Integration Concepts for Computer-Aided Design Tools for Wired and Wireless Local-Area Networks

High-performance fixed, wireless and mobile communication networks have become more and more important for global corporations, small and medium enterprises, public organizations, and universities. The efficient and economic design of such networks, however, remains a challenge, and existing design tools only provide limited and hardly integrated support.
Within his book, A. Luntovskyy addresses exactly this point by proposing a much more integrated design methodology with associated tool support. The work is therefore is of strong practical relevance, and also presents major conceptual and theoretical challenges, as follows:

1. Integrated design language support: The work proposes a modern network design markup language (NDML), an XML-based notation that serves as a uniform way of representing all major network elements (active and passive), their detailed technical properties, and their interconnections and related configuration issues. As opposed to existing vendor-specific notations, NDML is based on open standards and enables interoperability and portability of network designs. The language is illustrated by several non-trivial examples. 2. Design methodology: As a second major contribution, the work proposes an integrated design methodology forming a complete design workflow. It links a number of proven design methods together, extends them with respect to various options and parameter details, and especially focuses on the combination of wired and wireless network design. In the wireless area, modern network standards (IEEE 802.11 and 802.16) are particularly addressed by enhanced design algorithms. 3. Tool support: Finally, the whole methodology is supported by a significant set of design tools that have been implemented, tested, and validated to a large degree by the author and his team. This includes design editors, consistency checks, transformation tools, specific wireless network design tools, and integration of existing simulation environments. As a common notation, NDML once again serves as the common glue for these tools. This way, the overall conceptual approach is tested and validated and really becomes applicable in practice.
Overall, the work represents a substantial contribution to the field of network design support. Particular application areas of the future include the integrated design of wired local networks according to IEEE 802.3 and wireless networks according to IEEE 802.11 and IEEE 802.16. Especially this combination is of major practical importance for many companies. The novelty of the results is proven by a large number of publications, conference proceedings, magazines and workshops. The practical results have also been demonstrated successfully at major exhibitions such as CeBIT Hannover.