Heterogeneous Advanced Wireless Networks

HAWK (Heterogeneous Advanced Wireless networKs) is developed by the Internet and Mobile Computing Lab at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University supported by Innovation and Technology Fund of the government of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

As the next generation mobile wireless networks are based on all-IP networks. All kinds of advanced wireless access technologies such as 3G and beyond 3G cellular networks, wireless mesh networks, WLANs, will provide users higher data rate and larger coverage to access Internet. The main objective of the project is to study and develop practical techniques and mechanisms for realizing seamless communication and mobility when the mobile clients roam among the advanced heterogeneous wireless networks.

To achieve seamless communication and mobility while a mobile client roaming among 3G cellular networks, wireless mesh networks and WLANs, we choose the loose-coupling interworking architecture since the 3G and WLAN are transparent so that we cannot deploy Mobile IP entities for administrative reasons. Moreover, we also develop and implement fast and smooth handoff algorithms in intra-mesh and inter-networks scenarios.

We deploy a home agent on the Gateway inside a wireless mesh network, which we can operate directly. We consider the wireless mesh network as the home network and other two networks, 3G and WLAN, as foreign networks for mobile clients. Co-located Care-of Address mode in Mobile IP is used while the mobile client is in foreign networks so that we do not need to deploy any foreign agents inside 3G or WLAN networks.

A dual mode mobile client equipped with 3G modem and Wi-Fi wireless NIC can access Internet via 3G cellular networks, wireless mesh networks and WLANs.

We have developed mobile client software to support mobile client to select the available wireless interface intelligently, while a mobile client crosses different wireless networks.

Currently we deploy the mobile client hardware and software in a notebook platform and a MID (Mobile Internet Device) platform, and will further migrate into a smart phone platform.