Different Antenna Types, Wireless Network Protocols, And Software-Defined Wireless Network

Strengths and Weaknesses of Yagi, Horn and Cellular Antennas

1. i) Yagi Antenna: It is a type of directional antenna that comprises of few parallel elements within the half waved dipoles and single line dipoles, made up of metallic rods (Zhang et al., 2013). This type of antenna has the connection with receiver or transmitter and thus data transmission is much easier. Yagi antenna is often utilized as higher gain antenna on the bands of UHF, VHF and HF.

Following are the significant strengths of this Yagi antenna:

1. a) Wider Bandwidth: The most important strength of the antenna is that the bandwidth is much wider than in any other antenna.
2. b) Cheaper: Yagi is much cheaper than other antennas (Jiang, Xu & Lv, 2016).
3. c) Compacted Size: The size of the antenna is much compacted in nature and the weight is much lighter.

Following are the significant weaknesses of this Yagi antenna:

1. a) Lack of Higher Gain: There is no higher gain in the antenna and thus gain limit is up to 7dB.
2. b) Frequency Sensitive: This antenna is frequency sensitive and the antenna’s design is much obstructive.
3. ii) Horn Antenna: This particular antenna comprises of flaring metal wave guides and has the shape of horn that could direct the radio waves within one singe beam (Shen et al., 2013). Horn antennas are utilized at UHF and microwave frequency and its range is above 300MHz. The bandwidth range is within 0.8 to 18GHz.

Following are the significant strengths of this horn antenna:

1. a) Directivity: Horn antennas deliver sufficient directivity to the users.
2. b) Simplified Architecture: The architecture of this antenna is much simple than the other antennas.
3. c) Higher Gain: Horn antenna is made up of parabolic reflector discs and thus this higher gain can be provided by this antenna (Zhao et al., 2016).

Following are the significant weakness of this horn antenna:

1. a) Huge Length: The length of this particular antenna is huge. This is mainly because the antenna’s gain is restricted to lower than 20dB.
2. b) Lack of Directive Beams: This antenna does not provide any sharp or directive beam as the energy is radiated in spherical shape.

iii) Cellular Antenna: This type of antenna is completely wireless and is responsible for providing better network quality to the mobile phone users (Yang et al., 2013). This type is antenna is eventually distributed on the land areas and is termed as cell.

Following are the significant strengths of this cellular antenna:

1. a) Easy Upgrades: The up gradation of this antenna is much easier than the others.
2. b) Easy Connectivity: It could be easily connected to the other wired and wireless phones.

Following are the significant weaknesses of this cellular antenna:

1. a) Expensive: It is extremely expensive.
2. b) Limited Data: The data is limited in this antenna (Xie & Zhang, 2014).

The future dominant player for long and medium wireless network will be cellular network. This is mainly because the technology is growing gradually and soon it will be acquiring the entire network world with its benefits.

The three wireless network protocols are as follows:

1. i) LTE: LTE protocol is better for any type of bulky data transmission. It is used on for data terminals on the basis of GSM and EDGE technologies. Long term evolution has launched more advanced versions (Zhang et al., 2013).

Following are the significant strengths of this LTE:

1. a) High Speed: The rate of data transmission is extremely high and hence is extremely popular.
2. b) Less Time Consumption: LTE has another advantage that the time consumption is extremely less.

Following are the significant weaknesses of this LTE:

1. a) High Costs: It is quite expensive and could not be afforded by all.
2. b) Complicated Architecture: The architecture of this protocol is quite complicated and maintenance is required periodically (Jiang, Xu & Lv, 2016).

The most important security challenge for LTE is lack of authentication. The data is often hacked by the attackers and for this challenge, cipher algorithm is being implemented.

1. ii) Bluetooth: Another important wireless protocol is the Bluetooth that helps to transfer data within a short distance. The wavelength range is from 2.4 to 2.485GHz (Shen et al., 2013).

Following are the significant strengths of this Bluetooth:

1. a) Huge Speed: The speed of Bluetooth is very high in respect to other protocols.
2. b) Easier Connection: For low power consumption, connection to any device is very easy.

Following are the significant weaknesses of Bluetooth:

1. a) Lack of Security: There is always a chance that the data would be hacked (Zhao et al., 2016).
2. b) Low Bandwidth: The bandwidth of Bluetooth is low and thus the distance covered is less.

The security challenge of Bluetooth is the lack of data security. Thus, it is often avoided for confidential data. Short range is another issue here.

iii) WiFi: The third wireless protocol is WiFi. Wireless fidelity provides network to the users is a wide range. It is used in offices, schools and colleges (Yang et al., 2013). There is an inbuilt interoperability testing present.

Following are the strengths of WiFi:

1. a) High Speed: The speed of data transmission is extremely high.
2. b) Cost Effective: It could be utilized by everyone as it is cheap.

Following are the weaknesses of WiFi:

1. a) Lack of Security: WiFi does not provide any security to the data.
2. b) Needs Extra Hardware: An extra hardware is required before WiFi is used.

The security issue here is the lack of data security (Xie & Zhang, 2014). Hence, passwords are utilized here and are changed in a given period.

SDN provides proper network management and helps to configure the network efficiently. The network performance is improved with software defined wireless networking (Bernardos et al., 2014). Two types of architectures are discussed in this article. They are the SDN referred architecture and SDWN architecture.

The disassociation of data plane from control plane is being forwarded by SDN. The SDN referred architecture describes that centralized intelligence within controller is software based and can control the devices (Bernardos et al., 2014). The protocol of CAPWAP completes the process. The SDWN architecture provides better interfaces for the functions of control plane and traffic handing is easier.

Reflection of Paper 2: “Software Defined Wireless Networks: A Survey of Issues and Solutions”

SDN is responsible for making wireless network agile as well as flexible. The control of network is improvised by enabling the service provider for responding much faster (Rangisetti & Tamma, 2017). SDN controller can direct the switches and hence network services are delivered to those places, where network connection between devices and services are absent. MNO can handle the various challenges for traffic handling and thus controlling becomes simple.

The mobile network of LTE is implemented when data and control planes are separated. Network function virtualizations or NFV could easily handle the control signals and the traffics are controlled with effectiveness (Rangisetti & Tamma, 2017). Flexibility, scalability and adaptability are obtained in the network platform after replacing the inflexible middle box. MEC or mobile edge computing are responsible for combining IT and cloud computing. The few issues with frequency are discussed here with solutions.

References

Bernardos, C. J., De La Oliva, A., Serrano, P., Banchs, A., Contreras, L. M., Jin, H., & Zúñiga, J. C. (2014). An architecture for software defined wireless networking. IEEE wireless communications, 21(3), 52-61.

Jiang, D., Xu, Z., & Lv, Z. (2016). A multicast delivery approach with minimum energy consumption for wireless multi-hop networks. Telecommunication systems, 62(4), 771-782.

Rangisetti, A. K., & Tamma, B. R. (2017). Software Defined Wireless Networks: A Survey of Issues and Solutions. Wireless Personal Communications, 97(4), 6019-6053.

Shen, W., Zhang, T., Gidlund, M., & Dobslaw, F. (2013). SAS-TDMA: A source aware scheduling algorithm for real-time communication in industrial wireless sensor networks. Wireless networks, 19(6), 1155-1170.

Xie, X., & Zhang, X. (2014, April). Does full-duplex double the capacity of wireless networks?. In INFOCOM (pp. 253-261).

Yang, J., Chen, Y., Trappe, W., & Cheng, J. (2013). Detection and localization of multiple spoofing attackers in wireless networks. IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed systems, 24(1), 44-58.

Zhang, W., Wen, Y., Chen, Z., & Khisti, A. (2013). QoE-driven cache management for HTTP adaptive bit rate streaming over wireless networks. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 15(6), 1431-1445.

Zhao, N., Yu, F. R., Li, M., Yan, Q., & Leung, V. C. (2016). Physical layer security issues in interference-alignment-based wireless networks. IEEE Communications Magazine, 54(8), 162-168.