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IPonAir
About the Project

Type of project : IPonAir is a project supported by the German Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung () managed by .

Partners : Companies
Alcatel
Ericsson Eurolab Deutschland GmbH Aachen
T-Systems Nova
Lucent
Nokia
Siemens

Universities
Universität Karlsruhe (TH), Institut für Telematik
RWTH Aachen, Lehrstuhl für Kommunikationsnetze (Comnets), Lehrstuhl für Informatik IV
TU Berlin, Telecommunication Networks Group
TU München, Lehrstuhl für Kommunikationsnetze
Universität Bonn, Institut für Informatik IV
Universität Bremen, Institut für Kommunikationsnetze
Universität Essen, Lehrstuhl für Technik der Rechnernetze am Institut für experimentelle Mathematik
Universität Essen, Institut für Informatik, Arbeitsgruppe Systemmodellierung
Universität Kassel, Institut für Kommunikationstechnik
Universität Frankfurt, Institut für Informatik
Duration : Oct 2001 - Sep 2004

 

The Internet will strongly influence the global communication infrastructure of the next generations, in the wired as well as in the wireless, mobile communication. Today, the Internet is only barely useable for highly mobile and wireless systems, because architecture and protocols were developed for wired networks. The development of new or modified protocols for the wireless Internet has already started, but usually with the goal of improvements instead of a new orientation.

The wireless Internet will have many more communication partners than the wired. Therefore, users want to use there devices with the optimal radio interface depending on the environment, e.g. home environment, car, office, shopping, or in the public. In the future, we will continue to see different radio interfaces in different situations (e.g. Blueetooth, WLAN, UMTS). The radio interfaces might change dynamically in one region and might be different in different regions. Radio access networks (RAN) will also be based on Internet technology. Hence an integration into a homogeneous infrastructure at the IP layer will be possible. The underlying network infrastructure will be heterogenous, using different wired and wireless technologies. On the other hand, we will see multiple radio standards in this infrastructure (multi standard radio access network), using different bands and operated by different providers. To manage this different radio standards in a common way is a big challenge (multi standard radio access network management).

The wireless Internet is not only the access network to the fixed Internet. New services will be introduced for the wireless Internet, and direct multimedia communication between mobile systems becomes attractive. This opens the door for new business models. Beside normal office applications and classic low bandwith information services, new mobile and interactive information services will appear. For their growing bandwidth requests, more capacity will be needed. Both communication partners might use wireless devices, and the communication should use the optimal path. In many cases, it is not necessary to involve the fixed part of the Internet for the communication.

To make a system architecture as shown in Figure 1 possible, it is necessary to find new solutions in the areas of wireless routing, addressing and interaction, using mobility as different layers. To allow efficient transport in the system with multi-hop elements, new transport protocols are necessary, because protocols developed for the fixed Internet are not efficient. Solutions against congestion and for loadbalancing are nesessary. This implies, that the mobile nodes (MN) work as servers or proxies for some services. The location of this services might change from time to time. Despite this possible direct communication path, it is assumed that an access point as gateway to the fixed Internet exists, so that services from the fixed network can be used and communication with partners in the fixed Internet is possible. Usually, the best path according to Parameters such as QoS, cost, availability, mobility and user profile, should be used:
  • between mobile system in one wireless domain, possibly with multiple hops.
  • between mobile systems of different wireless domains in one town.
  • between arbitrary wireless systems.
 
Networking of self configuring environments (Example scenario)
Figure 1 : Networking of self configuring environments (Example scenario)
 
 
In this form of mobile communication, it is very important to protect personal and business data. In the current IP-based protocols and architectures, security is implemented only rudimentarily.

The goal is the seamless interconnection of different wireless and fixed network areas, which might be ordered hierarchically. This makes an efficient, flexible and secure communication based on the Internet protocol suite possible. Mobile communication with multiple domains in a wireless, self configuring and heterogenous enironment is seen as our long-term challenge.

 
AAA-Architecture for ad-hoc networks
The architecture of the AAA system of IPonAir is an extension of the architecture proposed in RFC 2977 (see figure 2). Whereas RFC 2977 deals with AAA for mobile IP, where the mobile node is directly connected to an access router (AR), the mobile node here might be connected through several ad-hoc nodes. These ad-hoc nodes might have different home domains. In addition to the multi-hop wireless connectivity, several access routers might be reachable by the ad-hoc network.

In simple mobile IP, all traffic from and to a mobile node is forwarded by the AR. Thus, the AR is responsible for metering resource usage like number and size of packets. These data are later used for auditing, charging, and finally for billing. Forwarding packets in the ad-hoc network over any other ad-hoc node is currently free of charge, and therefore inadequate for ISP's that are offering the ad-hoc community access to the Internet. For the future, the following questions have to be answered:

  What charging models will we have (flat rate, prepaid, postpaid)?
Will intermediate nodes of the ad hoc net get some benefit for forwarding?
How can such a scheme be protected against attacks?

 
 
 
AAA architecture for ad-hoc networks
AAA architecture for ad-hoc networks

 

B. Lamparter, M. Plaggemeier, D. Westhoff, Estimating the Value of Co-operation Approaches for Multihop Ad Hoc Networks, Elsevier Journal of Ad Hoc Networks, Elsevier Science, Januar 2004.

B. Lamparter, M. Plaggemeier, D. Westhoff, About the impact of Co-operation Approaches for Ad Hoc Networks, Letter, to appear in ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review, MC2R, in 2004.

B. Lamparter, I. Riedel, D. Westhoff, Anmerkungen zur Nuztung digitaler Signaturen in Ad Hoc Netzwerken, Praxis der Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikation, PIK Themenheft: Mobile Ad Hoc Netzwerke, Dezember 2003.

M. Gerharz, S. Hischke, O. Stanze, C. De Waal, K. Weniger, D. Westhoff, J. Wu, M. Zitterbart, IPonAir- Drahtloses Internet der nächsten Generation, Praxis der Informationsverarbeitung und Kommunikation, PIK Themenheft: Mobile Ad Hoc Netzwerke, Dezember 2003.

B. Lamparter, K. Paul, D. Westhoff, Charging Support for Ad Hoc Stub Networks, Elsevier Journal of Computer Communication, `Internet Pricing and Charging: Algorithms, Technology and Applications', Elsevier Science, Volume 26, Issue 13, pp. 1504-1514, August 2003.

B. Lamparter, D. Westhoff, A Low-Cost Packet Originator verification for Metering Access-Routers, Group Communications and Charges - Technology and Business Models (NGC/ICQT'03), supported by ACM Sigcomm, Springer-Verlag LNCS 2816, September 2003, Munich, Germany.

B. Lamparter, M. Plaggemeier, D. Westhoff, About the impact of Co-operation Approaches for Ad Hoc Networks, Extended abstract, ACM MobiHoc'03: The Fourth ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing, June 2003, Annapolis, Maryland, USA.

K. Paul, D. Westhoff, Context Aware Detection of Selfish Node in DSR based Ad-hoc Network, IEEE GLOBECOM 2002, Nov. 2002, Taipei, Taiwan.

B. Lamparter, M. Plaggemeier, D. Westhoff, Analysis of Co-operation Approaches in Ad Hoc Networks, WiOpt'03: Modeling and Organization in Mobile, Ad Hoc and Wireless Networks, Mar. 2003, INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, France.

B. Lamparter, K. Paul, D. Westhoff, Security Protocol for Charging and Participation Incentive in Ad Hoc Stub Networks, ACM Workshop on Wireless Security (WiSe) in conjunction with ACM MobiCom'02, poster presentation, Sep. 2002, Atlanta, Georgia.

K. Paul, D. Westhoff, Context Aware Detection of Selfish Nodes in DSR based Ad-hoc Networks, IEEE Semiannual Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC-2002) 2002, Sep. 2002, Vancouver, Canada.

D. Westhoff, The Role of Mobile Device Authentication with respect to Domain overlapping Business Models, The 6th World Multiconference on Systemics, Cybernatics and Informatics (SCI 2002), July 2002, Orlando, Florida.

D. Westhoff, B. Lamparter, Charging related mobile Device Authentication, Advanced Internet Charging and QoS Technologie (ICQT`01), Part of the GI and OCG General Annual Meeting, September 2001 Vienna, Austria.

D. Westhoff, Authentication in the context of Mobile IP and AAA, EURESCOM Summit, 3G Technologies and Applications, Securing the Business Case for 3G, November 2001, Heidelberg.

For more information please use our .

Please visit also the web page (partly in German only).

 

Last modified 01-Sep-2010