CHAPTER 4

WIRELESS
APPLICATION
PROTOCOL

Prepared By,
Prof.M.Dhanalakshmi,
IT Dept,
SCET, Surat.

INTRODUCTION

We are moving towards a net-centric world,

where Internet is becoming part of our
environment.
Along with physical environment we also acquire
information and knowledge from internet.
In 2G cellular network data access was possible
over mobile phones using WAP over circuit.
In a circuit, the user pays for the circuit even
during the idle period when there is no data
transmission.

INTRODUCTION

The data speed supported by CSD is in range of

9.6K bits per second.
For internet access 9.6K bits per second is
unlikely to offer a good user experience.
GPRS is designed to overcome some of these
constraints of GSM and offer higher data rate.
GPRS allows for short bursty traffic such as email
and web browsing including large volumes of data.
GPRS has the ability to offer data speeds from
14.4 KBps to 171.2KBps.
Internet traffic is asymmetric in the sense that
traffic volume from network to user agent is
higher compared to traffic in reverse direction.

Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is designed

for access to internet and advanced telephony
services from mobile phones.
WAP pays proper sensitivity to the constraints of
these devices like small display, limited keys on
the keypad, no pointer device like mouse etc..
Independent
of their network, bearer and
terminals user will b able to access internet and
corporate internet services while mobile.
Net-net using WAP , a mobile user will be able to
access same wealth of information from a pocketsized device as they can from a desktop.

WAP

WAP forum develops standards for application

deployment over wireless devices like PDAs and
mobile phones.
WAP is based on layered architecture.
WAP protocol stack is similar to OSI network
model.
These layers consists of:

Wireless

Application Environment
Wireless Session Protocol
Wireless Transaction Protocol
Wireless Transport Layer Security.
Wireless Datagram Protocol.

WAP

WIRELESS
APPLICATION
ENVIRONMENT
[WAE]

WAE

The application environment of WAE comprises

multiple components to provide facilities like:

User Agent: Browser or client program.

Wireless Markup Language (WML): A lightweight
markup language similar to HTML but optimized for
use in wireless devices.
WMLScript:
Lightweight client side scripting
language, similar to JavaScript in web.
Wireless
Telephony Application: Telephony
services and programming interfaces.
WAP Push Architecture: Mechanisms to allow
origin servers to deliver content to the terminal
without the terminal requesting for it.
Content Formats: Set of well defined data formats
including images, phone book records and calendar
information.

WAP APPLICATION ENVIRONMENT [WAE]

Primary objective of WAE is to provide an

interoperable environment to build services in
wireless space.
Covers system architecture related to user
agents, networking schemes, content formats,
programming languages and shared services
based on WWW.
Content is transported using standard protocols
in WWW domain and optimized HTTP like
protocols in wireless domain.
WAE architecture allows all content and services
to be hosted on standard web servers.

WAE

WAE
A WAP request from the browser is routed
through a WAP gateway.
The gateway acts as an intermediary between the
client and network through a wireless last mile.
Gateway does encoding and decoding of data
transferred from and to the mobile agent.
Purpose of encoding is to minimize the size of
data transacted over air.
Reduced data size reduces the computational
power required by the client to process the data.

WAE
Gateway processes the request, retrieves contents
from the server using Java Servlets, J2EE, CGI
Scripts or some other dynamic mechanism.
The data is formatted as WML and returned to
the client.
Client device employ logic through embedded
WML Script for client side processing of WML.
Elements of WAE model includes:

WAE

User Agents
Content Generators
Standard Content Encoding
Wireless Telephony Applications

WAE

WAE User Agents:

User

facing client software i.e browser.

User agents are integrated into the WAE
architecture.
They interpret network content referenced by a URL.
WAE includes user agents for two primary standard
contents: encoded WML and compiled WML script.

Content Generators:
Applications

on origin servers that extract standard

content in response to requests from user agents.
Content servers are typically HTTP servers used in
WWW.

WAE

Standard Content Encoding:

Set

of well defined content encoding allowing user

agent to navigate web content.
Standard content encoding includes compression
encoding for WML, bytecode encoding for WMLScript,
standard image formats.

Wireless Telephony Applications:

A

collection of telephony specific extensions for call

and telephony feature control.

USER AGENT

User agent signifies an agent who works on

behalf of the user.
In WWW and WAE context, user agent is the
user facing browser software.
In WAE it is referred as micro-browser.
WAE does not formally specify the functionality
of user agent.
But only defines fundamental services and
formats
that
are
needed
to
ensure
interoperability among implementations and
different layers.
A Wireless Telephony Application user agent has
been specified as an extension to WAE
specification for mobile telephony environments.

USER AGENT PROFILE [UAPROF]

UAProf specification allows WAP to notify the
content server about the device compatibility.
Also referred as Capability and Preference
Information.
CPI is passed from WAP client to origin server
through intermediate network points.
It
is
compatible
with
Composite
Compatibility/Preference
Profile
of
W3C
consortium.
CPI include hardware characteristics, software
characteristics,
application/user
preferences,
WAP characteristics.
Devices that support UAProf architecture provide
a URL in the WAP or HTTP session header.

WIRELESS MARKUP LANGUAGE

WML is a tag based document manipulation
language.
WML is designed to specify presentation and
user interaction on mobile phones and other
wireless devices.
These devices suffer from different constraints
like small displays, limited user input facilities,
narrow band network connection, limited
network resources, limited memory resources,
limited computational devices and absence of
pointer device.

WIRELESS MARKUP LANGUAGE

WML implements a deck and card metaphor.

Deck-> Logical representation of a document.
Decks are made up of multiple cards.
Each WML card , in a deck performs a specific
task for a particular user interaction.
To access a document , a user navigates to a card
reviews its contents, makes a choice or enters
information and then moves to another card.
WML decks can be stored in static files and
fetched by CGI, JSP and ASP scripts.
Also dynamically generated by Java servlets
running on origin server.