Wireless Connectivity to ATM Communication Grid

The AFOSR funds were used to purchase a 12 port Fore ATM switch, ATM network interface cards, a SUN UltraSPARC workstation, Lucent WavePoint wireless bridge, and Lucent WaveLAN wireless network interface cards. At North Carolina AT State University, a 8 million new technology building is under construction. AFSOR funds were used to purchase Fore ATM switches, ATM network interface cards, Fiber patch card, AMP wireless access point, AMP wireless card, Gateway PCTV Destination, HP Scanner, and two Data cabinets. All these equipments will be used by undergraduate students. We have designed and analyzed a low power access protocol, called ECMAC Energy conserving medium access control. This protocol has been simulated using a freely available discrete event simulation package. Performance results from the analysis show that this protocol does have better energy consumption characteristics compared to a number of other protocols, including the IEEE 802.11 standard. The next stage in this research is to implement the MAC protocol in software and reconfigurable hardware for real time power analysis. We have made significant modifications to the RSVP protocol, the Internet standard for reservation signaling.