Abstract
An indoor wireless network based on room-sized cells has been prototyped at AT&T Bell Laboratories to investigate ubiquitous tetherless access to multimedia information. A distinguishing feature of this network, named SWAN, is its use of end-to-end ATM connectivity as opposed to connection-less mobile-IP connectivity used by present day wireless LANs. This paper focuses on medium access control (MAC) and air-interface sub-system in SWAN. The design of this sub-system is made interesting by the interplay of wireless aspects with ATM and mobility. A MAC based on token passing and mobile-initiated hand-off is used in conjunction with novel algorithms to reroute ATM virtual circuits. The functionality is partitioned three-way amongst dedicated hardware and dedicated embedded processor software located on a flexible wireless ATM adapter card, and the host processor software.

This publication has 5 references indexed in Scilit: