Telecommunication Protocols

Higher education teachers: Hercog Drago

Subject description

Prerequisits:

• Enrollment. Understanding of the following topics: programming, digital technics, communication systems.
• A student may pass the exam if they attended laboratory work, wrote the report on laboratory work, and successfully made two homework assignments (protocol specification and publication of a web page on the server).

Content (Syllabus outline):

Telecommunication service (user, provider, service specification, service access point, primitives). Protocol (protocol as service implementation, protocol entities, protocol as a language, protocol specification). Messages (SDU, PDU, user message and overhead, PDU structure). Protocol stack (principles, OSI model, TCP/IP, SS7, ATM, communication planes, tunneling). Communication system and protocol specification (telecommunication system structure specification, PDU and protocol rules specification, abstract and transfer syntax, (extended) finite state machine, SDL, MSC). Protocol and protocol stack efficiency. Important functionalities of protocols. PDU formatting and synchronisation (synchronous and asynchronous transfer, transparent transfer). Connection management (two-way handshake, three-way handshake, collision resolution, negotiations). Providing reliable transfer (error detection and correction, sliding window protocols). Flow and congestion control (the need for control, flow control, congestion control, control methods). Segmentation and reassembly. Medium access control protocols. Examples of some specific protocols (a more detailed description of protocols LAPB/LAPD, TCP, UDP, IP, ICMP; Aloha, CSMA/CD, ARP, and some Internet-related application-layer protocols). Protocol analysis.

Objectives and competences:

Understanding principles and methods for message transfer through telecommunication system, purpose of telecommunication services, protocols and protocol stacks. Expertise in protocol specification techniques. Understanding and design of protocols to assure reliable message transfer. Overview of some most important telecommunication protocols.

Intended learning outcomes:

The course emphasis is on understanding principles, the goal of studying specific methods and protocols is to deepen and strengthen the principles understanding, as well as knowledge integration.

Learning and teaching methods:

Lectures and laboratory work. In lectures, principles are explained and illustrated with numerous examples. In laboratory, practical aspects of protocols are studied based on protocol specification in SDL language (using Cinderella software), protocol efficiency simulation, experiments with some application-layer protocols of the TCP/IP stack, and protocol analysis with Wireshark software. Students must work on their own on two homework assignments (specification of a telecommunication system in SDL language and publication of a simple web page on the server); both assignments must be explained before the exam. The exam consists of written and oral exam. Examination and discussion of the written exam as well as discussion on laboratory work are parts of oral exam.

Study materials

1. Hercog, D., Telekomunikacijska omrežja, Pasadena, 2013 (in Slovenian)
2. Hercog, D., Telekomunikacijski protokoli, učbenik v pripravi (in Slovenian)
3. Stallings, W., Data and Computer Communications, 9th Ed., Pearson Prentice-Hall, 2011
4. Sharp, R., Principles of Protocol Design, Springer, 2008
5. Pujolle, G., Les Réseaux, Édition 2011, Eyrolles, 2011