Throughput enhanced wireless in local loop (TWiLL)

Abstract

Traditionally, voice communication over the local loop has been provided by wired systems. In particular, twisted pair has been the standard means of connection for homes and offices for several years. However in the recent past there has been an increased interest in the use of radio access technologies in local loops. Such systems which are now popular for their ease and low cost of installation and maintenance are called Wireless in Local Loop (WLL) systems. Subscribers' demands for greater capacity has grown over the years especially with the advent of the Internet. Wired local loops have responded to these increasing demands through the use of digital technologies such as ISDN and xDSL. Demands for enhanced data rates are being faced by WLL system operators too, thus entailing efforts towards more efficient bandwidth use. Multi-hop communication has already been studied extensively in Ad hoc network environments and has begun making forays into cellular systems as well. Multi-hop communication has been proven as one of the best ways to enhance throughput in a wireless network. Through this effort we study the issues involved in multi-hop communication in a wireless local loop system and propose a novel WLL architecture called Throughput enhanced Wireless in Local Loop (TWiLL). Through a realistic simulation model we show the tremendous performance improvement achieved by TWiLL over WLL. Traditional pricing schemes employed in single hop wireless networks cannot be applied in TWiLL -- a multi-hop environment. We also propose three novel cost reimbursement based pricing schemes which could be applied in such a multi-hop environment.