Wednesday, December 23, 2009

IEEE 802.21 Implementation

Many vendors are building wireless products and participating in the development of the 802.21 standard. Current technologies such as 802.11 that accomplish handover use software to accomplish handovers and suggest that software will also be the way that handover will be implemented by 802.21. The use of software as a means to implement 802.21 should not cause large increases in the cost of networking devices.

Actually, we have two main MIH (Media Independent Handover) implementations:

  1. NS-2.29 by NIST
    this is the most used implementation by students, researchers and companies. Citation from the official website: "In addition, we evaluated mobility protocols' interactions across network layers 1-4 and the use of media independent handover functionality. As part of this work, we developed NS-2 models of IEEE 802.21 MIH architecture components such as the Event, Command, and Information Services, and transport of Layer 2 trigger information to higher layers. We also produced a set of NS-2 models of MAC-layers such as IEEE 802.16 and IEEE 802.11 that we used with the MIH functions to model vertical, i.e. heterogeneous, handovers that are assisted by cross-layer information passage."

  2. ODTONE
    stands for Open Dot Twenty ONE and is an Open Source implementation of a Media Independent Handover Function (MIHF) for the IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover Services standard, using C++ APIs. ODTONE supplies the implementation of a MIHF, supporting its inherent services (Media Independent Event Service (MIES), Media Independent Command Service (MIIS) and Media Independent Command Service (MICS), as well as supporting mechanisms (Capability Discovery, MIHF Registration, Event Registration, etc.). ODTONE aims to implement a MIHF that is capable of being deployed in multiple operating systems. In a first stage, it will support GNU/Linux, followed by Microsoft NT-based operating systems and others. This means this implementation will be decoupled of highly dependent operating system mechanisms. Official website
In my PhD thesis, I am working with the NS-2.29 implementation. I had to develop several new functions, being the MIIS service the most important part, which is the core of my work. If you are working with NS-2.29 NIST implementation and have problems, you can contact me. After suffering more than two years, there are tips and tricks... :)

6 comments:

  1. Please I am a Masters student and my thesis is on heterogeneous networks.I need help in running the NIST ns2 2.29 mobility package on centos 5.7.I tried to run the wimax_wifi handover example, which is in directory ns2.29/tcl/hsntg/wimax/handover-wifi-wimax. I got this error invalid command name "Handover/5"
    while executing
    "Handover/5 set debug_ 1"
    (file "wifi_wimax_nam.tcl" line 42)

    I am a newbie at linux, and will really appreciate it if you had any advise to resolve the matter

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  2. hi sir,
    i am also working on reducing handover delay in 802.11
    but here my problem is ns2.29 does not support multichannel AP. hence during active scan MN will scan only one channel.so is there any way to give multichannel support?

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    Replies
    1. I can help you a lot, write me at kire_jakimoski@yahoo.com.

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  3. hello sir,
    I have installed NS2.29 but unable to install the MIH add on. I have just started working on MIIS-neighbor discovery and done some literature survey. The topic is quite interesting but has a lot of vagueness which can be clarified with ur help. Plz let me the next step to work on MIH in NS2.29 (ubuntu 14.04). Thanks

    ReplyDelete