Mobile social networking: reconnect virtual community with physical space

Online social networks (OSNs) such as Facebook and MySpace, etc., greatly improve our social connectivity and collaboration. However, those applications lead to a shift from physical communities to virtual communities. The recent availability of mobile broadband connections and location technologies, their increasing affordability, and the usability of new mobile devices (e.g. smartphones) have led to the emergence of mobile social networks (MSNs), which re-connect the virtual community to the physical region, and move users between them in a way that enhances both. Currently, MSN applications are mushrooming and racing to replicate the success of social computing in the mobile domain. We argue that the potential success of MSNs lies in active collaboration among users, which naturally arises many interdisciplinary challenges. However, there exists no systematical survey about MSNs. This paper thoroughly characterizes the basic design principles, research architecture, typical techniques, and fundamental issues in MSNs from cross-discipline and application viewpoints. Our contributions lie in the following aspects: First, we summarized the basic design principles and fundamental issues that run through MSN researches and applications; then, from multidisciplinary viewpoint, the research architecture is divided into multi-dimensional structural characteristics and evolution of users’ rational behaviors. Finally, from application perspective, MSNs are categorized into two areas: Socially inspired mobile networking technologies, and enhanced real social life with mobile computing (people-centric tasks and place centric tasks). Briefly, this paper organizes the isolated topics and systems in existing work into meaningful categories, and structures the design space for identifying social-technical challenges, inspiring potentially interesting social networking applications, and suggesting important research opportunities.     

车联社会网络综述

车联社会网络是一种融合了社会科学与无线通信技术的移动通信网络,旨在为车载用户提供基于社会关系的数据投递服务。在分析国内外移动社会网络及车载网络研究现状基础上,提出了车联社会网络的基本架构及其典型应用,深入分析了车载网络与社会网络之间的关系,探讨了车联社会网络中信息投递、带宽分配、分布式存储和安全隐私等技术中存在的关键问题及其解决策略,最后讨论了该领域中新的研究方向与挑战。     

异构网络中基于移动社交组网的内容传播研究

Since more and more mobile applications are based on the proliferation of social information, the study of Mobile Social Net-works (MSNs) combines social sciences and wireless communications. Operating wireless networks more efficiently by exploiting social relationships between MSN users is an ap-pealing but challenging option for network operators. An MSN-aided content dissemina-tion technique is presented as a potential ex-tension of conventional cellular wireless net-works in order to satisfy growing data traffic. By allowing the MSN users to create a self-organized ad hoc network for spontane-ously disseminating contents, the network operator may be able to reduce the oper-ational costs and simultaneously achieve an improved network performance. In this paper, we first summarize the basic features of the MSN architecture, followed by a survey of the factors which may affect MSN-aided content dissemination. Using a case study, we demon-strate that one can save resources of the Base Station (BS) while substantially lowering content dissemination delay. Finally, other potential applications of MSN-aided content dissemination are introduced, and a range of future challenges are summarized.     

Pervasive Healthcare and Wireless Health Monitoring

With an increasingly mobile society and the worldwide deployment of mobile and wireless networks, the wireless infrastructure can support many current and emerging healthcare applications. This could fulfill the vision of “Pervasive Healthcare” or healthcare to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by removing locational, time and other restraints while increasing both the coverage and the quality. In this paper, we present applications and requirements of pervasive healthcare, wireless networking solutions and several important research problems. The pervasive healthcare applications include pervasive health monitoring, intelligent emergency management system, pervasive healthcare data access, and ubiquitous mobile telemedicine. One major application in pervasive healthcare, termed comprehensive health monitoring is presented in significant details using wireless networking solutions of wireless LANs, ad hoc wireless networks, and, cellular/GSM/3G infrastructure-oriented networks. Many interesting challenges of comprehensive wireless health monitoring, including context-awareness, reliability, and, autonomous and adaptable operation are also presented along with several high-level solutions. Several interesting research problems have been identified and presented for future research.     

5G在轨道交通行业的应用探讨

5G时代来临,各种行业的无线通信需求必将得到极大的释放和满足。分析了轨道交通行业的无线通信业务的特点及其对5G通信网络的需求,面对以地下隧道为主、行车速度较快、通信终端集中移动等特点的轨道交通应用场景复杂性,提出了5G技术在轨交环境下的应用方式和面临的技术挑战,同时,还针对5G在轨交行业的组网应用模式进行了分析和研究,分析了自建专网与运营商合作方式两种解决方案的优缺点、存在的主要问题和限制,给出了组网建议。     

WiFi: what's next?

WiFi, also known as 802.11b, has become the preferred technology for wireless local area networking in both business and home environments. Even though it was designed primarily for private applications, WiFi is also being deployed in public places to create so-called hotspots, where WiFi-capable users can obtain broadband Internet access. This new domain of application could be the major future market opportunity for WiFi, but in order to take advantage of it, several key challenges, both technical and business-related, must be overcome. We outline these challenges and discuss approaches to solutions.     

移动社会网络中用户相似性计算的隐私保护研究

移动社会网络（MSN）增强了虚拟世界与现实世界的联系,它允许移动用户发现其现实世界中附近的用户并与之交流。在MSN应用中,为提供更好的服务,通常会比较两个用户的相似性,但在计算用户相似性的过程中很有可能泄露用户的隐私信息。针对这一问题,设计了两种新的相似性计算协议,这些协议保证了在进行相似性计算时不会泄露用户的任何隐私信息。     

SparkMed: a framework for dynamic integration of multimedia medical data into distributed m-Health systems

With the advent of 4G and other long-term evolution (LTE) wireless networks, the traditional boundaries of patient record propagation are diminishing as networking technologies extend the reach of hospital infrastructure and provide on-demand mobile access to medical multimedia data. However, due to legacy and proprietary software, storage and decommissioning costs, and the price of centralization and redevelopment, it remains complex, expensive, and often unfeasible for hospitals to deploy their infrastructure for online and mobile use. This paper proposes the SparkMed data integration framework for mobile healthcare (m-Health), which significantly benefits from the enhanced network capabilities of LTE wireless technologies, by enabling a wide range of heterogeneous medical software and database systems (such as the picture archiving and communication systems, hospital information system, and reporting systems) to be dynamically integrated into a cloud-like peer-to-peer multimedia data store. Our framework allows medical data applications to share data with mobile hosts over a wireless network (such as WiFi and 3G), by binding to existing software systems and deploying them as m-Health applications. SparkMed integrates techniques from multimedia streaming, rich Internet applications (RIA), and remote procedure call (RPC) frameworks to construct a Self-managing, Pervasive Automated netwoRK for Medical Enterprise Data (SparkMed). Further, it is resilient to failure, and able to use mobile and handheld devices to maintain its network, even in the absence of dedicated server devices. We have developed a prototype of the SparkMed framework for evaluation on a radiological workflow simulation, which uses SparkMed to deploy a radiological image viewer as an m-Health application for telemedical use by radiologists and stakeholders. We have evaluated our prototype using ten devices over WiFi and 3G, verifying that our framework meets its two main objectives: 1) interactive delivery of medical multimedia data to mobile devices; and 2) attaching to non-networked medical software processes without significantly impacting their performance. Consistent response times of under 500 ms and graphical frame rates of over 5 frames per second were observed under intended usage conditions. Further, overhead measurements displayed linear scalability and low resource requirements.     

WiMAX组网技术与解决方案

文章在介绍WiMAX标准、技术和相关应用的基础上,提出WiMAX组网需要考虑频率复用、认证计费和移动性管理3个主要因素.文章给出了固定应用和移动应用模式下的组网方案,探讨了WiMAX无线组网方式将经过的4个阶段:室外接入、室内接入、有缝漫游、无缝移动,认为WiMAX网络最终将融合到NGN和移动蜂窝系统中.     

基于媒体独立切换并提供QoS保证的跨UMTS和WiMAX无线异构网络的网络切换方案

The rapid growth and innovation of the various mobile communication technologies have caused a change in the paradigm of internet access. Wireless technologies such as WiMAX, WiFi and UMTS/LTE networks have shown great potential in dominating the wireless access markets. The existence of various access technologies requires a means for seamless internetworking to provide anywhere, anytime services without interruption in the ongoing session, especially in multimedia applications with rigid Quality of Services (QoS) requirements. The IEEE 802.21 Media Independent Handover (MIH) working group was formed to develop a set of mechanisms under a standard framework with the capability to support migration of mobile users across heterogeneous networks. Therefore, the implementation of handover is extremely important in the heterogeneous network environment. In order to guarantee various QoS requirements during handover execution especially in multimedia applications, in this paper we propose a novel MIH-based capacity estimation algorithm to execute handover with QoS provision supporting both horizontal and vertical handovers across UMTS and WiMAX networks. Simulation shows that the proposed mechanism achieves lower call dropping rate (highest approximate 3% ) and higher system throughput (average 92% ) than the basic handover method does.     

Mobility support across hybrid IP-based wireless environment: review of concepts, solutions, and related issues

The 4G or Beyond 3G wireless networks is consist of IP-based heterogeneous access networks from 3G cellular, WiFi, WiMAX to other emerging access technologies such as mesh networks. The key objective of designing the next generation wireless networks is to support of mobile subscribers. To support the mobile host in the hybrid wireless access technologies, many solutions based on network protocol stack have been proposed in the literature. In this article, after review of mobility concepts, a special attention is given to some of the mobility management methods as well as handover techniques across various wireless access networks. We have also compared the major mobility protocols in each layer for their features. Finally, some of the open issues that needed to be addressed in mobility management protocol in the next generation wireless networks are outlined.     

Challenges and Solutions to Adaptive Computing and Seamless Mobility over Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

Recent years have witnessed the rapid evolution of commercially available mobile computing environments. This has given rise to the presence of several viable, but non-interoperable wireless networking technologies – each targeting a niche mobility environment and providing a distinct quality of service. The lack of a uniform set of standards, the heterogeneity in the quality of service, and the diversity in the networking approaches makes it difficult for a mobile computing environment to provide seamless mobility across different wireless networks. Besides, inter-network mobility will typically be accompanied by a change in the quality of service. The application and the environment need to collaboratively adapt their communication and data management strategies in order to gracefully react to the dynamic operating conditions.This paper presents the important challenges in building a mobile computing environment which provides seamless mobility and adaptive computing over commercially available wireless networks. It suggests possible solutions to the challenges, and describes an ongoing research effort to build such a mobile computing environment.     

Mesh networks: commodity multihop ad hoc networks

In spite of the massive efforts in researching and developing mobile ad hoc networks in the last decade, this type of network has not yet witnessed mass market deployment. The low commercial penetration of products based on ad hoc networking technology could be explained by noting that the ongoing research is mainly focused on implementing military or specialized civilian applications. On the other hand, users are interested in general-purpose applications where high bandwidth and open access to the Internet are consolidated and cheap commodities. To turn mobile ad hoc networks into a commodity, we should move to more pragmatic "opportunistic ad hoc networking" in which multihop ad hoc networks are not isolated self-configured networks, but rather emerge as a flexible and low-cost extension of wired infrastructure networks coexisting with them. Indeed, a new class of networks is emerging from this view: mesh networks. This article provides an overview of mesh networking technology. In particular, starting from commercial case studies we describe the core building blocks and distinct features on which wireless mesh networks should be based. We provide a survey of the current state of the art in off-the-shelf and proprietary solutions to build wireless mesh networks. Finally, we address the challenges of designing a high-performance, scalable, and cost-effective wireless mesh network.     

Mobile common friends discovery with friendship ownership and replay-attack resistance

Online social networking applications are nearly ubiquitous, but are currently limited to trusted infrastructure. For example, two unfamiliar users can exploit their social proximity to discover common friends, but otherwise face considerable difficulty in discovering of things they may have in common. However, social proximity depends on access personal data, raising concerns regarding potential data leakage from databases, the degree of trust in the particular social proximity, and user unwillingness to disclose the nature of personal friendships. Previous works have used mobile middleware to provide alternatives to hosting personal data in a fixed database, but these approaches still require users to divulge private information. Other approaches have used private-preserved decentralized online social networks to solve centralization and privacy issues, but these methods are still subject to other security problems such as mutual authentication, data-spoofing and replay attacks. This paper proposes the development of secure mobile common friends discovery methods to preserve the privacy of friendship data, establish mutual authentication between contact users, provide mutual proof of friendship, and provide protection against friendship spoofing and replay attacks. The proposed methods are shown to be secure and efficient, and are implemented in mobile phones that allow users to find common friends securely in seconds.     

Mobility,wireless and QoS

The proliferation of wireless local area networks has opened doors to numerous service opportunities. However, they tend to be limited to delay-tolerant applications. We envisage an environment where a single device is used for all types of communication and roaming freely between different wireless and wired technologies and network operators. To achieve this will require quality of service (QoS) handled appropriately. Within the IP community, QoS has generally been considered end-to-end over the fixed network. Wireless networks and mobile users add a new set of problems, which have only seen highly specialised solutions within the 2G/3G mobile telephone communities. This paper examines these problems and proposes a solution whereby QoS is dealt with by the end terminals through adaptive applications and end-to-end congestion control. This does not require explicit knowledge of the type of network, and does not need expensive whole network upgrades. We believe that this approach can improve the experience of users of current wireless LAN networks, and we are currently verifying and exploring our ideas on a WLAN test bed.     

从WAP的应用看移动因特网的发展

ＷＡＰ技术的开发与应用揭开了移动因特网发展的崭新一页,据预测,到２００４年亚太地区移动用户数将达到３．７亿,其中移动数据用户将占１．６亿;移动电子商务市场也将于２００３年超过固定电子商务市场。移动互联网未来的热点包括企业网的无线应用、与位置相关的服务以及移动电子商务。     

Real-time traffic support in heterogeneous mobile networks

Multi-hop mobile wireless networks have been proposed for a variety of applications where support for real-time multimedia services will be necessary. Support for these applications requires that the network is able to offer quality of service (QoS) appropriate for the latency and jitter bounds of the real-time application constraints. In this paper, we analyze the primary challenges of realizing QoS in mobile wireless networks with heterogeneous devices and propose a QoS framework for real-time traffic support. We address the problem in three ways: estimate the path quality for real-time flows, mitigate the impact of node heterogeneity on service performance, and reduce the impact of interfering non-real-time traffic. Specifically, our proposed QoS framework first utilizes a call setup protocol at the IP layer to discover paths for real-time flows, as well as to perform admission control by accurate service quality prediction. The underlying routing protocol also enables transparent path selection among heterogeneous nodes to provide stable paths for real-time traffic delivery. We then use a prioritized MAC protocol to provide priority access for flows with real-time constraints to reduce interference from unregulated non-real-time traffic. We foresee the utility of our proposed solution in heterogeneous mobile networks, such as campus or community-wide wireless networks. In these environments, resource-rich or fixed wireless routers may be leveraged to achieve better service quality when heterogeneity of node capability and movement is significant. Through experimental results, we demonstrate the utility and efficiency of our approach. Yuan Sun received her Ph.D. from the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2005. She worked with Prof. Elizabeth Belding-Royer in the MOMENT Lab. Her thesis work focused on providing QoS for mobile networks. Dr. Sun is currently employed at Google. Elizabeth M. Belding-Royer is an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Elizabeth’s research focuses on mobile networking, specifically ad hoc and mesh networks, multimedia, monitoring, and advanced service support. She is the founder of the Mobility Management and Networking (MOMENT) Laboratory (moment.cs.ucsb.edu) at UCSB. Elizabeth is the author of over 50 papers related to mobile networking and has served on over 40 program committees for networking conferences. Elizabeth served as the TPC Co-Chair of ACM MobiCom 2005 and IEEE SECON 2005, and is currently on the editorial board for the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. Elizabeth is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, and a 2002 Technology Review 100 award, awarded to the world’s top young investigators. See ebelding for further details. Xia Gao is currently a Staff Engineer at Ubicom. He received his Ph.D of ECE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001. Before joining Ubicom, he had worked in DoCoMo Communications Laboratory for 4 years where he conducted research on 3G-4G wireless communication system and handset technologies and WiFi systems. He has published more than 30 conference and journal papers. He has chaired several International conferences and served as TPC members for many others. He is a member of IEEE and a honored member of Sigma Xi. James Kempf is a Research Fellow at DoCoMo USA Laboratories. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ. Previously, James worked at Sun Microsystems for 13 years, and contributed to numerous research projects involving wireless networking, mobile computing, and service discovery. James is a former member of the Internet Architecture Board, and co-chaired the SEND and Seamoby IETF Working Groups. James continues to be an active contributor to Internet standards in the areas of security and mobility for next generation, Internet protocol-based mobile systems.     

NetCAPE: Enabling Seamless IMS Service Delivery across Heterogeneous Mobile Networks

An evolving wireless world is constantly providing users with a wider set of access technologies to choose from, each with different capabilities and properties. In this world, IMS as defined by 3GPP provides an enabling, standardized multimedia architecture that is access independent, hence, providing service convergence. This trend is accompanied by an increasing number of multimode terminals so that inter-access- system-service continuity gains relevance. This article presents the architectural framework of NetCAPE (networking context aware policy environment), which addresses the optimization of mobility management in such a heterogeneous environment while interacting with IMS applications to enable seamless service delivery across heterogeneous mobile networks; even as the mobility offered by the underlying network remains transparent to IMS applications. Although the focus is on 3GPP-based mobile networks, the framework also incorporates wired access technologies, hence, taking a further step toward fixed mobile convergence (FMC). First results are presented highlighting the improvements gained by applying NetCAPE concepts.     

基于无线Mesh网络技术构建无线城市

无线Mesh网络(WMN)可以和多种无线网络系统,如无线局域网(WLAN)、无线城域网(WMAN)等相结合,改善无线网络的性能,提高网络的覆盖范围.以WMN网络技术在IEEE 802系列标准中的发展为基础,提出了一种无线城市的覆盖方案,最底层网络覆盖采用WiFi+wireless Mesh技术,WiMAX网络与WiFi...     

Network-aware P2P file sharing over the wireless mobile networks

With the coming wireless mobile networks era and the popular use of P2P applications, how to improve the resource retrieval and discovery for P2P file sharing applications in wireless mobile networks becomes a critical issue. In this paper, we propose a novel network-aware P2P file architecture and related control schemes that can provide continuous resource retrieval and discovery for mobile users over the wireless network environment. The proposed architecture divides a P2P file sharing network into multiple network-aware clusters, in which peers are assigned to a network-aware cluster using a network prefix division. Accordingly, there are two designs for supporting mobile peers to retrieve files in wireless mobile networks. First, a novel file discovery control scheme named mobility-aware file discovery control (MAFDC) scheme is devised to obtain fresh status of shared peers and find the new resource providing peers in wireless mobile networks. Second, a resource provider selection algorithm is devised to enable a mobile peer to select new resource providing peers for continuous file retrieval