WINGs for the Internet
The WINGs project was funded by DARPA / ITO at the University of
California, Santa Cruz (UCSC) and
Rooftop Communications Corporation (Rooftop) of Mountain View,
California. The project was completed in 2000. Several technologies
developed in WINGS served the development of the NOKIA Wireless
Routers after NOKIA acquired Rooftop in 1999.
This project was part of the DARPA Global Mobile (GloMo)
program.
At UCSC, this project was part of the research carried out at the
Computer Communication Research Group (CCRG) of the
Computer Engineering Department, which is part of the UCSC School of
Engineering.
The principal investigators of this project were J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves
(UCSC)
and David Beyer (Rooftop).
Objective
Today's internetwork technology has been extremely successful in
linking huge numbers of computers and users; however, this technology
is oriented toward computer interconnection in relatively stable
operational environments, which cannot adequately support many of the
emerging civilian and military uses and interconnection of networks.
A multihop packet-radio network is an ideal technology to establish an
``instant communication infrastructure'' in disaster areas resulting
from flood, earthquake, hurricane, or fire, support U.S. military
doctrine, and extend the global communication infrastructure to the
wireless mobile environment.
Achieving multimedia communication on the move and instant information
infrastructures presents a challenge, because of the many differences
between wireline and wireless networks, the characteristics of
portable devices (e.g., power levels, size), and the dynamics of large
mobile environments in the battlefield and urban areas.
To meet this challenge, UCSC and Rooftop designed, analyzed,
implemented, and tested wireless internet gateways (WINGs)
needed to enable the seamless marriage of distributed, dynamic,
self-organizing, multihop wireless networks with the emerging
multimedia Internet.
WINGs enables fundamentally new wireless network architectures in
which not all network nodes must have the same capabilities but
any network node can move with minimal detriment to network
performance. To effectively tradeoff the small size and low-power
requirements of hand-helds with the higher-power, long-range needs of
the overall network, we targeted our development and demonstration
efforts on a two-tier, mobile wireless architecture.
Long-range WINGs, which are transportable and reside in
vehicles, tents, or on roof tops, to be used to establish dynamic
backbones, and short-range WINGs, which are low power and can
be hand held, serve as the access points for mobile users.
Approach
Our approach consisted of advancing the state of the art in the
following thre areas:
Innovative packet-radio networking protocols and
architectures designed top to bottom to guarantee service for
multimedia traffic and to provide a seamless extension of the
Internet.
A unique protocol development environment that provides
a seamless transition of new network algorithms and protocols from
simulations to the actual embedded radio platform.
Modular, high-speed, low-cost, commercial, spread-spectrum
radio hardware.
WING protocols permit seamless interfacing between a WING-based
network and the rest of the global communication infrastructure. The
innovative WING protocols developed in this project include channel
access protocols, link control protocols, and routing protocols.
Our development and demonstration tools and methodology of WINGs was based on:
A commercial spread-spectrum radio
Rooftop's unique protocol development toolkit,
which permits the same code used in simulations to be used as embedded
software controlling the operation of the transceiver hardware.
Accomplishments
The WING prototypes were used and adopted by several other DARPA
research groups in the GloMo program, including BBN.
The research work in this project resulted in 25 refereed papers
published in journals and conferences, four Ph.D. theses, and two
M.S. theses. All of these works are available on line at
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications.html
The theses completed with support from this project are the following:
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Shree Murthy, ``Routing in Packet-Switched Networks Using Path-Finding
Algorithms,'' Ph.D. thesis, Computer Engineering, University of
California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, Sept. 1996.
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications/shree.phd-thesis.pdf
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Jyoti Raju, ``Distributed Assignment of Codes in Multihop Radio
Networks,'' M.S. Thesis, Computer Science, University of California,
Santa Cruz, CA 95064, June 1998.
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications/jyoti.masters.pdf
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Christina Parsa, ``Improving TCP Performance over Wireless Networks at
the Link Layer,'' M.S. Thesis, Computer Engineering, University of
California, Santa Cruz, June 1998.
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications/chris.masters.pdf
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Andrew Muir, ``Channel Access Protocols based on Transmission Groups,''
PhD Thesis, Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa
Cruz, CA 95064, June 1998.
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications/andrew.phd-thesis.pdf
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Chane L. Fullmer, ``Collision Avoidance Techniques for Packet-Radio
Networks,'' PhD Thesis, Computer Engineering, University of
California, Santa Cruz, CA 95064, June 1998.
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications/chane.phd.pdf
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Rodrigo Garces, ``Collision Avoidance and Resolution Multiple Access,''
PhD Thesis, Computer Engineering, University of California, Santa
Cruz, CA 95064, March 1999.
http://www.soe.ucsc.edu/research/ccrg/publications/garces.phd.pdf
The technical papers published describing the results of our research in this
project are the following:
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D. Beyer, M.D. Vestrich, and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``The Rooftop
Community Network: Free, High-Speed Network Access for Communities,''
The First One Hundred Feet: New Options for Internet and
Broadband Access, Harvard Information Infrastructure Project,
Arlington VA, October 1996.
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A. Muir and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Group Allocation Multiple
Access in Single-Channel Wireless LANs,'' Proc. Communication
Networks and Distributed Systems Modeling and Simulation Conference,
Phoenix, Arizona, 12--15 January 1997.
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A. Muir and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Supporting Real-Time Multimedia
Traffic in a Wireless LAN,'' Proc. SPIE Multimedia Computing and
Networking 1997, San Jose, California, February 1997.
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R. Garces and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Collision Avoidance and
Resolution Multiple Access with Transmission Groups,'' Proc. IEEE
INFOCOM '97, Kobe, Japan, April 7--11, 1997.
( Selected for ACM WINET Issue on Best Papers from Infocom 97)
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A. Muir and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Group Allocation Multiple
Access with Collision Detection,'' Proc. IEEE INFOCOM '97, Kobe,
Japan, April 7--11, 1997.
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S. Murthy and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Loop-Free Internet Routing
Using Hierarchical Routing Trees,'' Proc. IEEE INFOCOM '97, Kobe,
Japan, April 7--11, 1997.
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C. Fullmer and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Complete Single-Channel
Solutions to Hidden-Terminal Problems,'' Proc. IEEE ICC '97,
Montreal, Canada, June 1997.
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R. Garces and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Collision Avoidance and
Resolution Multiple Access: First-Success Protocols,'' Proc. IEEE
ICC '97, Montreal, Canada, June 1997.
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C. Fullmer and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Solutions to Hidden-Terminal
Problems in Wireless Networks,'' Proc. ACM SIGCOMM '97, Cannes,
France, 14--18 September 1997.
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J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, C. Fullmer, E. Madruga, D. Beyer, and
T. Frivold, ``Wireless Internet Gateways (WINGs),'' Proc. IEEE
MILCOM '97, Monterey, California, November 1997.
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J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves and J. Raju, ``Distributed Assignment of Codes
for Multihop Packet-Radio Networks,'' Proc. IEEE MILCOM '97,
Monterey, California, November 1997.
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R. Garces and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``A Near-Optimum Channel Access
Protocol Based on Incremental Collision Resolution and Distributed
Transmission Queues,'' Proc. IEEE INFOCOM '98, San Francisco,
California, March 29--April 2, 1998.
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A. Muir and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``A Channel Access Protocol for
Multihop Wireless Networks with Multiple Channels,'' Proc.
IEEE ICC '98, Atlanta, Georgia, June 7--11, 1998.
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J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves and C. Fullmer, ``Performance of Floor
Acquisition Multiple Access in Ad-Hoc Networks,'' Proc. IEEE
ISCC'98: Third IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications,
Athens, Greece, June 30--July 2, 1998.
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R. Garces, J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, and R. Rom, `` An Access Etiquette
for Very-Wide Wireless Bands,'' Proc. IEEE IC3N '98: Seventh
International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks,
Lafayette, Louisiana, October 12--15, 1998.
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A. Muir and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``An Efficient Packet-Sensing
MAC Protocol for Wireless Networks,'' ACM Journal on
Mobile Networks and Applications, Vol.~3, No.~2, pp.~221--234, 1998.
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R. Garces and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Collision Avoidance and
Resolution Multiple Access,'' Cluster Computing
(Baltzer Sci. Pub.), Vol.~1, pp.~197--212, 1998.
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S. Murthy and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``A Routing Architecture for
Mobile Integrated Services Networks,'' ACM Mobile Networks and
Applications Journal, Special Issue on Mobile Networking in The
Internet, Vol.~3, No.~4, pp.~391--407, 1998.
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S. Murthy and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``A "A Loop-Free Routing
Protocol for Large-Scale Internets Using Distance Vectors,''
Computer Communications, Vol.~21, No.~2, 1998, pp.~147--161.
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R. Garces and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Collision Avoidance and
Resolution Multiple Access with Transmission Queues,'' ACM
Wireless Networks Journal, Special Issue on Selected Papers from
INFOCOM 97, Vol.~5, No.~2, pp.~95--109, March 1999.
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C. Parsa and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``TULIP: A Link-Level Protocol
for Improving TCP over Wireless Links,'' Proc. IEEE
Wireless Communications and Networking Conference 1999 (WCNC 99),
New Orleans, Louisiana, September 21--24, 1999.
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J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves and C. Fullmer, ``Floor Acquisition Multiple
Access (FAMA) in Single-Channel Wireless Networks,'' ACM Mobile
Networks and Applications Journal, special issue on Ad-Hoc Networks,
Vol. 4, 1999, pp. 157-174.
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R. Garces and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Collision Avoidance and
Resolution Multiple Access for Multichannel Wireless Networks,''
Proc. Infocom 2000, Tel-Aviv, Israel, March 26--30, 2000.
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R. Garces, J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, and R. Rom, ``An Access Etiquette
for Very-Wide Wireless Bands,''
Computer Communications, Elsevier, 2000.
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C. Parsa and J.J. Garcia-Luna-Aceves, ``Improving TCP Performance over
Wireless Networks at The Link Layer,'' ACM Mobile Networks and
Applications Journal, Special Issue on Mobile Data Networks: Advanced
Technologies and Services, Vol. 5, No. 1, 2000, pp. 57-71.
The accomplishments in this project were:
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WING software, prototypes and demonstrations.
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Novel protocols for channel access in multihop packet-radio networks.
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Link-level control techniques to improve the performance of
unmodified transport-level protocols across wireless networks.
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Routing protocols for multihop packet-radio networks.
Within nine months of the start of the project, the initial WINGs
prototype systems (the WING I) were completed and demonstrated at the
GloMo Conference at Lake Tahoe in July, 1996.
Since then, the WING I's were used in a number of other
demonstrations around the country. The WING I used the 900MHz,
258-kbps, 4-Msps, direct-sequence spreading LongRanger digital radio
modem by Utilicom Inc., and a 25 MHz, 68360-based microcontroller
board by Atlas Computer Inc. with 4 MBytes of RAM and 1 MByte of Flash
ROM. An embedded, CPT platform wrapper and a set of device drivers
were written for the WING I so that all WING protocol software, and
CPT libraries above the wrapper, could be seamlessly transitioned
between the CPT simulation environment and the WING I.
