School of Information and Electronics Beijing Institute of Technology Beijing, China E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] AbstractDirect Mode Operation (DMO) is an important mode of operation supported by TErrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) standard. However, TETRA-DMO cannot perform multi-hop communication, limiting both the coverage and the scalability of the whole network. An approach to building an ad hoc network based on TEREA DMO technology and a proactive routing protocol, Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR) is proposed. The algorithm of DMO Multipoint Relay (DMR) selection is also introduced. Performance analysis indicates the call setup delay of group call service can meet the requirement of TETEA. Keywords-TETRA DMO, Ad hoc Network, Proactive Routing Protocol, OLSR I. INTRODUCTION ETSI Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA) [1] is the most popular digital trunked mobile radio standard and is widely accepted among Professional Mobile Radio (PMR) user organizations, such as public safety, the government and the military. In addition to the classical infrastructure-based Trunked Mode Operation (TMO), TETRA supports a Direct Mode Operation (DMO) in which nodes can communicate with each other without the network infrastructure. DMO can be used when the mobile station (MS) is located outside the coverage area of the network, or as a more secure communication channel within the coverage of the network. Besides voice service, DMO supports circuit mode data (with different protection levels), short data service and status messages. In DMO, communications between Mobile Stations (MS) may involve, at most, two hops in terms of transmission range. However, the standard does not allow building multi- hop networks. Besides, there are still several limitations in DMO: the repeater is an independent facility to be arranged in advance; for a certain communication, only one repeater can be used; the relative position of the repeater and MSs has a greater impact on the coverage; MSs that are outside of the repeaters coverage cannot use the repeater, or even cannot setup a call. Some proposals for the extension of TETRA DMO technology have been put forward. Reference [2] proposes a design of multi-hop network formed by the integration of both TETRA DMO and IEEE 802.11 communication, in which the special devices called mobile node are used that incorporates both a TETRA-DMO transceiver and one or more Wi-Fi boards. Reference [3] proposes to design an IP- based TETRA ad hoc network by adapting DMO air interface to TETRA Advanced Packet Service (TAPS) Um interface. However, TETRA has a strict requirement of fast call setup (typically, < 300ms), which is difficult to meet in multi-hop 802.11 network or TAPS. Both [2] and [3] neither evaluate the expected performance of their proposed solutions nor give any experimental results. In [4], a transmission solution of short message based on TETRA DMO is proposed. However, this proposal is limited to a maximum of two hops supported in TETRA DMO and not applicable to voice communication. In [5], a wireless mesh network based on TETRA technology is proposed by introducing a forwarding scheme and a routing protocol to TETRA DMO to support multi-hop communication. But this proposal may suffer an unacceptable call set up delay with a reactive routing protocol. In this paper, an extension of TEREA DMO technology to build an ad hoc network with a proactive routing protocol is proposed, which focuses mainly on group call service, a key feature in PMR systems. In the next section, the design of our proposal is described. Section 3 discusses the key modifications to the TETRA standard. Future works are discussed in Section 4. Section 5 gives the conclusion. II. TETRADMOMESH NETWORK In this section, a brief overview on TETRA DMO technology and Optimized Link State Routing Protocol (OLSR), a proactive routing protocol is given. And then the proposal for an extension toward ad hoc network based on TETRA DMO technology is described. A. TETRA Direct Mode Operation The DMO physical layer is designed to be compatible with trunked mode operation. Hence the DMO access scheme is Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) with carrier separation of 25 kHz. The basic radio resource is the timeslot. A group of four timeslots constitutes a frame and eighteen consecutives frames constitute a multiframe. The duration of a timeslot is 14,167 ms. The modulation rate is 36 kbit/s. The physical content of timeslots is carried by a burst. A Direct Mode physical channel is composed of two non-consecutive timeslots. In DMO, a frequency carrier supports simultaneously up to two channels. TETRA DMO usually employs only one channel per carrier, which is known as a normal mode of operation. When two channels per carrier are used simultaneously, which is known as frequency efficient mode, the operation becomes more complex. Transmissions are performed in the timeslot 1 and timeslot 3 (corresponding to channel A) or timeslot 2 and 4 (corresponding to channel A) of each frame. 2011 International Conference on Instrumentation, Measurement, Computer, Communication and Control 978-0-7695-4519-6/11 $26.00 2011 IEEE DOI 10.1109/IMCCC.2011.205 808 The slot numbers of channel A and channel B are illustrated in Fig.1. TETRA DMO supports several operating modes, such as dual watch, repeater and gateway. The purpose of repeaters is to stabilize and extend the range of DM MS-MS communication. A DM-REP receives information from one MS and re-transmits it to other DM-MSs over the air interface. There are three kinds of DM Repeaters: Type 1A, Type 1B and Type 2. Their operating modes are showed in Fig.2. In DMO, the calling user is called Master, and the called user is called Slave[6]. B. Proactive Routing Protocol Routing mechanisms currently used in ad-hoc networks may be classified into two main groups: reactive and proactive solutions. Reactive solutions may introduce an additional delay, when initiating the communication or the transaction, if there is no available route. This may be an inconvenience because emergency communications require a fast call set-up. On the contrary, proactive solutions do not introduce this initial extra delay because they already have the routes available at expense of sending periodic control messages. We use a proactive routing protocol, OLSR [7], in this paper. In OLSR, each node selects a subset of its symmetric 1- hop neighbor nodes as "multipoint relays" (MPR) and only MPR nodes are responsible for forwarding control traffic, intended for diffusion into the entire network. This technique substantially reduces the message overhead as compared to a classical flooding mechanism, where every node retransmits each message when it receives the first copy of the message. C. Extensions of TETRA DMO toward Ad Hoc Network The TETRA DMO technology, as stated in the previous section, does not allow building multi-hop networks and cannot use more than one repeater at a time. In order to overcome these shortcomings a new method is proposed based on minimum modifications of the standard in this paper. Routing capabilities are core feature required and a proactive routing technology is used to minimize the call set up delay. 1) Local topology discovery Local topology discovery is the first step in our solution. This task is completed by taking advantage of the hello message mechanism which is commonly used by the proactive routing protocol in mobile ad hoc networks. Hello message containing a list of 1-hop neighborhood is broadcasted periodically in 1-hop radius by each node. Each neighbor node has an associated status of either "symmetric" or "asymmetric". "Symmetric" indicates that the link to that neighbor node has been verified to be bi-directional, i.e., it is possible to transmit data in both directions. "Asymmetric" indicates that HELLO messages from the node have been heard, but it is not confirmed that this node is also able to receive messages. 2) DMR selection Each node selects a set of nodes in its symmetric 1-hop neighborhood which are responsible to retransmit its messages. This set of selected neighbor nodes is called the DMO Multipoint Relay (DMR) set of that node. The neighbors, which are not in the DMR set, receive and process the messages but do not retransmit the messages. Theoretically, the DMR set is selected so that it can cover all 2-hop neighbor nodes. For group call service in our solution, DMRs need to work simultaneously. The number of DMR, therefore, is limited by the number of channels offered in DMO technology. The repeater Type 2 of TETRA DMO is suitable to support two simultaneous calls using the so-called channel A and channel B in each of the two carriers used by Type 2 repeaters. In other words, four channels can be used simultaneously. In this case, up to three DMRs can be selected, by which the maximum number of 2-hop neighbor nodes should be covered. We give an algorithm for the DMR selection. The following terminology will be used in the description of the algorithm. S: the node that is to setup a call and performs this algorithm. The call setup procedure will not be initiated if S cannot find any 1-hop neighbor, i.e., S is isolated. N: the set of symmetric 1-hop neighborhood of S; N2: the set of 2-hop neighborhood of S; D(x): the degree of a node x (where x is a member of N) is defined as the number of nodes in N2 for which node x can provide reachability to S. The algorithm is as follows: a) For each node in N, calculate D(x), where x is a member of N. If there is no any 2-hop neighbor for S, then D(x) will be zero and there is no need to select DMR. b) Select the node with the maximum degree as the first DMR, named DMR_1. Figure 1. Timeslot number for each channel S'uv '`ul Cu` ! Mu:t '`ul Cu` ! DM MS Mu:t DMkll T) !^ DM MS S'uv DM MS Mu:t DMkll T) !b Mu:t '`ul DM MS S'uv S'uv '`ul Cu` ! Cu` ? Cu` ? Cu` ! Mu:t '`ul DM MS! Mu:t DMkll T) ? DM MS? S'uv Cu` ! Cu` ? S'uv '`ul Cu` ? Cu` ! Mu:t '`ul DM MS3 Mu:t Cu` ? Cu` ! DM MS+ S'uv Cu` ! S'uv '`ul Cu` ? Figure 2. Frequency usage for three type of repeaters 809 c) Remove all the 2-hop neighbors from N2 that can be covered by DMR_1 and recalculate D(x), where x is a member of N except DMR_1. Select the node with the maximum degree as the second DMR, named DMR_2. If DMR_2 doesnt exists, Select DMR_2 from the 1-hop neighbors of DMR_1. d) Similar to the procedure c), select the third DMR, named DMR_3, if there are still members in N2. If DMR_3 doesnt exists, Select DMR_3 from the 1-hop neighbors of DMR_1 or DMR_2. As showed in Fig.3, by taking advantage of 3 DMRs, the number of nodes participating in the group call is much larger than those with a peer-to-peer manner or with only one repeater. Our solution, therefore, can extend the communication range significantly for group call servers and enhance the flexibility of networks. In some scenarios, DMRs are multi-hop neighbors of node S. For example, the calling node S is at the edge of the group, as showed in Fig.4. DMR_1 and DMR_2 are selected by node S, while DMR_3 is selected form the neighbors of DMR_2 to making use of the idle channel. DMR_3 is called as Multi-hop DMR. 3) Call Setup procedure Next a set up procedure according to the scenario in Fig.4 is given. The setup message broadcasted by node S contains the information about the selection of DMRs according to which the receiving nodes take their actions. For the 1-hop neighbor node, like D1, it should only process the messages without retransmitting them. For DMR_2, it needs not only to process the messages received from node S, but also to retransmit them. DMR_1 has an additional task assigned by node S, selecting a Multi-hop DMR. DMR_3 is selected and it will make another retransmission. For D3, it will join the call as a 3-hop neighbor of node S. III. IMPLEMENTATION AND ANALYSIS This section is focused on the practical implementation of our proposal and an analysis of the call set up time is given. A. Protocol Data Unit (PDU) Definition 1) DM HELLO PDU A new PDU should be added to carry HELLO message for local topology discovery. DM HELLO PDU can be carried in the Direct Mode Synchronization Bursts (DSB). According to TETRA DMO standard, there are still two available SYNC PDU types that can be carried in the DSB. Thereby one of them is proposed to be used to define our HELLO message, named DM HELLO PDU, which is used to broadcast 1-hop neighbor information of the symmetric or asymmetric nodes. Table 1 shows the most relevant elements in the DM HELLO PDU. The value of SYNC PDU type of DM HELLO is set to 10 2 . Each node is assigned a 10-bit repeater-like address as the neighbor address in order to minimize the cost of bits in DM HELLO PDU. It then should be additionally addressable by neighbor address besides of its own TETRA Subscriber Identity (TSI) family addresses. B. DMAC-SYNC PDU with DMR information The node setting up a call needs to select its DMRs and assign channel for them. The information about DMRs should be broadcasted with the setup message. In TETRA DMO standard, the DM-SETUP PDU generated at layer 3 is encapsulated in the DMAC-SYNC PDU at layer 2, named Data Link Layer (DLL). Therefore, we replace the Repeater address and Gateway address element of DMAC-SYNC PDU in SCH/H channel with DMR information represented in Table 2. Figure 4. Multi-hop DMR selection Figure 3. 1-hop DMR selection 810 TABLE 1. MAIN ELEMENTS OF DMHELLOPDU Information element Length Type SYNC PDU type 2 M Numbers of SYM nodes 6 M Addresses of symmetric nodes Numbers of ASYM nodes 6 M Addresses of asymmetric nodes TABLE 2. INFORMATION ABOUT DMR IN DMAC-SYNC PDU Information element Length Type Number of DMR 3 M Address of DMR_1 10 C Channel assigned to DMR_1 2 C Multi-hop DMR selection 2 C Address of DMR_2 10 C Channel assigned to DMR_2 2 C Address of DMR_3 10 C Channel assigned to DMR_3 2 C C. Performance Analysis According to the scenario in Fig.4, the usage of the wireless interface for each DMR and the end-to-end delay suffered in the communication for this case are illustrated in Fig.5. In the call setup procedure, the first transmission is preceded by a sequence of synchronization bursts which may have a length between 2 and 4 frames. Assuming the best case (according to the standard), the achieved global call setup time is the end-to-end delay plus 113.34 ms (2 frames), as shown in Table 3. We meet the requirement of fast call setup, the well known figure of less than 300ms as standard TRTEA offers. IV. FUTURE WORK The period for nodes to broadcast hello message has a great impact on the network performance. An appropriate HELLO emission interval is determined by several factors, such as transmission power and the mobility of nodes. This is for further study. The number of DMRs is limited and only one group is able to communicate at any given time due to the wireless interface and the work mode provided by TETRA DMO technology. Additional work is needed in order to consider further modifications of the standard that may improve performance. V. CONCLUSION In this paper, an extension of TEREA DMO technology to build an ad hoc network with a proactive routing protocol is proposed and the 300 ms set-up time that TETRA should offer can be fulfilled. Our solution can extend the communication range significantly for group call servers and enhance the flexibility of networks. TABLE 3 DELAY OF DIFFERENT DMRS DMR End-to-end delay Call set up delay DMR_1 56.67ms (4 slots) 170.01ms DMR_2 70.84ms (5 slots) 184.18ms DMR_3 70.84ms (9 slots) 240.85ms REFERENCES [1] TETRA MoU Association Limited. http://www.tetramou.com [2] R. F. Luca Adamo, Matteo Rosi, Daniele Tarchi and Federico Frosali, "Analysis and Design of a TETRA-DMO and IEEE 802.11 integrated network", In Proc. of IWCMC, Caen, France, July, 2010. [3] H. XiaoBen, "Study on TETRA DMO and Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking." [4] F. Eidlert, "Messaging and positioning in a dynamic TETRA environment," 2009. [5] C. G. P. Plans, J. Ferrer, and J. Paradells., "TETRA as a building block to WMNs," 2007. [6] ETSI ETS 300 396-1, "Terrestrial trunked radio (TETRA); technical requirements for direct mode operation (DMO); part 1: General network design." ETSI, 1998. [7] T. Clausen and P. Jacquet. Optimized link state routing protocol (OLSR). RFC 3626 http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc3626.txt, 2003. Figure.5 Usage of the wireless interface for each DMR 811