Resource planning and incentive engineering for a congested wireless access point: an integrated multiple time scale control mechanism

Wireless networks are playing an increasingly important role for global communications. Many resource allocation mechanisms have been proposed to efficiently utilize the limited radio resources in wireless networks to support a large number of mobile users with a diversity of applications. Among them, pricing frameworks that provide incentives to users to maximize their individual utility while optimizing allocation of network resources have attracted a lot of attention recently. Nevertheless, most of these pricing schemes require dynamic charging rates and may be too complex for wide acceptance by users, as most users would prefer relatively simple charging schemes. Moreover, use of a pricing framework to facilitate resource planning and future expansion at the service provider’s side has not yet been widely considered. In this paper, we propose Integrated Multiple Time Scale Control (IMTSC), a novel incentive engineering mechanism to facilitate resource allocation and network planning. Over different time scales, IMTSC combines the functions of network capacity planning, admission control for resource allocation, and tracking of users’ instantaneous traffic demands. The proposed mechanism is applied for access control at a congested access point in a wireless network. By decomposing the original problem into distributed optimization problems that are solved locally by the service provider through adjusting charging rate and remotely by individual users by appropriately changing her service requests, we show that maximization of user’s utility and increase of network efficiency can be simultaneously achieved. Results from extensive simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed IMTSC mechanism.     

Chain authentication in mobile communication systems

Digital mobile telecommunication systems have become a future trend in personal communications services (PCS) networks. To satisfy the demand for high quality services, security functions, including the authentications of communication parties and the confidentiality of communication channels, must be embedded into mobile communication systems. This work presents an authentication scheme to support the security functions. The proposed protocol significantly improves the performance of authentications and ensures the security of mobile communications in a large-scale communication network with multiple service providers. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Game-theoretic pricing for video streaming in mobile networks

Mobile phones are among the most popular consumer devices, and the recent developments of 3G networks and smart phones enable users to watch video programs by subscribing data plans from service providers. Due to the ubiquity of mobile phones and phone-to-phone communication technologies, data-plan subscribers can redistribute the video content to nonsubscribers. Such a redistribution mechanism is a potential competitor for the mobile service provider and is very difficult to trace given users' high mobility. The service provider has to set a reasonable price for the data plan to prevent such unauthorized redistribution behavior to protect or maximize his/her own profit. In this paper, we analyze the optimal price setting for the service provider by investigating the equilibrium between the subscribers and the secondary buyers in the content-redistribution network. We model the behavior between the subscribers and the secondary buyers as a noncooperative game and find the optimal price and quantity for both groups of users. Based on the behavior of users in the redistribution network, we investigate the evolutionarily stable ratio of mobile users who decide to subscribe to the data plan. Such an analysis can help the service provider preserve his/her profit under the threat of the redistribution networks and can improve the quality of service for end users.     

A service level model and Internet mobility monitor

Mobility is gaining a tremendous interest among Internet users and wireless access networks are increasingly being installed to enable mobile usage. Internet mobility requires solutions to move between access networks with maintained network connectivity. Seamless mobility in turn means that the experience of using a service is unaffected while being mobile. Communication in next generation networks will use multiple access technologies, creating a heterogeneous network environment. Further, roaming between network service providers may take place. To enable mobile nodes to move between access networks within as well as between network service providers with minimal disruption, nodes should be able to maintain multiple active network connections. With the usage of multihomed nodes, seamless mobility can be achieved in already installed infrastructures, not providing mobility support. Mobility in heterogeneous access networks also requires network selections that scale for services. In this article we propose an architecture where application service providers and network service providers define service levels to be used by a mobile node and its user. The user selects a service and the service level from an application service provider. When performing access network selection, information received as part of an application service level will be used to find a network that supports the service required. The performance of available access networks will be monitored and considered when making the decision. Our proposed architecture provides solutions to move flows between interfaces in real-time based on network performance, quality of service signalling to correspondent nodes, and cancellation of flows to give way for more important traffic.     

SATELLITE-ENHANCED PERSONAL COMMUNICATIONS EXPERIMENTS

Users of future generation wireless information services will have diverse needs for voice, data, and potentially even video communications in a wide variety of circumstances. For users in dense, inner-city areas, low power personal communications services (PCS) technology should be ideal. Vehicular-based users travelling at high speeds will need high-power cellular technology. For users in remote or inaccessible locations, or for applications that are broadcast over a wide geographic area, a satellite technology would be the best choice. Packet data networks provide an excellent solution for users requiring occasional small messages, whereas circuit switched networks provide more economical solutions for larger messages. To provide ubiquitous personal communications service, it is necessary to capitalize on the strength of each wireless technology and network to create one seamless internetwork including both current and future wired and wireless networks. As an initial step in exploring the opportunities afforded by the merging of satellite and terrestrial networks, Bellcore and JPL conducted several experiments. These experiments utilized Bellcore's experimental personal communications system (including several messaging applications with adaptations to wireless networks), NASA's advanced communications technology satellite (ACTS), JPL's ACTS mobile terminal, and various commercial data networks (such as the wireline Internet and the RAM wireless packet data network). Looking at loss of bits, packets and higher layer blocks (over the satellite-terrestrial internetworks with mobile and stationary users under various conditions) our initial results indicate that the communication channel can vary dramatically, even within a single network. We show that these conditions necessitate powerful and adaptive protocols if we are to achieve a seamless internetworking of satellite and terrestrial networks.     

Mobile middleware for the reconfigurable software radio

The maturing technologies and concepts for software radio mean that reconfigurability is fast becoming reality. The functions and RF configuration of the mobile terminal, the services it supports, and the applications accessible to it can all be selected, installed, and executed on demand. Mobile middleware provides the glue that matches the requirements of the applications and their users to the capabilities of the terminals and networks. The state of the art in distributed processing systems built on an Internet platform must be integrated with advanced telecommunications functions of the intelligent network and UMTS to provide the environment in which this middleware operates. We explore the issues of integration, the components of mobile middleware, and likely demands placed on such systems when mobile access comes to dominate personal communications     

Component-based charging in a next-generation multimedia network

In classical networks, charging and billing are important tools for customer care to fight competition and to assure the operator's revenue. If charging is to remain a prime competitive tool in next-generation networks, it must be functionally intelligent and flexible, and able to optimize operator and service provider revenues while providing a fair policy toward the end users. Multimedia sessions can be considered as being composed of a number of call components, each of which might consist of different bearer and service objects. The NGN multimedia network structure and its business model define four players involved in charging: access provider, connection provider, telecommunication service provider, and value-added service provider. Often charging components must be correlated to create a clear postpaid bill and ensure correct treatment of prepaid accounts, as well as settlement between the providers involved.     

A Unified Approach for Improving QoS and Provider Revenue in 3G Mobile Networks

In this paper, we introduce a unified approach for the adaptive control of 3G mobile networks in order to improve both quality of service (QoS) for mobile subscribers and to increase revenue for service providers. The introduced approach constantly monitors QoS measures as packet loss probability and the current number of active mobile users during operation of the network. Based on the values of the QoS measures just observed, the system parameters of the admission controller and packet scheduler are controlled by the adaptive performance management entity. Considering UMTS, we present performance curves showing that handover failure probability is improved by more than one order of magnitude. Moreover, the packet loss probability can be effectively regulated to a predefined level and provider revenue is significantly increased for all pricing policies.     

An integrated voice and data multiple-access scheme for a land-mobile satellite system

A Land-Mobile Satellite System (LMSS) is a satellite-based communications network which provides voice and data communications to mobile users in a vast geographical area. By placing a "relay tower" at a height of 22300 mi, an LMSS can provide ubiquitous radio communication to vehicles roaming in remote or thinly populated area. LMSS is capable of supporting a variety of services, such as two-way alphanumeric service, paging service, full-duplex voice service, and half-duplex dispatch service. A Network Management Center (NMC) will handle the channel requests, channel assignments, and in general the network control functions. A pool of channels is managed at the NMC to be shared by all mobile users. An integrated demand-assigned multiple-access protocol has been developed for the experimental LMSS. The pool of channels is divided into reservation channels and information channels. The information channels can be assigned by the NMC to be either voice channels or data channels. Each mobile user must send a request through one of the reservation channels to the NMC via the ALOHA random-access scheme. Once the request is received and processed, the NMC will examine the current traffic condition and assign an information channel to the user. NMC will periodically update the partitions between the reservation channels, voice channels, and data channels to optimize system performance. Data channel requests are queued at the NMC while voice channel requests are blocked calls cleared. Various operational scenarios have been investigated. Tradeoffs between the data and voice users for a given delay requirement and a given voice call blocking probability have been studied. In addition, performance impacts of such technological advancements as satellite on-board switching and variable bandwidth assignment are discussed.     

基于Android平台的网上商城的实现

随着移动通信与Internet的飞速发展及相互融合,GPRS使无线网络高速接入到Internet 成为现实,移动用户从而可以享受到Internet提供的服务.这样,移动终端不再仅是通讯网络的终端,还将成为互联网的终端.首先给出了系统研究背景,对当前手机操作系统发展做了简单的介绍.进而详细地分析了android的特征、架构、以及android应用的构成和工作机制,并对android和其他手机操作系统进行了比较,说明了android在手机操作系统中的优势.本系统主要用于对手机上网用户在线浏览该网站,用户管理员可以对商品信息进行增删改查等功能,用户可以在该网站注册,注册后的用户还可以商品进行购买以及评价.使用该系统很大的提高了用户购买能力.     

An access cell selection algorithm for next generation mobile environments

Next generation of mobile communications will be based on a heterogeneous infrastructure comprising different wireless access systems in a complementary manner. This paper proposes a network selection algorithm based on user activity, user preferences, service requirements, and networks conditions which provides users a prospect of being always best connected within an environment of heterogeneous mobile networks. This is achieved by a learning process which allows user to select an access network based in previous connections and a cost function that helps the user to select the best network that adapts to the needs.     

User QoE Influenced Spectrum Trade,Resource Allocation,and Network Selection

In future wireless networks, we envision more dynamic telecommunication paradigm, where the dynamics may be translated into dynamic service offerings and user profiles etc. We further expect that the wireless communication market will be influenced when the user-centric network selection vision is realized. By the user-centric network selection vision, we mean that users will be free to select any available network operator or service provider on short term contractual basis. This dictates that operators will compete for their share of a common user pool on much smaller time quanta when compared with the current long term user contacts with the operators. One intuitive strategy of operators will be to incentivize users by offering different QoS and service price offers. As the operators’ offers are influenced by their incurring costs. This necessitates to study the market behavior at different levels and investigate the operator and user behavior at these level. In this paper, we categorize and position the communication players and model the interaction between players at different levels. We introduce the learning aspects in the interaction and investigate the equilibrium strategies of involved stake-holders i.e., users and operators. We also model the utility functions of all the involved stake-holders. We also examine the risk-sensitive utility functions in order to cover both risk-seeking and risk-averse in the user QoEs. We implement the user-centric approach and compare it against our proposed network-centric resource utilization and call blocking.     

Profit-Based Routing for Multihop Coverage Extension in Wireless Networks

In future wireless systems, the coverage of a base station will decrease due to the characteristics of the channel at high-frequency bands. To expand the service coverage, a hybrid network that combines an ad hoc network with a cellular (or wireless LAN) network, appears to have great potential. In such systems, some mobile users outside the service area can access the network with the aid of other intermediate mobiles. However, this method incurs energy consumption in routing users, which could be a serious obstacle for wide-spread deployment of multihop wireless networks. Therefore we consider a revenue-cost model and propose a profit-based routing strategy that encourages routing users to actively participate in the relaying service because they are compensated for their energy consumption cost. Our strategy enables each mobile node to find an appropriate multihop path to a base station (or access point) that satisfies the interests of the service provider and the users. Numerical results show that our model successfully expands the network coverage area while ensuring the profit of each system involved.     

The development of personal communications

The rapid development and take-up of personal communications services has been effected as much by marketing and regulatory changes as the introduction of second generation, digital technology. The traditional boundaries between fixed and mobile and between consumer and business services have been crossed. Increasingly, customers will be offered all their communication needs from a single supplier. This will lead to composite architectures formed from several networks. In the short term, dual-mode terminals will link networks based on cordless, cellular, satellite and fixed network technologies. As intelligent network techniques are used more fully, least-cost routing and consistent service features will be achieved. Third generation standards will extend the range of services, including those utilising higher speed data. These mobile systems will provide the primary access to the `Information Society'     

Secure service convergence based on scalable media coding

In multimedia services, security and privacy issues are urgent to be solved, such as the content security and service protection. To solve these issues, some means have been proposed, such as conditional access and digital rights management. However, for the latest application scenarios in convergent networks, there is still no solution. This paper focuses on the convergent multimedia broadcasting applications: the multimedia content, e.g., TV program, is encoded and packaged by the content provider, and is then transmitted to users through different communication networks, e.g., 3G network, DVB-H, ADSL, etc. Thus, the same multimedia content will be used for various services, i.e., mobile TV, Internet TV and home TV. Since different network channel support different bandwidths, the multimedia content should be transcoded before being transmitted through the networks. To protect the content and service in this application, we propose the content and service protection methods. In content protection, the content provider encrypts the scalable multimedia content with the manner denoted by Encryption Flag. The content distributor has no decryption keys, but can transcode the scalable content with the manner denoted by Layer Flag, and transmit the transcoded content to users. In service protection, the content provider combines the encryption key, Encryption Flag and the user right information, and transmits them, independent from the encrypted content, to certified users. At user side, the content is decrypted with the received key according to the Encryption Flag and Layer Flag. Thus, the content provider needs only to encrypt the content once, which can be transcoded by the content distributor in a secure manner and used for various networks. Additionally, the user rights need not to be changed when the service network is changed. Totally, the proposed scheme is secure and efficient for service convergence.     

Location uncertainty in mobile networks: a theoretical framework

As users, services, databases, and computers become increasingly mobile, so fades the era of the fixed network. Modern networks are becoming mobile networks which must accommodate a broad range services with differing mobility characteristics. Consequently, there is an impetus to understand mobility and its effect on communications systems. Of particular interest are the unique stresses imposed by mobile computing and especially mobile computer programs (agents). As an aid to greater understanding, we propose a theoretical framework for the study of mobility tracking based on user/service/host location probability distributions. We show how this methodology, using stochastic ordering and information theory, can enable quantitative comparison of various mobility management schemes as well as insight into the mobility tracking problem over a wide range of mobility characteristics. This general approach should aid both applications and future research     

Location management strategies for cellular mobile networks

Location management in mobile communication systems is concerned with those network functions necessary to allow the users to be reached wherever they are in the network coverage area. The basic operations for that purpose-paging and location updating-are resource-consuming since both involve signalling over the radio link between the mobile stations and base stations. Future cellular mobile communication networks (wireless personal communication networks (PCN)) will have to support a large number of users, so a significant amount of radio signalling can be expected. This paper describes the conventional location management strategy (the one used in modern cellular systems like the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM)) and reviews, describes and comments on some alternative location management proposals for future high-density PCN environments that aim to reduce this expected high (radio) signalling load     

NTT DoCoMo的国内外战略

NTT DoCoMo是日本最大的移动通信公司，主要提供2.5G的i-mode和3G的FOMA服务。DoCoMo在国内的战略是将i-mode构建成开放式的移动网络；实现一步到位的3G战略，推出价格便宜的FOMA服务。但由于准备不足，DoCoMo在推进FOMA服务时出师不利。DoCoMo在进军国际市场时注重了地域及合作伙伴的选择。     

Pricing in computer networks: motivation, formulation, and example

The role of pricing policies in multiple service class networks is studied. An abstract formulation of service disciplines and pricing policies that allows the interplay between service disciplines and pricing policies in determining overall network performance to be described more clearly is presented. Effective multiclass service disciplines allow networks to focus resources on performance-sensitive applications, while effective pricing policies allows the benefits of multiple service classes to be spread around to all users. Furthermore, the incentives formed by service disciplines and pricing policies must be carefully tuned so that user self-interest leads to optimal overall network performance. These concepts are illustrated through simulation of several simple example networks. It is found that it is possible to set the prices so that users of every application type are more satisfied with the combined cost and performance of a network with service-class-sensitive prices     

浅析云计算技术下的移动通信网络优化

在信息技术科学技术迅速发展的今天,人和物逐渐进入通信时代和网络智能化时代,通信网络被广泛应用于人们的生活中,给人们的生活带来更多的便利。移动网络技术推动了信息技术的发展,在这种环境下云计算的诞生有利于移动通信网络进一步优化,为人们提供更加优质、高效的网络服务。所以,在云计算环境下必须合理配置和优化网络资源,将网络技术作为带动移动通信网络发展的技术核心,保障服务水平的提高。下面就云计算技术环境下的移动通信网络优化进行浅析。