Wireless Connectivity: An Intuitive and Fundamental Guide

Wireless connectivity has become an indispensable part, a commodity associated with the way we work and play. The latest developments, the 5G, next-generation Wi-Fi and Internet of Things connectivity, are the key enablers for widespread digitalization of practically all industries and public sector segments. This immense development within the last three decades have been accompanied by a large number of ideas, articles, patents, and even myths. This book introduces the most important ideas and concepts in wireless connectivity and discusses how these are interconnected, whilst the mathematical content is kept minimal. The book does not follow the established, linear structure in which one starts from the propagation and channels and then climbs up the protocol layers. The structure is, rather, nonlinear, in an attempt to follow the intuition used when one creates a new technology to solve a certain problem.

The target audience is:

* Students in electronics, communication, and networking

* Wireless engineers that are specialized in one area, but want to know how the whole system works, without going through all the details and math

* Computer scientists that want to understand the fundamentals of wireless connectivity, the requirements and, most importantly, the limitations

* Engineers in energy systems, logistics, transport and other vertical sectors that are increasingly reliant on wireless technology

Petar Popovski is a Professor of Wireless Communications at Aalborg University and Fellow of the IEEE. He received his Dipl.-Ing and M. Sc. degrees in Communication Engineering from the University of Sts. Cyril and Methodius in Skopje and the Ph.D. degree from Aalborg University in 2005. He has over 300 publications in journals, conference proceedings, and edited books. He holds over 30 patents and patent applications. He received an ERC Consolidator Grant (2015), the Danish Elite Researcher award (2016), IEEE Fred W. Ellersick prize (2016), and IEEE Stephen O. Rice prize (2018). He is featured in the list of Highly Cited Researchers 2018, compiled by Web of Science. His research interests are in the area of wireless communication and communication theory.

Klappentext

Wireless Connectivity: An Intuitive and Fundamental Guide

Wireless connectivity has become an indispensable part, a commodity associated with the way we work and play. The latest developments, the 5G, next-generation Wi-Fi and Internet of Things connectivity, are the key enablers for widespread digitalization of practically all industries and public sector segments. This immense development within the last three decades has been accompanied by a large number of ideas, articles, patents, and even myths. This book introduces the most important ideas and concepts in wireless connectivity and discusses how these are interconnected, whilst the mathematical content is kept minimal. The book does not follow the established, linear structure in which one starts from the propagation and channels and then climbs up the protocol layers. The structure is, rather, nonlinear, in an attempt to follow the intuition used when one creates a new technology to solve a certain problem.

The target audience is:

• Students in electronics, communication, and networking
• Wireless engineers that are specialized in one area, but want to know how the whole system works, without going through all the details and math
• Computer scientists that want to understand the fundamentals of wireless connectivity, the requirements and, most importantly, the limitations
• Engineers in energy systems, logistics, transport and other vertical sectors that are increasingly reliant on wireless technology

Wireless Connectivity: An Intuitive and Fundamental Guide

Wireless connectivity has become an indispensable part, a commodity associated with the way we work and play. The latest developments, the 5G, next-generation Wi-Fi and Internet of Things connectivity, are the key enablers for widespread digitalization of practically all industries and public sector segments. This immense development within the last three decades have been accompanied by a large number of ideas, articles, patents, and even myths. This book introduces the most important ideas and concepts in wireless connectivity and discusses how these are interconnected, whilst the mathematical content is kept minimal. The book does not follow the established, linear structure in which one starts from the propagation and channels and then climbs up the protocol layers. The structure is, rather, nonlinear, in an attempt to follow the intuition used when one creates a new technology to solve a certain problem.

The target audience is:

• Students in electronics, communication, and networking
• Wireless engineers that are specialized in one area, but want to know how the whole system works, without going through all the details and math
• Computer scientists that want to understand the fundamentals of wireless connectivity, the requirements and, most importantly, the limitations
• Engineers in energy systems, logistics, transport and other vertical sectors that are increasingly reliant on wireless technology

Foreword xv

Acknowledgments xix

Acronyms xxi

1 An Easy Introduction to the Shared Wireless Medium 3

1.1 How to Build a Simple Model for Wireless Communication 4

1.1.1 Which Features We Want from the Model 4

1.1.2 Communication Channel with Collisions 4

1.1.3 Trade-offs in the Collision Model 7

1.2 The First Contact 9

1.2.1 Hierarchy Helps to Establish Contact 9

1.2.2 Wireless Rendezvous without Help 11

1.2.3 Rendezvous with Full-Duplex Devices 12

1.3 Multiple Access with Centralized Control 12

1.3.1 A Frame for Time Division 13

1.3.2 Frame Header for Flexible Time Division 14

1.3.3 A Simple Two-Way System that Works Under the Collision Model 15

1.3.4 Still Not a Practical TDMA System 18

1.4 Making TDMA Dynamic 19

1.4.1 Circuit-Switched versus Packet-Switched Operation 19

1.4.2 Dynamic Allocation of Resources to Users 20

1.4.3 Short Control Packets and the Idea of Reservation 22

1.4.4 Half-Duplex versus Full-Duplex in TDMA 24

1.5 Chapter Summary 25

1.6 Further Reading 25

1.7 Problems and Reflections 26

2 Random Access: How to Talk in Crowded Dark Room 29

2.1 Framed ALOHA 30

2.1.1 Randomization that Maximizes the ALOHA Throughput 32

2.2 Probing 35

2.2.1 Combining ALOHA and Probing 39

2.3 Carrier Sensing 39

2.3.1 Randomization and Spectrum Sharing 39

2.3.2 An Idle Slot is Cheap 41

2.3.3 Feedback to the Transmitter 43

2.4 Random Access and Multiple Hops 45

2.4.1 Use of Reservation Packets in Multi-Hop 47

2.4.2 Multiple Hops and Full-Duplex 47

2.5 Chapter Summary 48

2.6 Further Reading 48

2.7 Problems and Reflections 48

3 Access Beyond the Collision Model 53

3.1 Distance Gets into the Model 53

3.1.1 Communication Degrades as the Distance Increases 53

3.1.2 How to Make the Result of a Collision Dependent on the Distance 55

3.2 Simplified Distance Dependence: A Double Disk Model 57

3.3 Downlink Communication with the Double Disk Model 58

3.3.1 A Cautious Example of a Design that Reaches the Limits of the Model 61

3.4 Uplink Communication with the Double Disk Model 62

3.4.1 Uplink that Uses Multi-Packet Reception 64

3.4.2 Buffered Collisions for Fut…