International Journal of Computer Networking, Wireless and Mobile Communications (IJCNWMC) ISSN 2250-1568 Vol.

3, Issue 1, Mar 2013, 131-136 TJPRC Pvt. Ltd.

ENHANCED ANALYSIS OF SPREAD SPECTRUM SCHEMES IN WIRELESS MESH NETWORKS

SONAL SOOD1, AMARPAL SINGH2 & VISHAL SHARMA2
1 2

Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, Mohali, Punjab, India

Department of Electronics & Communication Engineering, BCET, Gurdaspur, Punjab, India

ABSTRACT
IEEE 802.16 mesh network is a promising next generation wireless backbone network. In this paper an enhanced wireless mesh network has been designed using different spread spectrum schemes such as DSSS and FHSS by means of OPNETTM 14.0 and a comparison is carried out for both the schemes viz. Performance parameters such as medium access delay, throughput, retransmission delay and traffic load.

KEYWORDS: Wireless Mesh Networks (WMNs), Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), Direct Sequence
Spread Spectrum (DSSS)

INTRODUCTION
Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are the networks consist of routers (access points), mobile or fixed nodes and a backbone network. A mesh network is a collection of networks, such that, various networks are connected with each other without any involvement of Internet Service Provider (ISP). Mesh networks are kind of personal small scale Internets. Deploying a WMN is not too difficult, because all the required components are already available. In mesh networks ad hoc network routing protocols, such that, AODV, GRP, DSR, etc are used at the node end to support mobility in the nodes and traditional routing protocols; i.e., BGP, IGRP, RIP are used at the routers (access points) and at the backbone network, with which all the routers communicate to connect with each other. Wireless Mesh Networks are facing many challenges like reliability, security, quality of services, routing, channel access methods etc. There are many types of radio signal transmission or modulation techniques, such that Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS), Frequency-Hopping Spread Spectrum (FHSS), Direct-Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS), Time-Hopping Spread Spectrum (THSS) etc. DSSS and FHSS are most widely adopted techniques to transmit the radio signals in wireless systems. In [1], evaluation of wireless mesh networks has done by using DSSS and FHSS techniques and has shown the superiority of FHSS over the DSSS. The work presented in this paper is the extension of the previous work by using more complicated scenarios and parameters to justify the previous concluded results more concretely. The paper is organized around four sections. Section I discusses papers introduction. In Section II, we describe the background. In Section III, we study the evaluation of modulating techniques which are FHSS and DSSS. The results are analyzed by simulation and the conclusion has been summed up in section IV.

BACKGROUND
In wireless communication systems, Spread-spectrum technique to transmit the signals in which, the frequency of the transmitted signal is steadily varied. It makes jamming and interception harder in the network. The two widely adopted spread spectrum techniques are: Frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) and Direct Sequence spread spectrum (DSSS). FHSS uses 79 channels, each 1 MHz wide. When using FHSS, the frequency spectrum is divided into channels. Data packets are split up and transmitted on these channels in a random pattern known only to the transmitter and receiver.

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Because collocated networks follow different random patterns, or hop code tables, multiple networks can operate in close proximity without interfering. If interference is present on one channel, data transmission is blocked. The transmitter and receiver hop to the next channel in the hop table and the transmitter resends the data packet. Frequency hopping technology works best for small data packets in high interference environments. The receiver uses the same key to decode the data. While narrowband and DSSS transmissions use the same Total power to send data, DSSS uses a lower power density (power/frequency), making it harder to detect. DSSS also sends redundant copies of the encoded data to ensure reception. Narrowband interference appears to the receiver as another narrowband transmission. When the total received signal is decoded, the wider band transmission (DSSS encoded data) is decoded back to its original narrowband format while the interference is decoded to a lower power density signal, thereby reducing its effects. When broadband interference is present, however, the resulting decoded broadband interference can give a much higher noise floor, almost as high as the decoded signal. For this reason, DSSS works best for large data packets in a low to medium interference environment, but not as well in higher interference industrial applications. The performance evaluation of DSSS and FHSS modulation techniques in a congested wireless mesh network is reported [1] under the applications generating heavy traffic load. Various metrics are used to gather the information about the better modulation technique between DSSS and FHSS for congested wireless mesh network. The calculation of delay and throughput for evaluating the performance of real time applications like video streaming and voice over internet protocol services through distributed scheduling schemes is also observed [2]. Further, different service classes like mapping policy, QoS architecture, combined scheduling, cross layer design have discussed [3]. A proactive hop by hop QoS routing protocol is proposed [5] to give the best optimal routes that satisfies QoS requirements in terms of bandwidth and delay. Further, Service adaptive (SA) QoS is proposed for mesh mode of IEEE 802.16 [8]. Better QoS are achieved by implementing a new spread spectrum modem configuration for a radio local area computer network consist of fast frequency hopping (FFH) and direct sequence spread spectrum to mitigate the bit error degradation due to multi-user interference and multipath fading without increasing system complexity[9-10].

SIMULATION ENVIRONMENT
The research is carried out using discrete event simulation environment software, known as OPNET Modeler 14.0.

Figure 1: WMN Network

Enhanced Analysis of Spread Spectrum Schemes in Wireless Mesh Networks

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The simulation focused on the performance of wireless mesh networks under different modulation techniques. The Fig.1 shows the sample network model of Wireless Mesh Network used. It consists of 15 cells and 10 nodes per cell are available. The flow of data is 2 Mbps. The network has been congested and then the performance of data packets flowing in the network has been evaluated using FHSS and DSSS. Two applications Remote Login and Video Conferencing are used to analyze the performance between the two modulation techniques. Simulation focuses on performance of network with FHSS and DSSS in a congested WMN. The various general parameters obtained using our modular are shown as following in a Table 1. Table 1 PARAMETER NUMBER OF CELLS NUMBER OF NODES PER CELL PACKET SIZE (BYTES) DATA RATE (MBPS) TRANSMISSION POWER (WATTS) BUFFER SIZE (BITS) FRAME INTERVAL VALUE 15 10 2048 2 .03 102400000 15 FRAMES/SEC

SIMULATION RESULTS AND ANALYSIS

The Fig. 2 depicts the media access delay possessed by the networks using DSSS and FHSS modulation techniques to send data. Media Access Delay is a delay occurred, when the packets need to wait to get placed over the media from the time of generation due to some kind of pre-processing over the higher layers. It has shown that the network using FHSS possesses less media access delay than the network using DSSS due to complex encoding and decoding of the signals in DSSS. In DSSS, spreads the data across the wide range of frequencies using a mathematical and each packet is assigned a code for encryption and the same key is used at the receiver to decrypt the data packet. The code generation, encryption and decryption of the data packets are done prior to placement of the data at the medium and this process few chunks of time. On the other hand, In Frequency Hoping Spread Spectrum, data packets are split up and placed on the medium randomly and organized at the receiver end. The organization and fragmentation of the data packets consumes less time than the whole process followed by DSSS.

Figure 2: Media Access Delay (Sec)

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z Figure 3: Load (Bits/Sec) Fig. 3 shows load in both networks using Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) and Frequency Hoping Spread Spectrum (FHSS). In load, all the control messages, dropped data packets, retransmitted packets and successfully received packets at the receiver end are considered. Network using FHSS modulation possess high load minutely than the network using DSSS, due to the organization of packets (packet ordering) done at the receiver end. Whenever the packets of a segment received out of order then the whole segment will be dropped and retransmission of all the packets needs to be done and very little effect of the interference from the outer source also makes effect on the transmission of packets. On the other hand, in DSSS all the packets are sent in order and synchronized, due to which the loss of packets is decreased. Only the variation in load is due to the high proneness of DSSS towards interference of signals from some outer sources that corrupts the data packets and makes them retransmitted. Secondly, the nodes in both networks are mobile and due to the movements of the nodes, there is always a scope of changes in the routes between the source and destination that makes the transmitted packets dropped and control messages need to be retransmitted to update the routing caches.

Figure 4: Retransmission Attempts The average retransmission attempts done to transmit the packets are shown in Fig. 4. It has seen that there is steep increase in the retransmission attempts done to send data packets to the destinations in both DSSS and FHSS. It has clearly shown in the graphs that retransmission attempts done in DSSS modulation is very high than FHSS and begin to occur earlier than occurred in FHSS because DSSS modulation technique is very prone to the interference occurred due to

the other signals generated by some outer source and the unwanted signals overlapped with the actual data signals generated by the nodes and collision occurs, due to which retransmissions of the data packets need to done.

Figure 5: Throughput Figure 5 shows the throughput of both DSSS and FHSS based networks. In literature throughput is considered as a most influential performance evaluation metrics and according to throughput all the networks are evaluated in literature. In the given graph, very minute differences have seen in the throughputs of the networks using both DSSS and FHSS modulation techniques.

CONCLUSIONS
In this paper an enhanced wireless mesh network has been designed using different spread spectrum schemes such as DSSS and FHSS by means of OPNETTM 14.0 and a comparison is carried out for both the schemes viz. Performance parameters such as medium access delay, throughput, retransmission delay and traffic load. The results shows that by increasing the node density in the network, data traffic load under different applications, performance of both FHSS and DSSS increases but DSSS shows tremendous increase in throughput and about to outperform FHSS.

REFERENCES
1. Amoldeep Kaur, and Jyotsna Sengupta, Performance evaluation of DSSS and FHSS modulation techniques in a congested wireless mesh network in International Journal of Engineering & Science Research, Vol. 2, No. 6, p.p. 1153-1158, Sept 2012. 2. Y. Li, C. Wang et al., "Delay and throughput performance of IEEE 802.16 WiMax mesh networks" In IET Communication, Vol. 6, Issue 1, p.p. 107 - 115, January 2012 3. Yajun Li, Yuhang Yang et al., QoS Issues in IEEE 802.16 Mesh Networks." In the proceeding of 1st International Conference on Information Science and Engineering (ICISE2009), pp 2687-2690, December 2009 4. A. Bacioccola, C. Cicconetti et al., "IEEE 802.16: History, status and future trends" In, Computer Communications, Vol. 33, p.p. 113123, November 2009 5. Min Kim, Ilkyeun Ra, et al., QoS Mesh Routing Protocol for IEEE 802.16 based Wireless Mesh Networks." In 10th International Conference on Advanced Communication Technology (ICACT 2008), p.p. 812 - 817, February 2008

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Stephen Dominiak1, Nico Bayer et al., "Reliability Analysis of IEEE 802.16 Mesh Networks" In 2nd IEEE/IFIP International Workshop on Broadband Convergence Networks (BCN '07), p.p. 1 - 12, May 2007.

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Mehmet S. Kuran, Birkan Yilmaz et al., " Quality of Service in Mesh Mode IEEE 802.16 Networks" In the proceeding of International Conference on Software in telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM 2006), p.p. 107 - 111, October 2006.

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John H. Gass, Jr., Michael B. Pursley et al., "A Comparison of Frequency-Hop and Direct-Sequence SpreadSpectrum Communications." In the proceeding of Tactical Communications Conference, p.p. 435-441, April 1996

10. Kazuhiko Seki, Shuzo Kato et al., A Modem Combining Fast Frequency Hopping and Direct Sequence Spread Spectrum for Radio LAN." In the proceeding of Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, p.p. 352-355, September 1994