WAP WIRELESS COMMUNICATION

WAP Forum www.wapforum.com

WAP, Wireless Application Protocol aims to provide Internet content and advanced telephony services to digital mobile phones, pagers and other wireless terminals. The protocol family works across different wireless network environments and makes web pages visible on low-resolution and low-bandwidth devices. WAP phones are "smart phones" allowing their users to respond to e-mail, access computer databases and to empower the phone to interact with Internet-based content and e-mail.

WAP specifies a Wireless application Environment and Wireless Protocols. The Wireless application environment (WAE) is based on WSP (Wireless Session Protocol) and WTP (Wireless Transaction Protocol).

The OSI Model for Wireless Communication

WAP Protocol stack

The basic construction of WAP architecture can be explained using the following model. The order of the independent levels – which are a hierarchy - has the advantage that the system is very flexible and can be scaled up or down. Because of the different levels – or stacks - this is called the "WAP Stack", which is divided into 5 different levels.

• Application Layer: Wireless Application Environment (WAE).
• Session Layer: Wireless Session Protocol (WSP).
• Transaction Layer: Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP).
• Security Layer: Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS).
• Transport Layer: Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP).

Each stack overlaps with the stack below. This stack architecture makes it possible for software manufacturers to develop applications and services for certain stacks. They may even develop services for stacks which are not specified yet.

The WAP stack is an entity of protocols which cover the wireless data transfer. The diagram above shows the order of the different stacks and their protocols. This includes the stacks responsible for the layout as well as the stacks resposible for the actual data transfer. The highest level or stack is the one which deals with the layout. A lower stack is responsible for the transfer and the security through WTLS (Wireless Transport Layer Security). All stacks lower than this one are being called network stack. Due to this hierarchy of stacks any changes made in the network stacks will have no influence over the stacks above

Application Layer (WAE and WTA)

The environment for wireless applications (Wireless Application Environment WAE) and the application for wireless phones (Wireless Telephony Application WTA) are the highest layer in the hierarchy of WAP architechture. These two are the main interface to the client device, which gives and controls the description language, the script language of any application and the specifics of the telephony. WAE and WTA have only a few easy functions on the client device, like the maintenance of a history list, for example.

Session Layer (Wireless Session Protocol WSP)

The Wireless Session Protocol (WSP) has all the specifications for a session. It is the interface between the application layer and the transfer layer and delivers all functions that are needed for wireless connections. A session mainly consists of 3 phases: start of the session, transfering information back and forth and the end of the session. Additionally, a session can be interrupted and started again (from the point where it was interrupted.)

Transaction Layer (Wireless Transaction Protocol WTP)

The specifications for the transfer layer are in the Wireless Transaction Protocol (WTP). Like the User Datagramm Protocol (UDP), the WTP runs at the head of the datagramm service. Both the UDP and the WTP are a part of the standard application from the TCP/IP to make the simplified protocol compatible to mobile terminals. WTP supports chaining together protocol data and the delayed response to reduce the number of transmissions. The protocol tries to optimize user interaction in order that information can be received when needed.

Wireless Transport Layer Security WTLS

The Wireless Transport Layer Security (WTLS) is a optional layer or stack which consists of description devices. A secure transmission is crucial for certain applications such as e-commerce or WAP-banking and is a standard in these days. Furthermore WTLS contains a check for data integrity, user authentification and gateway security.

Transport Layer (Wireless Datagram Protocol WDP)

The Wireless Datagram Protocol (WDP) represents the transfer or transmission layer and is also the interface of the network layer to all the above stacks/layers. With the help of WDP the transmission layer can be assimilated to the specifications of a network operator. This means that WAP is completely independent from any network operator. The transmission of SMS, USSD, CSD, CDPD, IS-136 packet data and GPRS is supported. The Wireless Control Message Protocol (WCMP) is an optional addition to WAP, which will inform users about occurred errors.

WTLS

Wapforum version 11/99

Wireless Transport Layer Security is a protocol based on the TLS protocol. It is used with the WAP transport protocols and has been optimised for use over narrow-band communication channels. The WTLs layer is above the transport protocol layer. The required security layer of the protocol determines whether it is used or not. It provides a secure transport service interface that preserves the transport service interface below; additionally it provides an interface for managing secure connections. WTLS aims to provide privacy, data integrity and authentication between two communication applications. Among its features are datagram support, optimised handshaking and dynamic key refreshing. It is optimised for low-bandwidth bearer networks with relatively long latency.

The WTLS Record Protocol is a layered protocol. The Record Protocol takes messages to be transmitted, optionally compresses the data, applies a MAC, encrypts, and transmits the result. Received data is decrypted, verified, and decompressed, then delivered to higher-level clients. Four record protocol clients are described in the WTLS standard; the change cipher spec protocol, the handshake protocol, the alert protocol and the application data protocol. If a WTLS implementation receives a record type it does not understand, it ignores it. Several records can be concatenated into one transport SDU. For example, several handshake messages can be transmitted in one transport SDU. This is particularly useful with packet-oriented transports such as GSM short messages.

The handshake protocol is made up of 3 sub-protocols. All messages are encapsulated in a plaintext structure.

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WTP

WAPforum WTP 11/6/99

The Wireless Transaction Protocol provides the services necessary for interactive browsing applications. During a browsing session the client requests information from a server and the server responds with the information. This is referred to as a transaction. WTP runs on a datagram service and possible a security service.

Advantages of WTP include:

• Improved reliability over datagram services
• Imported efficiency over connection oriented services
• As a message oriented protocol, it is designed for services oriented towards transactions.

Main features:

• 3 kinds of transaction services.
  • Class 0 Unreliable invoke messages with no result messages
  • Class 1: Reliable invoke messages with no result messages
  • Class 2: Reliable invoke messages with exactly one reliable result message.

• Reliability achieved by using unique transaction identifiers, acknowledgements, duplicate removal; and retransmissions.
• No explicit set up or tear down phases.
• Optional user-to-user reliability.
• Optionally the last acknowledgement of the transaction may contain out-of-band information.
• Concatenation may be used to convey multiple PDUs in one service data unit of the datagram transport.
• The basic unit of interchange is an entire message, not a stream of bytes.
• Mechanisms are provided to minimize the number of transactions replayed as a result of duplicate packets.
• Abort of outstanding transactions.
• For reliable invoke messages, both success and failure reported.
• Asynchronous transactions allowed.

The protocol data unit (PDU) consists of the header and data (if present). The header contains a fixed part and a variable part; The variable parts are carried in the Transport Information Item (TPI). Each PDU has its own fixed header (the fixed headers vary slightly in structure). As an example, the structure of the invoke PDU fixed header appears below:

CON continue flag (1 bit):
The continue flag indicates the presence of any TPIs in the variable part. If the flag is set, there are one or more TPIs in the variable portion of the header. If the flag is clear, the variable part of the header is empty. This flag is also used as the first bit of a TPI, and indicates whether the TPI is the last of the variable header. If the flag is set, another TPI follows this TPI. If the flag is clear, the octet after this TPI is the first octet of the user data.

PDU type
The PDU type determines the length and structure of the header and dictates what type of WTP PDU the PDU is (Invoke, Ack, etc). This provides information to the receiving WTP provider as to how the PDU data should be interpreted and what action is required.

The following PDU types are defined:

Group trailer (GTR) and Transmission trailer (TTR) flag (2 bit):
When segmentation and re-assembly is implemented, the TTR flag is used to indicate the last packet of the segmented message. The GTR flag is used to indicate the last packet of a packet group.

GTR/TTR flag combinations:

GTR TTR Description

The default setting should be GTR=1 and TTR=1, that is, WTP segmentation and re-assembly not supported.

RID Re-transmission Indicator (1 bit):
Enables the receiver to differentiate between packets duplicated by the network and packets re-transmitted by the sender. In the original message the RID is clear. When the message gets re-transmitted the RID is set.

TID Transaction identifier (16 bit):
The TID is used to associate a packet with a particular transaction.

Version
The current version is 0X00

TIDnew flag
This bit is set when the Initiator has wrapped the TID value, i.e. set it to be lower than the previous TID value.

U/P
When this flag is set it indicates that the Initiator requires a User acknowledgement from the server WTP user. The WTP user confirms every received message.

RES
This is a reserved bit and its value should be set to 0.

TCL
The transaction class shows the desired transaction class in the invoke message.

Packet sequence number (8 bit):
This is used by the PDUs belonging to the segmentation and re

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WSP

WAP WSP 5/11/99

The Session layer protocol family in the WAP architecture is called the Wireless Session Protocol, WSP. WSP provides the upper-level application layer of WAP with a consistent interface for two session services. The first is a connection-mode service that operates above a transaction layer protocol WTP, and the second is a connectionless service that operates above a secure or non-secure datagram transport service.

The Wireless Session Protocols currently offer services most suited for browsing applications. WSP provides HTTP 1.1 functionality (it is a binary form of HTTP) and incorporates new features such as long-lived sessions, a common facility for data push, capability negotiation and session suspend/resume. The protocols in the WSP family are optimized for low-bandwidth bearer networks with relatively long latency. Requests and responses can include both headers and data. WSP provides push and pull data transfer WSP functions on the transaction and datagram services.

Messages can be in connection mode or connectionless. Connection mode messages are carried over WTP. In this case the protocol consists of WTP protocol messages with WSP PDUs as their data. Connectionless messages consist only of the WSP PDUs.

The general structure of the WSP PDU is as follows:

TID/PID
Transaction ID or Push ID. The TID field is used to associate requests with replies in the connectionless session service. The presence of the TID is conditional. It is included in the connectionless WSP PDUs, and is not included in the connection-mode PDUs. In connectionless WSP, the TID is passed to and from the session user as the "Transaction Id" or "Push Id" parameters of the session primitive

PDU type
The Type field specifies the type and function of the PDU. The type numbers for the various PDUs are defined below. The rest of the PDU is type-specific information, referred to as the contents.

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