IMPLEMENTING MULTI HOP TRANSMISSION IN WIRELESS LOW RATE

IEEE 802.11 NETWORK

IDA SYAFIZA BINTI MD ISA

A project report submitted in fulfilment of the

Requirement for the award of the degree of

Master of Engineering (Electrical – Electronics and Telecommunication)

Faculty of Electrical Engineering

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

JANUARY 2012

iii

Dedication to my beloved Husband and Daughter,

who has fulfilled my Heart with Love and Brightness

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

In the name of ALLAH, Lord of the Universe, and Peace and Prayers be upon

His Final Prophet and Messenger. With the help from the numerous individuals, this

thesis has successfully been done.

First and foremost, I would like to take this opportunity to express my

appreciation and gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Sharifah Hafizah Bt Syed Ariffin for

her guidance, suggestion and full support to complete this project.

I would also like to express my sincere appreciation to my husband, Nur latif

Azyze bin Mohd Shaari Azyze for his moral support, encouragement and providing

his valuable time and effort during my research so that the project would succeed.

Also to my daughter, thank you for your love and not giving Mama a hard time.

Special thanks go to my beloved mother, father, brother and sister for their

support in all the stages of my study.

Finally, I am also thankful to my colleagues in Telekom lab and to all my

friends in UTM for their assistance and understanding.

Thank you all

Ida Syafiza Binti Md Isa

v

ABSTRACT

An Ad Hoc networks are becoming more important in the daily lives. It can

be used to instantly connect to local or remote networks such as the internet without

the need of pre-existing infrastructure or centralized administration. The users of the

network together will establish the infrastructure. The disadvantage of wireless

communication is that it has limited range of radio transmission. Due to this, multiple

network „hops‟ may be needed for one node to exchange data with another across the

network. In an ad hoc network, the nodes may not only operate as a host but also as a

router to forwarding the packets to others nodes. There are variety of routing

protocol targeted at this environment have been developed and most of them suffers

from high overhead data traffic. The main purpose of this project is to develop a new

routing strategy. The new routing is developed by using the existing network

protocol that had been already used in network environments which is the Address

Resolution Protocol (ARP). This new routing is used to maintain and establish routes

in a vehicular ad hoc routing network. Many of the existing strategies nowadays are

wasting these resources. By extending the ARP protocol with two new operation

types, ARP Forward Request and ARP Forward Reply to allow the intermediate

nodes to forward the request and reply, we have successfully manage to create a

multi hop transmission in ad hoc network. The data can be sent through multi hop

transmission until it reaches the destination. Measurement taken from a 3 nodes of

802.11b test bed demonstrate the new routing protocol for multi hop transmission

can be used in an ad hoc network and it can perform well.

vi

ABSTRAK

Rangkaian tanpa struktur tetap semakin menjadi kepentingan dalam

kehidupan seharian manusia. Rangkainan tanpa struktur tetap ini boleh digunakan

dalam menyediakan perhubungan diantara rangkaian tempatan atau rangkainan

kawalan seperti laman sesawang tanpa memerlukan satu struktur rangkaian tetap.

Pengguna didalam rangkaian perhubungan tersebut akan bergabung dengan

sendirinya untuk membentuk satu rangkainan perhubungan yang tetap. Perhubungan

tanpa wayar mempunyai keburukkan iaitu ia mempunyai kawasan rangkaian

perhubungan yang terhad. Oleh itu, beberapa rangkaian untuk menghantar data dari

satu nod to nod yang lain dalam rangkaian perhubungan yang sama di perlukan.

Dalam rangkaian perhubungan tanpa struktur rangkaian tetap ini, setiap nod bukan

hanya beroperasi sebagai penghantar tetapi juga nod yang digunakan sebagai

pengantara untuk menjadi laluan penghantaran data dari mana-mana nod ke nod yang

lain. Tujuan utama projek ini adalah untuk mencipta satu strategi penghantaran yang

baru. Strategi penghantaran yang dicipta ini adalah dengan menggunakan strategi

penghantran yang sedia ada dan digunakan dalam sistem perhubungan iaitu protocol

ARP. Strategi yang dicipta ini adalah untuk menjaga selain membina satu jalan

penghantaran di dalam aplikasi penghataran tanpa struktur tetap di antara kenderaan.

Kebanyakkan strategi penghantaran yang sedia ada kini tidak menggunakan strategi

protocol ARP yang sedia ada ini. Dengan menambah baik protocol ARP ini iaitu

dengan membawa kehadapan pertanyaan dan membawa ke hadapan balasan untuk

membenarkan pengantara nod menghantar pertanyaan dan membalas, pemprosesan

data strategi ini berjaya dikurangkan. Selain itu data juga berjaya di hantar menerusi

beberapa nod sehingga samapi ke destinasinya. 3 nod yang menggunakan 802.11b

diaplikasikan dalam eksperimen dan keputusan menunjukkan bahawa strategi baru

yang dicipta untuk penghantran data menerusi beberapa nod ini berjaya diaplikasikan

dalam rangkain pehubungan tanpa struktur tetap

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER TITLE PAGE

DECLARATION ii

DEDICATION iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENT iv

ABSTRACT v

ABSTRAK vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS vii

LIST OF TABLES xi

LIST OF FIGURES xii

LIST OF SYMBOLS xiv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS xv

LIST OF APPENDICES xvii

1 INTRODUCTION 1

1.1 Background 1

1.2 Motivation 3

1.3 Objective 3

1.4 Scope of work 4

1.5 Significant of the Project 5

1.6 Organization of the Report 5

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2 LITERATURE REVIEW 6

2.1 Introduction to Ad Hoc Routing 6

2.2 Routing Protocol in Ad Hoc Wireless Multi hop

Networks

8

2.2.1 Proactive Routing Algorithms 10

2.2.2 Reactive Routing Algorithms 11

2.2.3 Hybrid Routing Algorithms 12

2.3 Existing Strategies for Ad Hoc Routing 12

2.3.1 Ad Hoc On-Demand Distance Vector

(AODV)

12

2.3.2 Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) 13

2.3.3 Optimized Link State Routing (OSLR) 14

2.3.4 Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) 14

2.4 IEEE 802.11 Standard 15

2.5 Address Resolution Protocol 17

2.5.1 ARP Request and Reply 19

2.6 Internet Control Message Protocol (ICMP) 20

2.7 Related Works 21

2.8 Summary 23

3 METHODOLOGY 24

3.1 Introduction 24

3.2 Hardware and Software Specification 25

3.2.1 Explorer 16 Board 25

3.2.1.1 PIC Microcontroller

(PIC24FJ128GA010)

26

3.2.2 RF Transceiver Module 27

3.2.2.1 IEEE 802.11 29

ix

3.2.2.2 MRF24WB0MA Antenna

Specification

30

3.2.3 MPLAB Software 32

3.3 Flow Chart of Methodology 33

3.4 Multi-hop Transmission Using Address

Resolution Protocol (ARP)

35

3.4.1 The Concept of Multi-hop using ARP 35

3.4.2 ARP Message for Ad Hoc Purposes 35

3.5 PING Application 38

3.5.1 ICMP Packet 38

3.6 Experiment Tool and Design 40

3.6.1 Experiment Scenario 41

3.7 Experiment Calculation of the Average of

Round Trip Time

43

3.8 Experiment Calculation of the Throughput 43

3.9 Experiment Program Flow 44

3.9.1 State Diagram for Node B 46

3.9.2 Classifier Module 47

3.9.3 ARP Module 48

3.9.4 ICMP Module 49

3.9.5 Forwarding Module 51

3.9.6 Reply Module 52

3.10 Summary 53

4 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS 54

4.1 Introduction 54

4.2 System Requirement 54

4.2.1 Orientation of the MRFWB0MA Antenna 55

x

4.2.2 The Model of Deployment 56

4.3 Experimental Results 58

4.3.1 Place with Obstacle Results 58

4.3.2 Place without Obstacle Results 61

4.3.3 Comparison results of different

environment

63

4.3.4 Wireshark Results 65

4.4 Summary 66

5 CONCLUSION AND FUTURE WORKS 67

5.1 Conclusion 67

5.2 Future Works 69

REFERENCES 70

Appendix A 73

xi

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE NO. TITLE PAGE

2.1 Overview of IEEE 802.11 standards 16

3.1 802.11b Wi-Fi Standards Specification 27

3.2 Specification of PIC24FJ128GA010 30

xii

LIST OF FIGURES

FIGURE NO. TITLE PAGE

2.1 The VANET architecture 8

2.2 The OSI Reference Model 15

2.3 The Address Resolution Protocol packet format 18

2.4 ARP resolves MAC address 19

2.5 ICMP Packet Format 20

3.1 PIC Explorer 16 board 26

3.2 Microchip PIC24FJ128GA010 27

3.3 RF Transceiver Module MRF24WB0MA 28

3.4 MRF24WB0MA/MRF24WB0MB Block Diagram 29

3.5 Azimuth Radiation Pattern, 2.44GHz 30

3.6 Radiation Pattern On Side With PCB Antenna, 2.44GHz 31

3.7 Radiation Pattern Along Pin Edge, 2.44GHz 31

3.8 Overview of MPLAB IDE Software 33

3.9 The Project Methodology 34

3.10 The ARP message used to find a route path through

destination

36

3.11 The ARP message packet 37

3.12 Multi-hop transmission in an Ad Hoc network 39

3.13 Place with no obstacle experiment test bed

deployment

42

3.14 Place with obstacle experiment test bed deployment 42

3.15 State Diagram For Node B 46

3.16 Classifier Module State Diagram 47

3.17 ARP Module State Diagram 48

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3.18 ICMP Module State Diagram 49

3.19 Forwarding Module State Diagram 51

3.20 Reply Module State Diagram 52

4.1 Antenna Orientation for each node 55

4.2 The model to deploy the nodes during experiment 56

4.3 At a place with obstacles, Hutan Bandar Mutiara

Rini, Johor

57

4.4 At a place with no obstacle, Padang Kawad UTM 57

4.5 Average of RTT vs Distances in a place with

obstacles

59

4.6 Packet Loss and Packet receive over distance in a

place with obstacles

60

4.7 Throughput (kbps) over Distances in a place with

obstacles

60

4.8 Average of RTT over Distances in place without

obstacles

61

4.9 Packet Loss and Packet receive over distance in a

place without obstacles

62

4.10 Throughput (kbps) over Distances in a place without

obstacles

62

4.11 Average RTT over Distances 63

4.12 Packet Loss over Distances 64

4.13 Throughput (kbps) over Distances 65

4.14 Wireshark capturing packet data 66

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LIST OF SYMBOLS

T - Average of round trip time in (ms)

i - No of packet transmission

iT - Round Trip Time for each packet transmission

Th - Throughput (bps)

xv

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

ARP - Address resolution Protocol

AES - Advance Encryption Standard

API - Application Programming Interface

AODV - Ad Hoc On Demand Distance Vector

CCK - Complementary Code Keying

CSMA/CA - Carrier Sense Multiple Access/Collision

Avoidance

DSDV - Destination Sequenced Distance Vector

DSSS - Direct Sequence Spectrum

DSR - Dynamic Source Routing

DPSK - Differential Phase Keying

DQPSK - Differential Quaternary Phase Keying

EEPROM - Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only

Memory

IP - Internet Protocol

IPX - Internetwork Packet Exchange

IEFT - Internet Engineering Task Force

ICD - In Circuit Debugger

ISM - Industrial, Scientific and Medical

IPv4 - Internet Protocol Version 4

LAN - Local Area Network

LLC - Logical Link Control

LED - Light Emitting Diode

MANET - Mobile Ad Hoc Network

MAC - Media Access Control

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MPR - Multipoint Relays

OFDM - Orthogonal Frequency Division Modulation

OSI - International Organization for Standardization

OSLR - Optimized Link Rate Routing

PCB - Printed Circuit Board

PIC - Programmable Interface Controller

PHY - Physical

RF - Radio Frequency

RFC - Request for Comments

RTCC - Real Time Clock and Calender

RTT - Round Trip Time

RREQ - Route request

RREP - Route Reply

RERR - Route Error

SRAM - Static Random Access Memory

SSID - Service Set Identifier

TP - Topology Local message

TCP - Transmission Control Protocol

TCP/IP - Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol

TKIP - Temporal Key Integrity Protocol

UART - Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter

UDP - User Datagram Protocol

USB - Universal Serial Bus

UTM - Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

VANET - Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks

V2V - Vehicle to vehicle

VRC - Vehicle to Roadside

V2I - Vehicle To Infrastructure

WEP - Wired Equivalent Privacy

WPA - Work Project Administration

WSN - Wireless Sensor Network

WLAN - Wireless Local Area Network

ZRP - Zone Routing Protocol

xvii

LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX TITLE PAGE

A Source Code 73

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

1.1 Background

Nowadays, the technology for wireless communications has made

tremendous advantages where it allows a very high mobility, efficient working and

almost extreme economical. Moreover the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) has

become more crucial for mankind. The WSN is built of nodes from a few node to

several hundreds or even thousands nodes, where each node is connected to a sensor.

Each of the sensor network nodes consists of a radio transceiver with an internal

antenna, a microcontroller, an electronic circuit for interfacing and an energy source.

Devices such as cellular phone have now become necessity to everyone which allows

people to communicate with each other with the urban coverage nearly everywhere

around the world. Bluetooth and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN)

technologies have now become available and it facilitates easier living and creating

the wireless environment.

Ad hoc is one of the communication technologies which provide the

possibility for wireless devices to communicate directly with each other. Ad hoc

mode allows all wireless devices to operate within the range of each other to discover

and communicate in peer-to-peer fashion without using central access points. Ad hoc

network is a network that makes pre-existing infrastructure obsolete and it provides

2

dynamic topology. Ad hoc network has the ability of self healing structure that

makes the communication less vulnerable for failing links. This means that, even the

communicating devices may be removed or added in the network, the information

still can make its way through the networks to its final destination.

Due to the limited transmission range of the wireless network interfaces,

sometimes the exchange data from one node to another may not be successful across

the network. So, multiple networks “hops” may be needed to exchange data between

the nodes across the network. In such a network, each of the nodes will not only

operate as a host but also as a router where the forwarding packets from one node to

another in the network may not be within direct wireless transmission range of each

other. Each node that participates in an ad hoc routing protocol will allows it to

discover „multi-hop‟ path through the network to any other node. The ad hoc

networking is also called infrastructure less networking, since the node in the

network will dynamically establish routing among themselves to form their own

network.

The existence of ad hoc technology and the „multi-hop‟ network are useful

for the Vehicular Ad Hoc Network (VANET) application. The VANET technology

used vehicle as mobile nodes in the network to create a network. Every participating

car in the network is turned by VANET into a wireless router or node. This allows

car approximately 100 to 300 metres of each other to communicate and this creates a

network with wide range. The cars may fall out of the signal and drop out of the

network and other cars may join in, connecting vehicles to one another.

For the safety purpose, the system that integrated with this technology is

beneficial to the police and fire vehicles where the communication of Vehicle to

vehicle (V2V) application can be done even the nodes or vehicles can move around

with no boundaries on their direction.

3

1.2 Motivation

Nowadays the IEEE 802.11 standard dominates the market and the

implementing hardware is well developed. Ad Hoc protocol can be used for

robustness and it can be deployed anywhere. This is useful for Vehicular Ad Hoc

Network (VANET) which has grown out of the need to support the growing number

of wireless products that can be used in vehicles. Moreover, as the mobile wireless

devices and networks become increasingly important, the demand for Vehicle-to-

Vehicle (V2V), Vehicle to Roadside (VRC) and Vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I)

communication will continue to grow where the nodes can move around with no

boundaries on their direction. To support the communication in VANET network, a

multi-hop concept is needed. Hence a new strategy for multi-hop transmission in

wireless low rate ad hoc network with less overhead network traffic compared to

existing protocols is developed.

1.3 Objective

The objectives of the project are:

1. To configure the low rate IEEE 802.11b platforms using Microchip WiFi

Development Board.

2. To develop a multi hop routing protocol in C language.

3. To implement multi hop routing protocol on wireless Ad Hoc network.

Performances of the routing protocol will be evaluated base on the packet

receives, packet loss, average time required for successful transmission and the

throughput.

4

1.4 Scope of Work

The scope of this project includes developing software for the low rate

802.11b platforms in C language. The routing protocol of multi hop transmission

using the existing network protocol, Address Resolution Protocol (ARP) on wireless

Ad Hoc network is developed to send packets to the destination. This software will

be embedded in the low rate 802.11b radio. The node will acts as a transmitter,

receiver and a router.

The proposed routing protocol used the existing network protocol which is

the Address Resolution Protocol (ARP). The ARP protocol utilizes to define the

route or the path to the destination nodes. The query packet which is the ARP request

will be broadcast to all nodes in the network in order to find the location of the

destination. The forwarding nodes are implemented to find the routes to the

destination. This new protocol comprises of two phases which are route discovery

and data forwarding. In route discovery, if the nodes are in the same network, the

ARP request or the query will be broadcasted. Nodes that hear the request will decide

to broadcast the packet by replacing the source IP with its own IP. Therefore, at the

destination node that receive this packet will then send a reply to the intermediate

node and it will be forwarded via the route that have been established.

The development of this new routing began with the development of the state

diagrams of the algorithm that illustrates the essential sequence of events. This eases

the real test bed implementation. This project did not involve with the simulation but

are developed in a real working implementation of a test bed that runs the routing

protocol. The performance metrics such as packet receive, packet loss, the round trip

time and also the throughput are analyzed. The test bed developed consists of three

802.11b and a laptop that can run a Wireshark.

5

1.5 Significant of the Project

This project is to develop a new routing protocol that can works in an ad hoc

network. The development of the new routing protocol is based on the literature

review on the existing routing protocol in the current communication network. The

performance of this new routing protocol is verified with the implementation on a

test bed in a two different environment. Depends on these outcomes, the feasibility of

using this new protocol can be determined.

1.6 Organization of the Project

This report consists of five chapters. Chapter 1 contains the introduction to

the project, the motivation, objectives, scope of work and the significant study of the

project. Chapter 2 contains the literature review of the ad hoc network, the existing

routing protocol and the concept of the Address resolution Protocol (ARP). In

chapter 3, the methodology of the project is illustrated. This chapter details the

hardware and software tools used. Besides, the testing method is also discussed here.

In addition, the flow chart of the methodology and the flow chart of the programming

are also explained here. Chapter 4 explains the result and the analysis of the

experiments. The result of the different location of the experiment is also illustrated.

Finally, chapter 5 concludes the report and suggests the future works.

70

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