ITC513 Wireless Networking Concepts

1.Different antenna, such as yagi, horn, and cellular antennas, etc. has different merits. Research these technologies in details and pay specific attention to how they are used as well their strengths and weakness. Provide an opinion regarding which antenna types will become the dominant players in the future of medium- and long-distance wireless links.

 

2.A local engineering group ask you to present your finding of the most recent advanced wireless technologies. Research any  3 different wireless network protocols in details and pay specific attention to how they are used as well their strengths and weakness. What security challenges they are facing? Provide a report of your opinion .

 

3.Read the following two research papers, please give your critical reflection on the topic of the software-defined wireless network.

1. Description of Different Types of Antenna

An antenna is a transducer that converts the electrical signal to the electromagnetic waves during the transmitting mode and vice versa in receiving mode (Potapov, 2013, September). This paper would research about the Yagi antenna, Cellular antenna and Horn antenna. It would discuss the uses of these antennas along with their strengths and weakness.

Horn Antenna:

The horn antenna is known as a Microwave antenna, and it uses a microwave frequency above 300 MHz It consists of a flaring metal waveguide with a horn like structure. The first horn antenna was introduced in 1897 in India (Pan et al., 2013).

Applications:

It is used for the transmission of the microwaves to space with the help of a waveguide and reception of the signal in the waveguide. They are also used in the applications which require high performance such as radio telescope and feed horn for satellites. 

Strength and Weakness:

The strength of horn antenna includes an absence of the resonant element and can operate over a wide bandwidth and range of frequency. The weakness is that due to spherical shape it fails to provide a directive beam.

Yagi Antenna:

It is appropriately known as the Yagi- Uda antenna. The Yagi antenna is directional in nature, and it consists of all the elements parallel in a line. The director element of Yagi antenna is shorter, and reflector element is longer than the driven pole. They have an average frequency above 10 MHz (Kim et al., 2014). 

Applications:

It is used for communication of low frequency. The application of the Yagi antenna is in amateur radio communication and rarely for satellite communication. 

Strength and Weakness:

Yagi antenna is used in reception of weak signals as they have beam width between 50 and 70 degrees and single direction focus. The weakness of the Yagi antenna is that the range of antenna is low.

Cellular Antenna

This type of antenna consists of the wireless communication network. The transceivers are distributed in the land areas a specific gap (Zhang et al., 2015). It can transmit voice and data.

Application:

It is used in the mobile communication for the exchange of data and voice signals between the transmitter and receiver.

Strength and Weakness:

The strength of cellular antenna is that it is capable of handling number of users at the same instant of time and the range of this antenna is wide (Zhang et al., 2015). The weakness is that it requires an immediate platform for reception and transmission of data and the implementation cost is high.

Comparing these antennas in the context of future dominant player, the cellular antenna can be considered as efficient. The coverage area of the cellular network is large than the other two antenna. Therefore the cellular antenna is recommended as the future of distance wireless links.

2. Different Wireless Network Protocols

The network model consist of various network protocols such as Internet Protocol, File transfer protocol, Internet Protocol, Electronic trading protocol and Bluetooth protocol. This paper would consider the Internet Protocol,

Internet Protocol

It is used for transmitting datagram and enabling internetworking. It delivers the data packets from the source to the host. The IP address is used for determining the destination of the host in the packet headers. It is defined as the transmission control protocol which is introduced in 1974 (Demmer, Ott & Perreault, 2014).

Application:

This type of protocol is used for the transmission of data between the devices of sender and receiver considering that both the devices may or may not be in the same network (Demmer, Ott & Perreault, 2014). It uses encapsulation method which is used for hiding the data and thus can be implemented for transferring data safely.

Strength and Weakness:

The Internet protocol is considered to be stable. The strength is that the implementation of IP is easy and it supports modern OS. The weakness of IP can face security challenges such as DNS attack and SYN attack.

Hyper Text Transfer Protocol:

It is a client server protocol where the browser is a client, and the application running is the server (Fielding & Reschke, 2014). It is used to provide intermediate network elements for the communication between the server and the client.

Applications:

It is used for transmitting data and files on the World Wide Web since 1990 (Fielding & Reschke, 2014). It is used for defining the method for formatting and transmitting the data and actions of browser and server for various commands.

Strength and Weakness:

The strength of HTTP protocol is that a single IP address can host the multiple numbers of websites. The disadvantage is that it is not encrypted and thus there is an issue of privacy of data.

File Transfer Protocol:

It is a protocol based on the client server architecture which provides a communication channel between the client and server (Khan, Rehmani & Reisslein, 2016). The data transfer is controlled with the help of a command channel.

Applications:

It is used for transferring of data and files securely between the two servers over a network.

Strength and Weakness:

The strength is that file transfer protocol can be used for sending numbers of files at the same time. It provides the facility of resuming and pausing the transfer of file (Khan, Rehmani & Reisslein, 2016). The disadvantage is that it faces security challenges such as Brute force attack and bounce attack.

The above discussion can be used to conclude that there are specific issues of network security in using these protocol, but network protocols are important for the communication between different devices.

3. Critical Reflection of Software-Based Wireless Network

This article "An architecture for software-defined wireless networking", the author has defined Software-defined networking as ideal for implementing wired networking. The author illustrates the SDN approach and reviews the standardization for the need of coordinated approach (Bernardos et al., 2014).

The reviewed article “Software Defined Wireless Network: A Survey of Issues and Solutions” provides the definition of different 4G solution based on SDN. The authors also provide a comparative study parameters of 4G solutions (Rangisetti & Tamma, 2017). The author states how the evolution of 5G will affect traffic demand increase, low latency and high data demands. The article ends by summarizing the implications of SDN in addressing the 5G requirements.

The critical analysis of this two articles concludes that the dynamic requirement of server virtualization is not supported by the data centers. It also summarizes that open API structure can be used for improving network flexibility and ensuring quality service.

References

Bernardos, C. J., Oliva, A. d. l., Serrano, P., Banchs, A., Contreras, L. M., Jin, H., & Zuniga, J. C. (2014). An architecture for software-defined wireless networking. IEEE Wireless Communications, 21(3), 52-61.doi: 10.1109/MWC.2014.6845049.

Demmer, M., Ott, J., & Perreault, S. (2014). Delay-tolerant networking TCP convergence-layer protocol (No. RFC 7242).

Fielding, R., & Reschke, J. (2014). Hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP/1.1): Semantics and content (No. RFC 7231).

Khan, A. A., Rehmani, M. H., & Reisslein, M. (2016). Cognitive radio for smart grids: Survey of architectures, spectrum sensing mechanisms, and networking protocols. IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, 18(1), 860-898.

Kim, J., Roh, Y. G., Cheon, S., Choe, J. H., Lee, J., Lee, J., ... & Park, Q. H. (2014). Babinet-inverted optical Yagi–Uda antenna for unidirectional radiation to free space. Nano letters, 14(6), 3072-3078.

Pan, W., Huang, C., Chen, P., Pu, M., Ma, X., & Luo, X. (2013). A beam steering horn antenna using active frequency selective surface. IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, 61(12), 6218-6223.

Potapov, A. A. (2013, September). The base of fractal antenna theory and applications: Utilizing in electronic devices. In Antenna Theory and Techniques (ICATT), 2013 IX International Conference on (pp. 62-67). IEEE.

Rangisetti, A. K., & Tamma, B. R. (2017). Software Defined Wireless Networks: A Survey of Issues and Solutions. Wireless Personal Communications, 97(4), 6019-6053. doi: 10.1007/s11277-017-4825-8.

Zhang, J. A., Huang, X., Dyadyuk, V., & Guo, Y. J. (2015). Massive hybrid antenna array for millimeter-wave cellular communications. IEEE Wireless Communications, 22(1), 79-87.