Showing papers on "Mobile telephony published in 2013"

Millimeter Wave Mobile Communications for 5G Cellular: It Will Work!

Abstract: The global bandwidth shortage facing wireless carriers has motivated the exploration of the underutilized millimeter wave (mm-wave) frequency spectrum for future broadband cellular communication networks. There is, however, little knowledge about cellular mm-wave propagation in densely populated indoor and outdoor environments. Obtaining this information is vital for the design and operation of future fifth generation cellular networks that use the mm-wave spectrum. In this paper, we present the motivation for new mm-wave cellular systems, methodology, and hardware for measurements and offer a variety of measurement results that show 28 and 38 GHz frequencies can be used when employing steerable directional antennas at base stations and mobile devices.

Broadband Millimeter-Wave Propagation Measurements and Models Using Adaptive-Beam Antennas for Outdoor Urban Cellular Communications

Abstract: The spectrum crunch currently experienced by mobile cellular carriers makes the underutilized millimeter-wave frequency spectrum a sensible choice for next-generation cellular communications, particularly when considering the recent advances in low cost sub-terahertz/millimeter-wave complementary metal–oxide semiconductor circuitry. To date, however, little is known on how to design or deploy practical millimeter-wave cellular systems. In this paper, measurements for outdoor cellular channels at 38 GHz were made in an urban environment with a broadband (800-MHz RF passband bandwidth) sliding correlator channel sounder. Extensive angle of arrival, path loss, and multipath time delay spread measurements were conducted for steerable beam antennas of differing gains and beamwidths for a wide variety of transmitter and receiver locations. Coverage outages and the likelihood of outage with steerable antennas were also measured to determine how random receiver locations with differing antenna gains and link budgets could perform in future cellular systems. This paper provides measurements and models that may be used to design future fifth-generation millimeter-wave cellular networks and gives insight into antenna beam steering algorithms for these systems.

What's up with whatsapp?: comparing mobile instant messaging behaviors with traditional SMS

Abstract: With the advent of instant mobile messaging applications, traditional SMS is in danger of loosing it's reign as the king of mobile messaging. Applications like WhatsApp allow mobile users to send real-time text messages to individuals or groups of friends at no cost. While there is a vast body of research on traditional text messaging practices, little is understood about how and why people have adopted and appropriated instant mobile messaging applications. The goal of this work is to provide a deeper understanding of the motives and perceptions of a popular mobile messaging application called WhatsApp and to learn more about what this service offers above and beyond traditional SMS. To this end, we present insights from two studies an interview study and a large-scale survey highlighting that while WhatsApp offers benefits such as cost, sense of community and immediacy, SMS is still considered a more reliable, privacy preserving technology for mobile communication.

Can you connect with me now? How the presence of mobile communication technology influences face-to-face conversation quality:

Abstract: Recent advancements in communication technology have enabled billions of people to connect over great distances using mobile phones, yet little is known about how the frequent presence of these devices in social settings influences face-to-face interactions. In two experiments, we evaluated the extent to which the mere presence of mobile communication devices shape relationship quality in dyadic settings. In both, we found evidence they can have negative effects on closeness, connection, and conversation quality. These results demonstrate that the presence of mobile phones can interfere with human relationships, an effect that is most clear when individuals are discussing personally meaningful topics.

Real Challenges in Mobile App Development

Abstract: Context: Mobile app development is a relatively new phenomenon that is increasing rapidly due to the ubiquity and popularity of smartphones among end-users. Objective: The goal of our study is to gain an understanding of the main challenges developers face in practice when they build apps for different mobile devices. Method: We conducted a qualitative study, following a Grounded Theory approach, in which we interviewed 12 senior mobile developers from 9 different companies, followed by a semi-structured survey, with 188 respondents from the mobile development community. Results: The outcome is an overview of the current challenges faced by mobile developers in practice, such as developing apps across multiple platforms, lack of robust monitoring, analysis, and testing tools, and emulators that are slow or miss many features of mobile devices. Conclusion: Based on our findings of the current practices and challenges, we highlight areas that require more attention from the research and development community.

A Review on Distributed Application Processing Frameworks in Smart Mobile Devices for Mobile Cloud Computing

Abstract: The latest developments in mobile devices technology have made smartphones as the future computing and service access devices. Users expect to run computational intensive applications on Smart Mobile Devices (SMDs) in the same way as powerful stationary computers. However in spite of all the advancements in recent years, SMDs are still low potential computing devices, which are constrained by CPU potentials, memory capacity and battery life time. Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) is the latest practical solution for alleviating this incapacitation by extending the services and resources of computational clouds to SMDs on demand basis. In MCC, application offloading is ascertained as a software level solution for augmenting application processing capabilities of SMDs. The current offloading algorithms offload computational intensive applications to remote servers by employing different cloud models. A challenging aspect of such algorithms is the establishment of distributed application processing platform at runtime which requires additional computing resources on SMDs. This paper reviews existing Distributed Application Processing Frameworks (DAPFs) for SMDs in MCC domain. The objective is to highlight issues and challenges to existing DAPFs in developing, implementing, and executing computational intensive mobile applications within MCC domain. It proposes thematic taxonomy of current DAPFs, reviews current offloading frameworks by using thematic taxonomy and analyzes the implications and critical aspects of current offloading frameworks. Further, it investigates commonalities and deviations in such frameworks on the basis significant parameters such as offloading scope, migration granularity, partitioning approach, and migration pattern. Finally, we put forward open research issues in distributed application processing for MCC that remain to be addressed.

Estimating mobile application energy consumption using program analysis

Abstract: Optimizing the energy efficiency of mobile applications can greatly increase user satisfaction. However, developers lack viable techniques for estimating the energy consumption of their applications. This paper proposes a new approach that is both lightweight in terms of its developer requirements and provides fine-grained estimates of energy consumption at the code level. It achieves this using a novel combination of program analysis and per-instruction energy modeling. In evaluation, our approach is able to estimate energy consumption to within 10% of the ground truth for a set of mobile applications from the Google Play store. Additionally, it provides useful and meaningful feedback to developers that helps them to understand application energy consumption behavior.

Tour Planning for Mobile Data-Gathering Mechanisms in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: In this paper, we propose a new data-gathering mechanism for large-scale wireless sensor networks by introducing mobility into the network. A mobile data collector, for convenience called an M-collector in this paper, could be a mobile robot or a vehicle equipped with a powerful transceiver and battery, working like a mobile base station and gathering data while moving through the field. An M-collector starts the data-gathering tour periodically from the static data sink, polls each sensor while traversing its transmission range, then directly collects data from the sensor in single-hop communications, and finally transports the data to the static sink. Since data packets are directly gathered without relays and collisions, the lifetime of sensors is expected to be prolonged. In this paper, we mainly focus on the problem of minimizing the length of each data-gathering tour and refer to this as the single-hop data-gathering problem (SHDGP). We first formalize the SHDGP into a mixed-integer program and then present a heuristic tour-planning algorithm for the case where a single M-collector is employed. For the applications with strict distance/time constraints, we consider utilizing multiple M-collectors and propose a data-gathering algorithm where multiple M-collectors traverse through several shorter subtours concurrently to satisfy the distance/time constraints. Our single-hop mobile data-gathering scheme can improve the scalability and balance the energy consumption among sensors. It can be used in both connected and disconnected networks. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed data-gathering algorithm can greatly shorten the moving distance of the collectors compared with the covering line approximation algorithm and is close to the optimal algorithm for small networks. In addition, the proposed data-gathering scheme can significantly prolong the network lifetime compared with a network with static data sink or a network in which the mobile collector can only move along straight lines.

Mobile Health: Revolutionizing Healthcare Through Transdisciplinary Research

Abstract: Mobile health (mHealth) seeks to improve individuals' health and well-being by continuously monitoring their status, rapidly diagnosing medical conditions, recognizing behaviors, and delivering just-in-time interventions, all in the user's natural mobile environment. The Web extra at http://youtu.be/o2mieSywutY is an audio interview in which Santosh Kumar, Wendy Nilsen, and Mani Srivastava discuss the path toward realizing mobile health systems.

Dynamic Coverage of Mobile Sensor Networks

Abstract: We study the dynamic aspects of the coverage of a mobile sensor network resulting from continuous movement of sensors. As sensors move around, initially uncovered locations may be covered at a later time, and intruders that might never be detected in a stationary sensor network can now be detected by moving sensors. However, this improvement in coverage is achieved at the cost that a location is covered only part of the time, alternating between covered and not covered. We characterize area coverage at specific time instants and during time intervals, as well as the time durations that a location is covered and uncovered. We further consider the time it takes to detect a randomly located intruder and prove that the detection time is exponentially distributed with parameter 2λrvs where λ represents the sensor density, r represents the sensor's sensing range, and vs denotes the average sensor speed. For mobile intruders, we take a game theoretic approach and derive optimal mobility strategies for both sensors and intruders. We prove that the optimal sensor strategy is to choose their directions uniformly at random between (0, 2π). The optimal intruder strategy is to remain stationary. This solution represents a mixed strategy which is a Nash equilibrium of the zero-sum game between mobile sensors and intruders.

System and method for assessing an application to be installed on a mobile communication device

Abstract: A system and method checks for harmful behavior of an application to be installed on a mobile communication device. A server computer receives from the mobile communication device data pertaining to the application to be installed and information pertaining to the mobile communication device. The server processes the data and information to determine an assessment for the application to be installed. The assessment is provided to the mobile communication device and the assessment is displayed on the device if the assessment is one of dangerous and potentially dangerous.

Adaptive Mobile Cloud Computing to Enable Rich Mobile Multimedia Applications

Abstract: With worldwide shipments of smartphones (487.7 million) exceeding PCs (414.6 million including tablets) in 2011, and in the US alone, more users predicted to access the Internet from mobile devices than from PCs by 2015, clearly there is a desire to be able to use mobile devices and networks like we use PCs and wireline networks today. However, in spite of advances in the capabilities of mobile devices, a gap will continue to exist, and may even widen, with the requirements of rich multimedia applications. Mobile cloud computing can help bridge this gap, providing mobile applications the capabilities of cloud servers and storage together with the benefits of mobile devices and mobile connectivity, possibly enabling a new generation of truly ubiquitous multimedia applications on mobile devices: Cloud Mobile Media (CMM) applications.

Heterogeneous Cellular Networks: Theory, Simulation and Deployment

Abstract: This detailed, up-to-date introduction to heterogeneous cellular networking introduces its characteristic features, the technology underpinning it and the issues surrounding its use. Comprehensive and in-depth coverage of core topics catalogue the most advanced, innovative technologies used in designing and deploying heterogeneous cellular networks, including system-level simulation and evaluation, self-organisation, range expansion, cooperative relaying, network MIMO, network coding and cognitive radio. Practical design considerations and engineering tradeoffs are also discussed in detail, including handover management, energy efficiency and interference management techniques. A range of real-world case studies, provided by industrial partners, illustrate the latest trends in heterogeneous cellular networks development. Written by leading figures from industry and academia, this is an invaluable resource for all researchers and practitioners working in the field of mobile communications.

Vita: A Crowdsensing-Oriented Mobile Cyber-Physical System

Abstract: As a prominent subcategory of cyber-physical systems, mobile cyber-physical systems could take advantage of widely used mobile devices, such as smartphones, as a convenient and economical platform that facilitates sophisticated and ubiquitous mobile sensing applications between humans and the surrounding physical world. This paper presents Vita, a novel mobile cyber-physical system for crowdsensing applications, which enables mobile users to perform mobile crowdsensing tasks in an efficient manner through mobile devices. Vita provides a flexible and universal architecture across mobile devices and cloud computing platforms by integrating the service-oriented architecture with resource optimization mechanism for crowdsensing, with extensive supports to application developers and end users. The customized platform of Vita enables intelligent deployments of tasks between humans in the physical world, and dynamic collaborations of services between mobile devices and cloud computing platform during run-time of mobile devices with service failure handling support. Our practical experiments show that Vita performs its tasks efficiently with a low computation and communication overhead on mobile devices, and eases the development of multiple mobile crowdsensing applications and services. In addition, we present a mobile crowdsensing application, Smart City, developed on Vita to demonstrate the functionalities and practical usage of Vita.

Interaction analysis and prioritization of mobile content

Abstract: In embodiments of the present invention improved capabilities are described for receiving interaction information relating to a first mobile communication facility, weighting content based at least in part on the interaction information, and ordering the content for presentation on a second mobile communication facility based at least in part on the weighting.

Optical fiber solution for mobile fronthaul to achieve cloud radio access network

Abstract: This paper describes the technical aspects of optical access solutions for mobile fronthaul application. The mobile context and main constraints of fronthaul signals are presented. The need for a demarcation point between the Mobile operator and the Fiber provider is introduced. The optical solution to achieve such a network is discussed. A WDM network with passive monitoring at the antenna site and automatic wavelength assignment is proposed based on self-seeded solution.

Method And Apparatus For Monitoring Mobile Communication Networks

Abstract: A manner of monitoring communications networks, and in a preferred embodiment specifically of monitoring and reporting RF (radio frequency) signal strength in mobile communication networks. A mobile device manager generates and transmits one or more measurement request messages and receives network-characteristic measurements in response. These responses are stored and aggregated and may be used to generate network maps and generate alarms as appropriate or at the request of a network operator.

Target Tracking and Mobile Sensor Navigation in Wireless Sensor Networks

Abstract: This work studies the problem of tracking signal-emitting mobile targets using navigated mobile sensors based on signal reception. Since the mobile target's maneuver is unknown, the mobile sensor controller utilizes the measurement collected by a wireless sensor network in terms of the mobile target signal's time of arrival (TOA). The mobile sensor controller acquires the TOA measurement information from both the mobile target and the mobile sensor for estimating their locations before directing the mobile sensor's movement to follow the target. We propose a min-max approximation approach to estimate the location for tracking which can be efficiently solved via semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation, and apply a cubic function for mobile sensor navigation. We estimate the location of the mobile sensor and target jointly to improve the tracking accuracy. To further improve the system performance, we propose a weighted tracking algorithm by using the measurement information more efficiently. Our results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm provides good tracking performance and can quickly direct the mobile sensor to follow the mobile target.

A Progressive Approach to Reducing Data Collection Latency in Wireless Sensor Networks with Mobile Elements

Abstract: The introduction of mobile elements has created a new dimension to reduce and balance the energy consumption in wireless sensor networks. However, data collection latency may become higher due to the relatively slow travel speed of mobile elements. Thus, the scheduling of mobile elements, i.e., how they traverse through the sensing field and when they collect data from which sensor, is of ultimate importance and has attracted increasing attention from the research community. Formulated as the traveling salesman problem with neighborhoods (TSPN) and due to its NP-hardness, so far only approximation and heuristic algorithms have appeared in the literature, but the former only have theoretical value now due to their large approximation factors. In this paper, following a progressive optimization approach, we first propose a combine-skip-substitute (CSS) scheme, which is shown to be able to obtain solutions within a small range of the lower bound of the optimal solution. We then take the realistic multirate features of wireless communications into account, which have been ignored by most existing work, to further reduce the data collection latency with the multirate CSS (MR-CSS) scheme. Besides the correctness proof and performance analysis of the proposed schemes, we also show their efficiency and potentials for further extensions through extensive simulation.

Providing privacy-aware incentives for mobile sensing

Abstract: Mobile sensing exploits data contributed by mobile users (e.g., via their smart phones) to make sophisticated inferences about people and their surrounding and thus can be applied to environmental monitoring, traffic monitoring and healthcare. However, the large-scale deployment of mobile sensing applications is hindered by the lack of incentives for users to participate and the concerns on possible privacy leakage. Although incentive and privacy have been addressed separately in mobile sensing, it is still an open problem to address them simultaneously. In this paper, we propose two privacy-aware incentive schemes for mobile sensing to promote user participation. These schemes allow each mobile user to earn credits by contributing data without leaking which data it has contributed, and at the same time ensure that dishonest users cannot abuse the system to earn unlimited amount of credits. The first scheme considers scenarios where a trusted third party (TTP) is available. It relies on the TTP to protect user privacy, and thus has very low computation and storage cost at each mobile user. The second scheme removes the assumption of TTP and applies blind signature and commitment techniques to protect user privacy.

Resource Efficient Mobile Computing Using Cloudlet Infrastructure

Abstract: Mobile Cloud Computing (MCC) has been introduced as a viable solution to the inherited limitations of mobile computing. These limitations include battery lifetime, processing power, and storage capacity. By using MCC, the processing and the storage of intensive mobile device jobs will take place in the cloud system and the results will be returned to the mobile device. This will reduce the required power and time for completing such intensive jobs. However, connecting mobile devices with the cloud suffers from the high network latency and the huge transmission power consumption especially when using 3G/LTE connections. In this paper, we introduce a Cloudlet based MCC system aiming to reduce the power consumption and the network delay while using MCC. We merged the MCC concepts with the proposed Cloudlet framework and propose a new framework for the MCC model. Our practical experimental results showed that using the proposed model reduces the power consumption from the mobile device, besides reducing the communication latency when the mobile device requests a job to take place remotely while keeping high quality of service stander.

On-demand Charging in Wireless Sensor Networks: Theories and Applications

Abstract: Recently, adopting mobile energy chargers to replenish the energy supply of sensor nodes in wireless sensor networks has gained increasing attention from the research community. The utilization of the mobile energy chargers provides a more reliable energy supply than the systems that harvested dynamic energy from the surrounding environment. While pioneering works on the mobile recharging problem mainly focus on the optimal offline path planning for the mobile chargers, in this work, we aim to lay the theoretical foundation for the on-demand mobile charging problem, where individual sensor nodes request charging from the mobile charger when their energy runs low. Specifically, in this work we analyze the on-demand mobile charging problem using a simple but efficient Nearest-Job-Next with Preemption (NJNP) discipline for the mobile charger, and provide analytical results on the system throughput and charging latency from the perspectives of the mobile charger and individual sensor nodes, respectively. To demonstrate how the actual system design can benefit from our analytical results, we present an example on determining the optimal remaining energy level for individual sensor nodes to send out their recharging requests. Through extensive simulation with real-world system settings, we verify our analysis matches the simulation results well and the system designs based on our analysis are effective.

The Case for Mobile Edge-Clouds

Abstract: Current mobile applications treat the end-user device as a "thin client," with all of the heavy computations being offloaded to an infrastructure cloud. However, the computational capabilities of mobile devices are constantly improving, and it is worthwhile considering whether an edge-cloud that consists purely of mobile devices (operating effectively as "thick clients") can perform as well as, or even better than, an infrastructure cloud. In this paper, we study the trade-offs between offloading computation to an infrastructure cloud versus retaining the computation within a mobile edge-cloud. To this end, we develop and run two classes of applications on both types of clouds, and we analyze the performance of the two clouds in terms of the time taken to run the application, along with the total amount of battery power consumed in both cases. Our results indicate that there are indeed classes of applications where an edge-cloud can outperform an infrastructure cloud in terms of both latency and battery power.

Geocommunity-Based Broadcasting for Data Dissemination in Mobile Social Networks

Abstract: In this paper, we consider the issue of data broadcasting in mobile social networks (MSNets). The objective is to broadcast data from a superuser to other users in the network. There are two main challenges under this paradigm, namely 1) how to represent and characterize user mobility in realistic MSNets; 2) given the knowledge of regular users' movements, how to design an efficient superuser route to broadcast data actively. We first explore several realistic data sets to reveal both geographic and social regularities of human mobility, and further propose the concepts of geocommunity and geocentrality into MSNet analysis. Then, we employ a semi-Markov process to model user mobility based on the geocommunity structure of the network. Correspondingly, the geocentrality indicating the “dynamic user density” of each geocommunity can be derived from the semi-Markov model. Finally, considering the geocentrality information, we provide different route algorithms to cater to the superuser that wants to either minimize total duration or maximize dissemination ratio. To the best of our knowledge, this work is the first to study data broadcasting in a realistic MSNet setting. Extensive trace-driven simulations show that our approach consistently outperforms other existing superuser route design algorithms in terms of dissemination ratio and energy efficiency.

An analytical model for Follow Me Cloud

Abstract: This paper introduces an analytical model for the Follow-Me Cloud (FMC) concept whereby service mobility is enabled across data centers following the mobility of a mobile user. Given a network and cloud setup and a mobility pattern of a mobile user, the proposed analytical model provides the performance of the FMC concept related to: (i) the user experience with the service (such as: UE average distance from the optimal DC, average end-to-end delay, service disruption duration); and (ii) to the cloud/mobile operator (such as the service migration cost). Obtained results are encouraging. They confirm the advantage of the FMC concept, but stress the need for careful consideration when triggering the service migration.

Modeling and Restraining Mobile Virus Propagation

Abstract: Viruses and malwares can spread from computer networks into mobile networks with the rapid growth of smart cellphone users. In a mobile network, viruses and malwares can cause privacy data leakage, extra charges, and remote listening. Furthermore, they can jam wireless servers by sending thousands of spam messages or track user positions through GPS. Because of the potential damages of mobile viruses, it is important for us to gain a deep understanding of the propagation mechanisms of mobile viruses. In this paper, we propose a two-layer network model for simulating virus propagation through both Bluetooth and SMS. Different from previous work, our work addresses the impacts of human behaviors, i.e., operational behavior and mobile behavior, on virus propagation. Our simulation results provide further insights into the determining factors of virus propagation in mobile networks. Moreover, we examine two strategies for restraining mobile virus propagation, i.e., preimmunization and adaptive dissemination strategies drawing on the methodology of autonomy-oriented computing (AOC). The experimental results show that our strategies can effectively protect large-scale and/or highly dynamic mobile networks.

Towards Computational Offloading in Mobile Device Clouds

Abstract: Many mobile applications overcome their device limitations in computational, energy, or data resources by offloading computations to the cloud. In this paper, we consider environments in which computational offloading occurs amongst a set of mobile devices. We call such an environment a mobile device cloud (MDC). In this work, we first highlight the gain in computation time and energy consumption that can be achieved by offloading tasks to nearby devices within an MDC compared to a cloud. We then propose and implement an MDC platform that enables the creation and assessment of various offloading algorithms in MDCs. This platform consists of an Android application deployable across MDC devices, and a test bed to measure power being consumed by a mobile device. We utilize this platform to carry out various offloading experiments on an MDC test bed from which we gain interesting insights into the potential for MDC offloading. Results from these experiments show up to 50% gain in time and 26% gain in energy. Finally, we address the off loadee selection problem in MDCs by proposing several social-based algorithms. The potential promise of this approach is shown by evaluating these algorithms using real data sets that include contact traces and social information of mobile devices in a conference setting.

Smart GSM based Home Automation System

Abstract: This research work investigates the potential of `Full Home Control', which is the aim of the Home Automation Systems in near future. The analysis and implementation of the home automation technology using Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) modem to control home appliances such as light, conditional system, and security system via Short Message Service (SMS) text messages is presented in this paper. The proposed research work is focused on functionality of the GSM protocol, which allows the user to control the target system away from residential using the frequency bandwidths. The concept of serial communication and AT-commands has been applied towards development of the smart GSM-based home automation system. Home owners will be able to receive feedback status of any home appliances under control whether switched on or off remotely from their mobile phones. PIC16F887 microcontroller with the integration of GSM provides the smart automated house system with the desired baud rate of 9600 bps. The proposed prototype of GSM based home automation system was implemented and tested with maximum of four loads and shows the accuracy of ≥98%.