IST PACWOMAN - WING Contribution

The IST PACWOMAN project running from March 2001 investigates, specifies, designs, simulates, develops and demonstrates a true WPAN environment based on IPv6. The PACWOMAN architecture opens up new ways of extending mobile networks into the user domain, by the use of ad-hoc networking in combination with gateways to GRPS/UMTS. In the first project year a detailed analysis of the requirements has been made, as well as a functional and system design of the PACWOMAN concept. First of all a Personal Area Network (PAN) is defined as the network in the immediate surrounding of a person. It can contain what is called a Virtual Device (VD), a group of master and slave devices; a PAN can also contain advanced Terminals (aT). Between the VD and the aT ad-hoc routing is applied. When two or more PANs meet they can form a CAN and exchange information, also here ad-hoc routing is applied. A CAN may contain a GateWay (GW), which can be used to access external networks (Internet, corporate networks etc.) through GPRS/UMTS. The designed infrastructure in the PACWOMAN project meets the following requirements: * Scalability: design a (or a family of) IP radio devices that enable the coexistence of very different data rates (100 bps to 10 Mbps) and a range of different devices (of different complexity/cost); * Low-power: for the low-rate segment of WPAN, the multiplicity of very small devices calls for a major breakthrough in the battery life (the target will be one year). Even for the high rate segment of the WPAN, the requirement on autonomy is expected to be very high (at least one week), which is a specific constraint that has to be taken into account in the as well in the design of the IP node as in the design of the networking; * Radio integration: to enable low-cost solutions, the radio, along with the upper layers, has to be integrated on a single chip. Advanced research on mixed signal integration as well as global power optimisation will be needed; * Wireless nomadic IP: to enable the existence of a Wireless-IP(v6) radio node, with the power and integration constraints detailed above, and support for ad-hoc networking. This includes network management techniques; * Security: to insure security on Wireless IP nomadic networks, possibly on non-secure links. (Carl Wijting, Yaoda Liu, Istvan Kovacs, Liljana Gavrilovska, and Efrayim)