Re: [Discuss-gnuradio] Looking for 802.11 MAC & PHY Package

[Bastian Bloessl]

Hi,

On 10/10/2014 06:20 PM, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
> Dear Marcus and Bloessl,
>
> Thanks for the reply. I also notice the fully functional gr-ieee802-11
> package provide by Bloessl. Previously I thought it's only PHY, but as
> Marcus mentioned it also include MAC. It seems to me in the
> gr-ieee802-11-master package, the MAC does not run csma. I also find the
> gr-ieee802-11-csma package, which is smaller than the master package but
> indicate "csma" in name and one of examples.

Sorry, I don't get what you mean with smaller. Are you talking about the 
file size of the sources?
All branches add / parse the MAC header as defined in the standard. So 
the frame format is OK on all branches. The 'csma' branch implements 
channel access for broadcast frames.

> After checking the Readme
> and other pulications from WIME project, I cannot find detail
> description regarding the MAC and CSMA function for the package.

It's the one at the top
http://www.ccs-labs.org/bib/bloessl2014timings/

> 1. Does the csma package should be used with the master package?

No. 'csma' is the name of a branch. You would checkout and use that branch.

> 2. Does the csma package support multiple nodes in an ad-hoc network?

The CSMA implementation is for broadcast frames only. So depends on what 
you want to do.

> Return to Marcus's advice, do you mean that to realize the MAC (CSMA),
> we still need implement FPGA (not the one in USRP?) to handle it in
> hardware, no matter we use the software lib, e.g. GRU Radio or Click
> Module Router?

To support CSMA functionality you will have to change the FPGA otherwise 
you will not be able to meet the timing constraints of 802.11. For the 
broadcast case you only need some small changes.
If you want to support ACKS and RTS/CTS you need a lot of functionality 
on the FPGA. In my opinion this will not happen on a N210, but AFAIK 
Ettus has a 802.11 implementation for RFNoC (i.e. for the FPGA) which 
most likely meets all timing constraints.

Best,
Bastian

> Many thanks for your help again!
>
> Best regards,
> Jiayi
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 4:05 PM, Marcus Müller <address@hidden
> <mailto:address@hidden>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Jiayi,
>
>     :) gr-ieee802-11 is, as far as I know, the most comprehensive,
>     functional implementation so far. It *can* talk to consumer cards -- but
>     of course, that's not because it has a complete MAC implementation.
>     Actually, doing a really standards-compliant IEEE802.11agp MAC can't
>     really be done in host software alone -- the gigabit ethernet interface
>     alone just has too much latency, and you'll have to be really fast when
>     detecting ACK's, calculating checksums and sending out the reply. I
>     doubt you can implement a fully working IEEE802.11 MAC in software alone
>     without touching the FPGA.
>
>     Here's the official source code:
>     https://github.com/bastibl/gr-ieee802-11 has the source code, btw.
>
>
>     Greetings,
>     Marcus
>     On 09.10.2014 21:47, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
>      > Dear Marcus and all,
>      >
>      > Many thanks for the advice regarding the Hydra and ORBIT project.
>      >
>      > Actually I'm looking for the open-source 802.11 PHY&MAC packages
>     which are
>      > compatible with Recent GNU Radio and USRP N210/X310.
>      >
>      > I've searched from internet and got some findings listed below:
>      > 1) Hydra PHY & MAC from University of Texas at Austin [1]
>      > 2) FTW IEEE802.11a/g/p OFDM Frame Encoder [2]
>      > 3) UWICORE m-HOP 802.11 MAC for USRP based on the FTW PHY [3]
>      > http://www.uwicore.umh.es/mhop-software.html
>      > *** All (1-3) only compatible with gnuradio-3.2.2 which was too
>     many years
>      > ago.
>      >
>      > 4) WIME IEEE 802.11a/g/p Transceiver for GNU Radio v3.7 [3]
>      > http://www.ccs-labs.org/software/gr-ieee802-11/
>      > *** This is a most recent package for gnuradio 3.7, but is PHY
>     only. Are
>      > there any MAC package which compatible with this WIME PHY?
>      >
>      > 5) ORBIT Project [5]
>      > *** This is a huge project which can be studied. Are there any
>     project
>      > provide both 802.11 MAC & PHY like Hydrd did before?
>      >
>      > Best regards,
>      > Jiayi
>      >
>      > [1] K. Mandke, Soon-Hyeok Choi, Gibeom Kim, R. Grant, R. Daniels,
>     Wonsoo
>      > Kim, R. W. Heath, Jr., and S. Nettles, “Early Results on Hydra: A
>     Flexible
>      > MAC/PHY Multihop Testbed,” Proc. of IEEE Vehicular Tech. Conf. , pp.
>      > 1896-1900, Dublin, Ireland, April 23 – 25, 2007.
>      > [2] http://www.cgran.org/wiki/ftw80211ofdmtx
>      > [3] J.R. Gutierrez-Agullo, B. Coll-Perales and J. Gozalvez, "An
>     IEEE 802.11
>      > MAC Software Defined Radio Implementation for Experimental Wireless
>      > Communications and Networking Research", Proceedings of the 2010
>     IFIP/IEEE
>      > Wireless Days (WD'10), 20-22 October 2010, Venice (Italy).
>      > [4] Bastian Bloessl, Michele Segata, Christoph Sommer and Falko
>     Dressler,
>      > "An IEEE 802.11a/g/p OFDM Receiver for GNU Radio," Proceedings of ACM
>      > SIGCOMM 2013, 2nd ACM SIGCOMM Workshop of Software Radio
>     Implementation
>      > Forum (SRIF 2013), Hong Kong, China, August 2013, pp. 9-16.
>      > [5] http://www.orbit-lab.org/
>      >
>      >
>      > On Thu, Oct 9, 2014 at 1:02 PM, Marcus Müller
>     <address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>>
>      > wrote:
>      >
>      >> Yes. Nothing in GNU Radio or UHD (the USRP driver framework) is
>      >> distribution-specific, so transition from Ubuntu to Fedora
>     should not be
>      >> a problem
>      >>
>      >> Good luck with finding a "new version" of Hydra; I didn't find any
>      >> publication after 2009 on a quick first glance on google
>     scholar[1]. And
>      >> I couldn't find the source code anywhere. Honestly: If you don't
>     find
>      >> anything that proves otherwise, I'd presume that Hydra is kind
>     of dead
>      >> [2]. Please prove me wrong on this!
>      >>
>      >> There is the ORBIT lab that has come up with a rather comprehensive
>      >> infrastructure for wireless testbeds, so you might want to look
>     at that[3].
>      >>
>      >> Greetings,
>      >> Marcus
>      >>
>      >> [1]
>      >>
>      >>
>     
> http://scholar.google.de/scholar?q=%22Robert+W.+Heath%22+hydra&hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo=2010&as_yhi=
>      >> [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0yXqU-w9U0
>      >> [3] http://www.orbit-lab.org/
>      >> On 09.10.2014 16:41, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
>      >>> Hi Marcus,
>      >>>
>      >>> Another question is that, if we development the software with
>     GNU Radio
>      >> and
>      >>> USRP in Ubuntu, is it easy to transfer to Fedora?
>      >> Thanks for your reply. I think the best way to us is to find the new
>      >> version of Hydra package which is based on the recent GNU Radio
>     version
>      >> working with current USRP produces.
>      >>
>      >>> Many thanks!
>      >>>
>      >>> Regards,
>      >>> Jiayi
>      >>>
>      >>> On Wed, Oct 8, 2014 at 11:11 AM, Marcus Müller
>     <address@hidden <mailto:address@hidden>
>      >>>
>      >>> wrote:
>      >>>
>      >>>>  Hello Jiayi,
>      >>>>
>      >>>> 3.2.2 is *very* ancient. In fact, it's older than my
>     involvement with
>      >> GNU
>      >>>> Radio, and I think it will be very hard to find someone how's
>     still
>      >> using
>      >>>> it, so asking for experience, I'm afraid, is not going to
>     yield a lot of
>      >>>> responses in 2014.
>      >>>> Therefore, it will be nearly impossible to recreate an
>     environment with
>      >>>> all the GNU Radio dependencies that match the needs of GNU
>     Radio 3.2.2.
>      >>>>
>      >>>> I'm not familiar with Hydra itself; but if it uses GR 3.2.2
>     you won't be
>      >>>> able to use it with modern USRPs, you won't have much fun
>     developing new
>      >>>> applications for it, and in total it might be wise to look if
>     you can
>      >>>> either find a suitable substitute or port it to a modern GNU
>     Radio.
>      >>>>
>      >>>> However, I'm optimistic that someone else here has used Hydra,
>     and maybe
>      >>>> he has some more specific hints than I do.
>      >>>>
>      >>>> Greetings,
>      >>>> Marcus
>      >>>>
>      >>>>
>      >>>> On 08.10.2014 16:50, Zhang, Jiayi wrote:
>      >>>>
>      >>>> Dear all,
>      >>>>
>      >>>> I'm a beginner of GNURadio but I'm familiar with some basis of
>     Linux
>      >> when I
>      >>>> use C++ & IT++. Currently I'm trying to test the Hydra-0.4
>     package for
>      >>>> evaluation under the last ubuntu ver 14.04.1 32bit. During the
>      >> installation
>      >>>> of gnuradio-3.2.2, there is an error which I cannot find the
>     solution on
>      >>>> internet.
>      >>>>
>      >>>> gnuradio-3.2.2$ ./bootstrap && ./configure --prefix=$GR
>      >>>> …
>      >>>> checking for boost >= 1.35... yes
>      >>>> checking whether the boost::thread includes are available... yes
>      >>>> configure: error: Could not link against libboost_thread!
>      >>>>
>      >>>> ‘libboost-all-dev’ has already installed, including
>      >> ‘libboost-thread-dev’,
>      >>>> I tried both version 1.54 and 1.55 of libboost. I've also
>     searched the
>      >>>> error message in Google, even after I installed the
>     'build-essential'
>      >>>> package, the error remains the same.
>      >>>>
>      >>>> I will be much appreciated if any of you have such an
>     experience and
>      >> would
>      >>>> feedback some solutions.
>      >>>>
>      >>>> Regards,
>      >>>> Jiayi (Vincent)