Abstract
Researchers and companies of telecommunication sector have been working hard to enhance wireless network infrastructure to fulfill the end user’s needs for Internet connectivity. However, it is not easy to satisfy the high demand and expectation of end users always. There are some situations where Internet connectivity is not enabled due to the locations and environmental constraint. For example, network infrastructure breakdown during a disaster or the user’s device is out of the network coverage area. Besides relying only on the network infrastructure provided by telecommunication companies, one possible strategy to provide Internet connectivity in the ubiquitous environment is to exploit the functionality of end-user mobile devices to be the tool to share Internet connectivity. This paper aims to identify the constraints and challenges of forming Wireless Collaborative Network (WCN) by the end user devices. To identify the constraints and challenges, we have reviewed and categorized the past and current research focusing on collaborating mobile devices in the mobile ad-hoc network for communication and resource sharing. For validation, a simple test case was conducted which involves few mobile devices in a random formation. Base on the finding, it is concluded that the biggest challenge of forming WCN is the ability of mobile devices to provide bridging functionality. This paper also discussed the expecting architecture of WCN and suggested the simulation tools with relevant metrics to be considered in this research area.
Highlights
The rapid advancement of new technology has brought a huge impact to the mobile device industry
The position of the Access Point (AP) must be manually adjusted with the help of simulation tools (Qualnet) for calculating a suitable location. This method is considered as time-consuming, albeit the results showed that Wi-Fi Quality of Service (QoS) has been improved
The information shared among mobile devices could be the location of the nearest free WiFi access point or information of diverted wireless network connections via the social collaboration of mobile devices
Summary
The rapid advancement of new technology has brought a huge impact to the mobile device industry. Based on a survey reported by Accenture (2012), “mobile Internet usage continues to be on a sharp upward trajectory.”. Mobile devices are the primary medium to access the Internet across different groups of people. Based on mobile behaviour report, the activities performed by most of mobile device owners are emailing, text messaging, searching information on the Internet, logging to social networking as well as watching videos or movies (ExactTarget, 2014). Based on a study of consumers’ smartphone usage behaviour in Malaysia, Osman et al (2012) reported that Malaysian consumers have a high usage of the smartphone as the medium for Internet access for daily activities such as blogging, checking emails and entertainment. Based on all the reports studied, Internet access is essential for most mobile device users
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