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Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow Multimedia Wireless Access:
The vision of Mobile Ad Hoc Networking

The past decade has shown a phenomenal growth in wireless communications. Cellular systems have been standardized and Personal Communication Services (PCS) and the 3 rd generation radio technology are being used providing wide-band services to mobile users.

Additionally, wireless networking is being used more and more in both fixed and mobile usage scenarios, whereas high quality multimedia (voice, video and data) services over high-speed wireless local area networks (LANs) are becoming a reality. Wireless LANs (e.g. HiperLAN2, IEEE 802.11), being interconnected to a fixed network, are offering up to 54Mbps both to residential and business environments with high quality of service (QoS). The demand of these multimedia applications has been largely witnessed so far in fixed networks but as life style is rapidly changing, internet-like applications are more and more attractive to mobile users as well.

In parallel with (and separately from) the single hop model for today’s cellular/wireless communications, another type of model based on radio to radio multihopping, has been evolving to serve a growing number of applications which rely on a fast deployable, multihop, wireless infrastructure. A multihop mobile radio network, also called mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-organizing and rapidly deployable network in which neither a wired backbone nor a centralized control exists. The network nodes communicate with one another over scarce wireless channels in a multi-hop fashion. The ad hoc network is adaptable to the highly dynamic topology resulted from the mobility of network nodes and the changing propagation condit ions.

MANETs are a new paradigm of wireless wearable devices enabling instantaneous person-to-person, person-to-machine or machine-to-person communications immediately and easily. One can foresee that in the near future most of the commercial laptops and PDAs will be equipped with radios enabling them to form ad hoc “virtual” wireless networks. Possible commercial applications include business associates sharing information during a meeting, students using laptop computers to participate in an interactive lecture, and emergency disaster relief personnel coordinating efforts in natural disasters. In these applications, where a fixed backbone is not available, a readily deployable wireless network is needed. Mobile ad hoc networks are also a good alternative in rural areas or third world countries where basic communication infrastructure is not well established. Another interesting application of mobile ad hoc networks is ubiquitous computing. Intelligent devices are connected with one another via wireless links and are self-organized in such a way that a newly joined node can request service from local servers without any human intervention.

When designing mobile ad hoc networks, several interesting and difficult problems arise due to shared nature of the wireless medium, limited transmission power (range) of wireless devices, node mobility, and battery limitations. The limited transmission range of wireless network interfaces coupled with the highly dynamic routing infrastructure, due to mobility, create a lot of concerns when addressing issues such as dynamic routing, efficient channel access and quality-of-service (QoS) support.

This tutorial addresses four areas in the area of wireless ad-hoc networking: Application of the Ad-Hoc Technology, Routing Protocols & Mobility Management Algorithms, Medium Access Control Schemes & Quality of Service Based Routing, and Applicability of Ad Hoc Technology to current Mobile Wireless Communication Architectures.

More specifically, the tutorial describes first the idea of ad hoc networking and scenarios where this technology will make an impact. How the environment of an ad hoc network is very different from the wired environment, and the effect this has on the design and operation of routing protocols for ad hoc networks are extensively explained. A description of a number of different issues related to medium access control (MAC), routing, and QoS in mobile ad hoc networks, including the prominent protocols under consideration for standardization by the IETF, follows up. Finally, integration issues with wide area mobility models, such as Mobile-IP, and Cellular systems, such as the GSM, are also discussed. Novel solutions/patents proposed and published by the speaker conclude each technical section. Open problems and challenges for ad hoc networks conclude the presentation.

George N. Aggélou is presently an Associate Professor of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at the Institute of Technology, Athens, Greece and the director of G-Alpha Telecomms, Athens, Greece. In the past years, Prof. Aggélou joined various international companies, including IBM, Thomas J. Watson Research Center, NY - USA, D.M. Data, NJ - USA, CISCO Systems, London –UK, and INTRACOM S.A, Athens - Greece. In 1999, he co-founded Mobile E-Commerce Technologies, in London, UK.

Prof. Aggélou is the editor of a number of conference and journal publications, IETF drafts and one patent. He is the author of the book “Mobile Ad Hoc Networking: Design and Integration” by McGraw-Hill, February 2003, and co-author of the book “Handbook of Wireless Ad Hoc Networks” by CRC Press, September 2002. His research interests include Mobile Networking Protocols, Wireless Ad Hoc Networks, Routing Algorithms and Communication Protocols, QoS provisioning in IP-based wireless multimedia networks, signalling for QoS-aware protocols and Wireless MAC protocols.

Prof. Aggélou is the recipient of the 2000 RACAL Prize for Research Excellence, received by Dr. Chris Ash, RACAL Research Director. He serves on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWireless). In the past, George has served as a technical program committee member in a number of international conferences and as a panelist at ATAMS' 2001.

1. INTRODUCTION TO WIRELESS NETWORKS

   • a. Enabling Technologies (FDMA, TDMA, CDMA, TDD/FDD, the cellular principle)

   • GSM/GPRS wireless communications systems

   • Baseline UMTS infrastructure

   • Evolution of All-IP wireless networks

2. MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKING

   • Issues & Applications

   • Research Challenges: from MAC to Transport Layer

3. DYNAMIC ROUTING IN MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKS

   • Routing problems in MANETs

   • Standardization efforts and the role of the IETF MANET WG

   • Overview of IETF MANET Routing Protocols & Analysis of the RDMAR protocol (IETF candidate by G. N. Aggélou)

4. WIRELESS MEDIUM ACCESS CONTROL/CHANNEL ACCESS PROTOCOLS

   • Problems at Wireless Access Layer

   • Overview of IEEE 802.11 & ETSI HIPERLAN type 2 protocols

   • Analysis of MBCA/BRCA Channel Assignment (Filed for Patent by G. N.Aggélou)

5. QUALITY-OF-SERVICE (QOS) IN WIRELESS/MOBILE NETWORKS

   • Issues & problems

   • QoS Signalling protocols

   • Framework for QoS Wireless Access

6. INTEGRATION WITH WIDE-AREA MOBILITY MODELS

   • Techniques in Cellular Radio Networks (channel assignment algorithms,
     handoff schemes, diversity techniques, sectorization/cell splitting, micro/pico-cellular)

   • Mobility Management in Wireless Networks (call processing and signaling)

   • Issues, Challenges & System Requirements

   • Analysis of an integrated GSM-MANET model (Proposed model to Nokia 3G Lab/UK by G. N. Aggélou)

7. SUMMARY AND CONCLUDING REMARKS

The goal of the tutorial is to comprehensively expose the state-of-the-art in ad-hoc networking, with the emphasis on the applicability of the ad-hoc technology to current and future commercial communications systems.

The tutorial is targeted towards a broad audience, both from the academic and the industrial environments. It is designed to provide the attendees with a focused view on what are the issues, the solutions, and the techniques used in today's and future wireless networks. Mobile Networking professionals who want to develop better understanding of technology trends and identify new market opportunities in the space of short range wireless networking will also benefit from this tutorial.

Basic understanding of layered network architecture is expected. No background in wireless communication is required. Researchers who want to identify open research problems in the area of personal area networking will also find this tutorial very useful.

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Internet Multimedia Traffic Pattrerns

Internet multimedia traffic is increasing as applications like streaming media and packet telephony grow in popularity. In the North America, data traffic volumes now regularly exceed voice traffic volumes. It is expected that the predominant form of traffic carried over advanced networks will be computer to computer traffic. Therefore, understanding the new tendencies in network traffic becomes a key factor for monitoring and managing tomorrow's networks. The tutorial presents particular traffic challenges in multimedia environments.

In the first part, the tutorial introduces Internet traffic and multimedia aspects related to it. The second part is dedicated to traffic modeling, and especially to particular multimedia traffic patterns. The third part is devoted to multimedia monitoring and management, while the last part illustrates special use cases on content delivery and GRID networks.

• Internet Traffic 

• Internet Multimedia Traffic 

• Internet Multimedia Traffic Modelling 

• Traffic Patterns 

• Multimedia Traffic Patterns 

• Service Differentiation and QoS Handling to support Internet Multimedia through Traffic Monitoring 

• Dynamic Packet Filtering 

• Internet Traffic Management 

• Special Multimedia Traffic concerns in Content Delivery 

• Particular issues in Internet Multimedia GRID Networks

Petre is a Senior Technical Leader with Cisco Systems, Inc., being responsible for policy-based strategic architectures and protocols for network management, QoS, SLA, and Performance, Programmable Networks and Services, Provisioning under QoS constraints, and Consistent Service Manageability. He’s industrial research interests include mobile systems, performance, scalability, and policy-related issues in GRID networks. He’s also working on particular issues in multimedia systems concerning traffic patterns and security. He worked on various industrial applications including CAD/CAM, nuclear plant monitoring, and real-time embedded software. In early 90’s he worked on various Pan-Canadian projects related to object-oriented management applications for distributed systems, and to broadband services in multimedia applications. As a Researcher at the Computer Science Research Institute of Montreal he coordinated many projects on distributed software and management architectures. In this period he was an Adjunct Professor with McGill University, Montreal, Canada, and a Canadian representative in the European projects. Since 1998 he was with AT&T Labs, as a senior technical manager, focusing on distributed QoS, SLA, and Performance in content delivery services.

He is the IEEE ComSoc Committee Chair of Dynamic Policy-Based control in Distributed Systems, and actively involved in the innovative NGOSS industrial initiative in TeleManagement Forum. Petre is also a Rapporteur in Study Group 4 at ITU-T. He has been an invited speaker to many international conferences, a tutorial lecturer, chaired several international conferences, and published many technical papers.

He is currently an Adjunct Professor at Concordia University, Montreal, Canada, a Senior IEEE member, and an ACM member.

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Realizing the Vision of On-Demand Networking

In today's economy, everyone must learn to do more with less. With respect to network services, this means that a new genre of management applications is required to accommodate more users that use more demanding applications that have conflicting requirements on their shared environment. The key to solving this problem is to realize that currently, network operation is divorced from how the business operates, and that current approaches don't address this problem. 
This tutorial will discuss the four key foundational elements of solving this problem - use of standard information models, the transformation of these information models to a set of data models to suit the characteristics of different management data, the holistic combination of policy and process management, and a distributed interface oriented architecture that can realize the power of the previous three elements. 
More specifically, the information models discussed will be DEN-ng (the new version of the original Directory Enabled Networks standard) and the Shared Information and Data model - both being built under the auspices of the TeleManagement Forum. In this section, focus will be directed on two important characteristics of these models - their representation of business, system, and implementation entities, and their innovative modeling of policy and network resources (especially how to configure a network resource). 
The second portion of the tutorial will discuss how the information models, which are independent of platform, language and protocol, are transformed into multiple data models, each of which are very dependent on platform, language and protocol. Coherency between the multiple data models will be discussed. It will be shown that this is an implementation of the OMG's Model Driven Architecture initiative. 
The third portion of the tutorial centers around the theme that the combination of policy and process management is required to built high-performance distributed systems. The architectural implications of this lead naturally into the concluding portion of the tutorial, which discusses how the TeleManagement Forum's NGOSS architecture can be used to meet our goals. The NGOSS is a business-oriented solution framework for defining a next-generation OSS. 
This tutorial will be of interest to system and software architects, developers and project managers, as well as technical and business team leaders that want to gain an understanding of future OSS solutions.

John Strassner, the founder of Directory Enabled Networking (DEN) technology, currently serves as Chief Strategy Officer for Intelliden, providing the overall direction and strategy for the definition and development of the company's patent-pending software management suite. He is a former Cisco Fellow who was instrumental in setting the direction for directory- and policy-enabled products and technologies within Cisco and the industry. He first developed DEN as a new paradigm for managing and provisioning networks and networked applications. Currently, he is the rapporteur of the NGOSS metamodel working group (this extends the UML metamodel to incorporate NGOSS concepts), rapporteur of the NGOSS behavior and control working group (this defines how policy and process management can be used to manage the behavior of an NGOSS system), co-chair of the TMF Shared Information and Data modeling work group (which is where DEN-ng and other modeling activities live), member of the TMF NGOSS Steering Group (chartered to set the definition and direction of the NGOSS architecture). Strassner is currently leading the effort to define and implement the next version of the DEN specification, called DEN-ng, in both the TMF as well as in Intelliden products. DEN-ng was built to accommodate the needs of NGOSS architectures, and features the use of patterns and roles. He is the author of the book Directory Enabled Networks, and is currently authoring a new book, called Policy Based Network Management. Strassner is a frequent speaker at many leading international industry conferences.

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