own transmission. 

- To put it simply we can say that the carrier sense is what the CSMA protocol is based up on. 

- By ‘multiple access’, it simply means that a number of stations can transmit and receive data through the same medium. 

- But in this case all the other stations receive the data transmitted by one node using that same medium. 

There are many types of CSMA protocols as mentioned below:

1. CSMA with collision detection: 

- In short, this protocol is known as the CSMA/CD. 

- This protocol is used for improving the performance. 

- This it does through the termination of the transmission once a collision occurs along making reductions in the probability of occurrence of the other collisions upon re-transmissions.

2. CSMA with collision avoidance: 

- CSMA/ CA is the abbreviated form of this type of CSMA protocol. 

- This protocol avoids collision for improving the performance of the same.

- It tends not to be greedy on the transmitting channel.

- If it happens to sense the channel as busy prior to transmission then it is said to defer to a random interval.

- This is a measure for reduction in the probability of the packet collisions occurring on the channel.

3. Virtual time CSMA: 

- In short, known as the VTCSMA.

- This type of CSMA protocol has been designed for avoiding the collisions that are generated by the nodes. 

- These are the nodes that translate the signals at the same time. 

- This CSMA protocol is employed in the hard real time systems. 

- Two clocks are used by each node namely a real clock (rc) and a virtual clock (vc) for telling ‘real time’. 

- If the channel happens to be busy, the virtual clock freezes and if not it is reset. 

- vc is not initialized if the channel is busy and it runs faster when compared to the real clock.

CSMA happens to operate in various modes as discussed below:

1-Persistent: 

- The sender stations keeps on sensing the transmission channel until it becomes idle if previously it was busy. 

- When it finally becomes, then it starts transmitting the data packet i.e., the frame. 

- If a collision is detected, the transmitter has to wait for a random period of time before attempting to re-transmit the signal. 

- It finds use in systems such as Ethernet i.e., the systems using CSMA/ CD.

P-Persistent: 

- This mode lies somewhere between the non–persistent and the 1–persistent CSMA access modes.

- Once the data is ready to be transmitted, it checks for the status of the medium and starts transmitting the data packets with a certain probability.

Non-persistent: 

Less aggressive when compared to the previous one.

O-Persistent:

It works based according to the assigned transmission order. 

What are five key assumptions in dynamic channel allocation?

Putting the available bandwidth in operation of the cellular telephone system to efficient use is an important problem to be considered for providing good service to the largest number of customers possible. The problem has gained a critical status owing to the rapid growth of the cellular telephones users. 

- A communication channel is nothing but a band of frequencies which a number of users can use simultaneously if they are residing far apart from each other. 

- There is a minimum distance at which no interference occurs between the users and it is known as the channel reuse constraint. 

- A cellular telephone system divides the service area in to a number of regions commonly known as the cells. 

- Each of the cells has its own base station for handling the calls concerned with that cell. 

- The bandwidth of the communication channel is partitioned in to many channels permanently. 

- The cells are then allocated these channels in such a way that the channel reuse constraint is not violated by the calls. 

- There are a number of ways for allocating the channels. 

- Few of them are better than the others when it comes to reliably making channels available to all the cells. 

Few examples of channel allocation methods are:

1. Fixed assignment method
2. Dynamic allocation method
3. Reinforcement learning method

About Dynamic Method Allocation

- One type of dynamic method allocation is the BDCL or the borrowing with directional channel locking. 

- Out of all the above mentioned channel allocation methods, the dynamic allocation is considered the best one according to some studies conducted. 

- It is somewhat of the heuristic kind. 

- In dynamic allocation, the channels are allocated in the same way as in the fixed assignment method but it permits borrowing channels from the other cells whenever required. 

- It then arranges those channels in a specific order in each of the cells and this ordering is used in determining the channels for borrowing and reassigning the calls dynamically within the cells.

- There are static allocation techniques also but those don’t seem to work as well as the dynamic allocation techniques. 

In dynamic channel allocation 5 assumptions are always made which we have discussed below:

Station model: 

- There are N independent stations in the model and one frame is generated by each of the stations one at a time. 

- It is blocked until the successful transmission of the previous frame. 

- This means a station cannot queue multiple frames for transmission. 

- For example, a transmission gap of 100 bits is required during the transmission of the consecutive frames.

Single channel assumption:  

- The same medium is shared by all the stations. 

- Through it all the stations can receive and transmit.

Collision assumption: 

- A collision occurs whenever at the same time two frames are transmitted. 

- The two frames that collide have to be re-transmitted.

Transmission model: 

- There are 2 types namely, the continuous time model and the slotted time model. 

- In the former type transmission can be started at any given time. 

- In the latter model, transmission starts with a time slot.

Carrier sense: 

- It can also be classified in to 2 categories namely carrier sense and no carrier sense. 

- Stations can know if a channel is occupied prior to using it. This is called carrier sense.

- In no carrier sense, the stations cannot know whether the channel is occupied or not before transmission.

- Also, it gets difficult for the dynamic allocation method for setting up the favorable usage patterns as the calls start saturating the system.