Abstract

Wireless technology has rapidly expanded in recent years; however, until now, it is only used to extend services in wired networks, applications that can take full advantage of mobile communication have not appeared yet. In this thesis, a practical messaging application for mobile computing is presented and a realtime Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP) for underlying wireless networks is evaluated. Mobile Yellow page Messaging and Retrieval (MYMAR) system is a new application for self-organized IEEE 802.11 compliant WLANs which consist of one Base Station (BS) and several Mobile Stations (MS) in each WLAN segment. In this distributed free public-access mobile network, BSs provide yellow page-like local information, such as digital maps, business advertisements, and business locations, to enable mobile receivers to quickly determine driving direction and navigate facilities of an intended service. Users retrieve and navigate such information via a user-friendly, voice recognition based hand-free command system. Other services available are voice messaging between users and voice-activated global web wireless access. The basic architecture and system operation of this wireless application system is shown. A suitable routing strategy is also necessary to forward packets between WLAN segments. A realtime Zone Routing Protocol (ZRP), which combines proactive routing for in-zone traffic and on-demand routing for out-zone traffic, was implemented. Some optimal configurations, such as Early Detection/Termination and Backward Route Accumulation, were made to improve the ZRP performance in mobile wireless network. The processing time for each ZRP subtask was evaluated.