System capacity of a wireless system can be improved greatly by using variable rate transmission. Assuming a low-rate and wide-coverage signaling-only wireless network, in this paper we evaluate, analytically and numerically, the extent of this improvement for various schemes with variable transmission rates. We considered log-normal shadowing as well as the effect of Rayleigh fading. Simulation results show close proximity with the analytical predictions.

We are researching a mobile and sensor access platform network for the future called NerveNet, which accommodates ubiquitous sensors and provides services in local areas. The realization of reliable and accountable information collection, processing and provision over NerveNet poses a challenging and fundamental issue in promotion of the sensor business field. As a first step toward a reliable NerveNet, we investigate privacy preservation and the collection of reliable sensor information for prospective personalized sensor applications. The privacy requirement impels the logic separation between sensor networks and the communication platform in the design of NerveNet architecture. To enable sensor network users (SNUs) to reliably interact with sensors managed by different sensor network owners (SNOs), we designed a secure sensor sharing framework (S3F) based on two business models – the Ad Hoc Sales Model (AHSM) and Shopping Center Sales Model (SCSM). With S3F-AHSM, an SNU acquires permission from an SNO each time she wants to obtain information from a sensor. On the other hand, with S3F-SCSM, an SNU can obtain the access privilege to a flexible set of sensors based on the queried preferences via a third party called a sensor network service provider (SNSP). In S3F-SCSM, SNSPs that share the sensors owned by various SNOs have the ability to search the preferred sensors and provide the authorization certificate to the SNUs.

Multicast delivery in heterogeneous wireless networks requires careful coordination, in order to take full advantage of the resources such an interworking network environment can offer. Effective coordination, however, may require interworking signaling from coordinating network entities to receivers of a multicast service. Scalable delivery of such signaling is of great importance, since a large number of receivers may be interested in a multicast service. This paper therefore investigates the use of a multicast signaling channel (MSCH) to carry such interworking signaling in a scalable manner. Applications of interworking signaling for multicast service delivery in heterogeneous wireless networks are presented, motivating the need for an MSCH. Then a comparative study is performed analysing potential benefits of employing an MSCH for signaling message delivery compared to conventional unicast signaling. The analysis reveals that the benefits of the MSCH depend mainly on the selection of an appropriate signaling network to carry the MSCH and also on efficient addressing of a subset of receivers within the MSCH. Based on the findings, guidelines for the selection of a suitable signaling network are provided. Furthermore a novel approach is proposed that allows efficient addressing of a subset of receivers within a multicast group. The approach minimizes the required signaling load on the MSCH by reducing the size of the required addressing information. This is achieved by an aggregation of receivers with common context information. To demonstrate the concept, a prototype of the MSCH has been developed and is presented in the paper.

A millimeter-wave radio access system has a number of features that makes it appealing as one approach to broadband communications. However, for a millimeter-wave system to come into wide use, it must be miniaturized and the associated costs reduced. We have succeeded in realizing a compact 156 Mbps radio transceiver with a 38 GHz band optimizing RF architecture. We also adopted newly developed three-dimensional laminated MCMs using low cost plastic composite materials. It was confirmed in the initial experiments that this millimeter-wave wireless LAN equipment can cover a sufficient service area for broadband telecommunications in an indoor environment.

Wireless access networks of the future could provide a variety of context-aware services with the use of sensor information in order to solve regional social problems and improve the quality of residents' lives as a part of the regional infrastructure. NerveNet is a conceptual regional wireless access platform in which multiple service providers provide their own services with shared use of the network and sensors, enabling a range of context-aware services. The platform acts like a human nervous system. Densely located, interconnected access points with databases and data processing units will provide mobility to terminals without a location server and enable secure sensor data transport on a highly reliable, managed mesh network. This paper introduces the motivations, concept, architecture, system configuration, and preliminary performance results of NerveNet.

Channel-state-dependent (CSD) radio-resource scheduling algorithms for wireless message transport using a framed ALOHA-reservation access protocol are presented. In future wireless systems that provide Mbps-class high-speed wireless links using high frequencies, burst packet errors, which last a certain number of packets in time, would cause serious performance degradation. CSD resource scheduling algorithms utilize channel-state information for increasing overall throughput. These algorithms were comparatively evaluated in terms of average allocation plus transfer delay, average throughput, variance in throughput, and utilization of resources. Computer simulation results showed that the CSD mechanism has a good effect, especially on equal sharing (ES)-based algorithms, and also CSD-ES provides low allocation plus transfer delay, high average throughput, low variance in throughput, and efficient utilization of radio resources.

The current Internet is not capable of meeting the future communication requirements of society, i.e., reliable connectivity in a ubiquitous networking environment. The shortcomings of the Internet are due to the lack of support for mobility, multihoming, security and heterogeneous network layer protocols in the original design. Therefore, to provide ubiquitous networking facilities to the society for future innovation, we have to redesign the future Internet, which we call the New Generation Network. In this paper, we present the Heterogeneity Inclusion and Mobility Adaptation through Locator ID Separation (HIMALIS) architecture for the New Generation Network. The HIMALIS architecture includes a new naming scheme for generating host names and IDs. It also includes a logical control network to store and distribute bindings between host names, IDs, locators and other information useful for providing support for network operation and control. The architecture uses such information to manage network dynamism (i.e., mobility, multihoming) and heterogeneity in network layer protocols. We verify the basic functions of the architecture by implementing and testing them using a testbed system.

This paper presents severl radio resource scheduling algorithms which aim to provide best-effort service for non-real-time unit-oriented, or message traffic. The objective of resource scheduling algorithm is to distribute radio resources between competing message traffic sources while attaining throughput as high and fair as possible for each source without any explicit quality-of-service (QoS) guarantee. Computer simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance in terms of the average of allocation plus transfer delay, the average of throughput, the variance of throughput, and the usage of resources. The message-size distributions of homepages in World-Wide-Web and e-mails obtained by actual measurement are used. Message size-based resource scheduling algorithms are found to provide high and fair throughput as well as efficient use of the resources.

Despite the recent advances in personal communication devices and access network technology, users still face problems such as high device maintenance costs, complication of inter-device cooperation, illegal access to devices, and leakage of personal information. Consequently, it is difficult for users to construct a secure network with local as well as remote personal devices. We propose a User-driven Service Creation Platform (USCP), which enables users to construct a secure private network using a simple and intuitive approach that leverages the authentication mechanism in mobile phone networks. USCP separates signaling and data paths in a flat, virtual network topology. In this paper, we describe the basic design of USCP, the current implementation, and system evaluations.

For future generation mobile networks, we expect that the mobile devices like PDAs, note PCs or any VoIP-enabled communicators will have the feature of being always switched on, ready for service, constantly reachable by the wireless Internet. In addition to high access speed, attractive real-time contents or other expected spectacular features of the future wireless Internet environment, the mobile terminals has to be very much energy-aware to enable literal untethered movement of the user. Mechanisms for network activities like maintaining location information and wireless system discovery, which require regular network access, should be energy-efficient and resource-efficient in general. Cellular systems employ the notion of passive connectivity to reduce the power consumption of idle mobile hosts. In IP based Multi-service User Terminal (MUT) that may have multiple wireless interfaces for receiving various classes of services from the network, there should be an efficient addressing of the energy consumption issue. To devise an energy-efficient scheme for simultaneous or single operation of the wireless interfaces attached to such terminals we should have comprehensive understanding of the power consumption of the devices/modules in various operational states. This paper investigates the power consumption pattern or behavior of some selected wireless interfaces that are good candidates for being part of the future of the multi-service user terminals. We propose a simple model for predicting energy consumption in a terminal attributed to the wireless network interfaces. We measured the actual consumption pattern to estimate the parameters of the model.

The use of IP addresses as host IDs and locators in the present day Internet protocols imposes constraints on designing efficient solutions for mobility, multihoming, renumbering, and security. To eliminate the constraints, different approaches of introducing ID/locator split into future network architectures have been discussed recently. HIMALIS is such an architecture, which uses distinct sets of values for identifiers and locators and allows the network layer to change locators without requiring the upper layers to change identifiers. One of the major challenges of HIMALIS is the design and implementation of a distributed ID-to-locator mapping database system to efficiently store, update and provide the up-to-date mapping data to the network elements. For this purpose, this paper discusses the application of the Domain Trusted Entity (DTE) infrastructure to the HIMALIS architecture. It provides a unified manner to get locators from high level identifiers (names) with enhanced security, privacy, and trust, while maintaining all capabilities and full compatibility with the previous DNR, HNR, and IDR infrastructures found in HIMALIS.

We have developed an IP-over-Ethernet-based ultra high-speed multimedia wireless LAN prototype operating in the 60-GHz band. It employs a media-access-control (MAC) protocol based on reservation-based slotted idle signal multiple access (RS-ISMA), which was implemented in the former prototype, for supporting various IP traffic such as real-time AV traffic and best-effort web traffic. The protocol also has a new function called NACK sensing for the efficient retransmission of wireless multicast packets. It was demonstrated that the prototype can provide the world's fastest radio transmission speed of 128 Mbps for two-way communications. We have measured the throughput and latency of the prototype LAN for Ethernet-frame transmission in a point-to-point baseband-connected environment. The measurement showed that the prototype LAN provides a maximum throughput of 30 Mbps, and that the measured throughput agrees with the theoretically predicted throughput. It also showed that the maximum latency, which includes switching and routing latency in the wired part, is below 1 msec.

Developments in new frequency bands for wireless communications make a broadband channel for new services possible. Great effort has been made researching and developing broadband wireless communication in the 60-GHz millimeter-wave band since the early 1990s. In this paper, we design an ATM (asynchronous transfer mode)-based indoor millimeter-wave wireless local area network (WLAN) that supports multimedia transmissions and focus on the wireless access topic for implementation of wireless ATM. We propose an integrated multimedia transmission protocol, based on the MAC (medium access control) protocol, called RS-ISMA (reservation-based slotted idle signal multiple access). It supports CBR (constant bit rate), VBR (variable bit rate), ABR (available bit rate) and UBR (unspecified bit rate) transmissions and provides QoS (quality of service)-dependent adaptive retransmissions. An RS-ISMA-based prototype full-duplex indoor high-speed WLAN in the 60-GHz band was developed.

From past experience of the large-scale cutoff of existing networks as a result of the East Japan Great Earthquake and tsunamis, and from previous research on stabilizing ad hoc networks that lack control mechanisms, we have strengthened the resilience of NerveNet. NerveNet was originally designed and developed as an access network for providing context-aware services with the use of sensors and actuators. Thus, at present, it has the capability to enable resilient information sharing and communications in a region even if access to the Internet is impossible in emergency situations. NerveNet is composed of single or multiple base stations interconnected by a variety of Ethernet-based wired or wireless transmission systems. A network is formed using line, star, tree, or mesh topology. Network and data management works in each base station in a distributed manner, resulting in the resilience of this system. In collaboration with the town of Shirahama in Wakayama prefecture in Japan, we have been conducting a pilot test with the NerveNet testbed. The test includes nine base stations interconnected by 5.6-GHz Wi-Fi and Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), providing tourists and residents with Internet access. In the future, we expect that not only NerveNet but also other novel technologies will contribute to solving social problems and enriching people's lives.