Comp60242:
Course leader: Dr, Barry Cheetham
Academic staff: Dr. Barry
Cheetham & Dr. Nick Filer
Aim
Understanding of concepts underlying current developments in mobile communication systems and wireless computer networks.
Level: M.Sc. Credit
rating: 15 credits (7.5 ECTS)
Degrees ACS (& others for suitably
qualified students)
Pre-requisites: Basic Mathematics
Preliminary course-work: 40 hours
Lectures & supervised laboratory work:
40 hours
Post course-work: 40 hours assessed
laboratory work
Assessment: 50 % laboratory and 50 %
exam
Course material:
Barry's notes: MC10NOTES
Barry's slides: MC10SLIDES
Nick's part: http://moodle.cs.man.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=59
Coursework: MC10LABS
Revision/Exams: MC10Rev-exams
Learning Outcomes
1) Understanding of the systems, protocols and mechanisms to needed to support mobility in communications and computing equipment such as mobile phones, portable computers, PDAs, etc. (A1,A2)
2) Understanding of the issues involved and techniques used in the design of Medium Access Control protocols for wireless Networks (A1,A2)
3) Understanding of digital transmission methods, radio propagation and the effects of radio interference (A1,A2)
4) Practical experience and analysis of the effects of radio interference on transmissions between a wireless LAN access point and a mobile computer, and the effectiveness of bit-error control techniques.(A1,A2,B1,C1,C2,D4)
5) The experience of using an industrial standard network simulation package, such as OPNET(B1,C1,C2,D4)
Assessment of learning
outcomes
All outcomes are assessed through examination and a practical project.
Contribution to programme
learning
A1,A2, B1,C1,C2,D4
Supplemental books
Detailed Syllabus
Introduction to wireless networking and mobile computing.
Recent history of wired and wireless telephone and computer networks. Convergence of cellular mobile telephony (2G and 3G) and wireless computer networks (wireless LANs, PANs and WANs).
Protocols supporting mobility
Application layer issues: Multimedia, Voice over IP (VoIP) and mobile VoIP. Mobile Internet.
Network & transport layer issues: Mobile IP, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP).
Mobile transport layer protocols such as mobile-TCP, indirect-TCP. Wireless Application Protocol (WAP).
Security in mobile computing
Security issues in wired &
wireless networks: authentication, confidentiality, integrity, authorisation,
non-repudiation. Public & symmetric key cryptography; hash
functions. Differences between wired & wireless networks with respect to security. Current security protocols for wireless
LANs. WEP and future
strategies.
Medium Access Control (MAC) issues:
MAC protocols for digital cellular systems such as GSM. MAC
protocols for wireless LANs such as IEEE802.11 and HIPERLAN I and II. The near
far effect. Hidden and exposed terminals. Collision Avoidance (RTS-CTS)
protocols.
Error control in mobile networks
Error mechanisms at physical layer. Hard & soft decision detection. Roles of error correction & detection.
Hamming distance. Block codes & convolutional (tree) codes. Hamming codes & CRC checks.
Idea of convolutional coder. Use of ‘soft decision Viterbi decoder’ for max-likelihood decoding. Roles of CRC and convolutional coding/decoding in IEEE802.11 Wireless LAN standards.
Introduction to digital modulation & transmission.
Calculation of bit-error probabilities when the channel is affected by the addition of Gaussian noise. The need for modulation. Binary and multi-level (M-ary) amplitude-shift keying (ASK), frequency-shift keying (FSK) and phase-shift keying (PSK).
Direct sequence spread spectrum Adaptive Equalization Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing.
Characteristics of radio propagation.
Antennas and radio propagation. Multipath effects including fading.