Wireless Virtualization on Commodity 802.11 Hardware

Short Description
In this paper we describe specific challenges in virtualizing a wireless network and multiple strategies to address them. Among different possible wireless virtualization strategies, our current work in this domain is focussed on a Time-Division Multiplexing (TDM) approach. Hence, we we present our experiences in the design and implementation of such TDM-based wireless virtualization. Our wireless virtualiza- tion system is specifically targeted for multiplexing experi- ments on a large-scale 802.11 wireless testbed facility.

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Content
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Challenges to wireless virtualization
Virtualizing a wireless network presents some unique chal- lenges that are not observable in a wired network. The biggest challenge in this domain is to virtualize the wire- less link. To establish a wireless link, a transmitter-receiver pair has to configured to the same channel parameters, e.g., channel of operation, appropriate setting of transmit power, receiver sensitivity, etc. Now consider two different exper- iments (A and B), each with its own definitions of wire- less links and communication patterns spanning the physi- cal network. If these two experiments are to co-exist on the same hardware, communication activities from one experi- ment should not affect any reception behavior on the second experiment, and vice versa. This observation translates to two important requirements: (i) Coherence: When a trans- mitter of one experiment is active, all of the corresponding receivers and potential sources of interference as defined by the experiment should be simultaneously active on their ap- propriate channels of operation, and (ii) Isolation: When a node belonging to one one experiment is receiving some signal pertinent to the experiment, no transmitter of a dif- ferent experiment within the communication range of the re- ceiver should be active in the same or a partially-overlapping channel [6]. To enforce such requirements, we need careful scheduling of transmission activities across different experi- ments. We next discuss different approaches to meet these goals.
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