Convergence Of Services Research Articles

Factors enhancing independent tourists’ experience through convergence of smartphone-based services and information searching

The aim of the present study is to identify influential factors of travel intention under the context of highly developed IT society today. Due to the development of IT and diversified ways of technology convergence, individual travelers become highly efficient in travel-related information processing. As predicted, the results of both Korean and Chinese samples show that acquaintance recommendation, autonomy, relatedness, and technology self-efficacy are significantly related with the travel information acquisition and travel intention. In this study, smartPLS, which is widely used in social science, was used. PLS is a useful analytical tool for determining causality between variables. The present study will make practical contributions by enhancing the accuracy of travel recommendation services from the perspective of technology convergence. The results of this study are expected to provide guidelines for travel-related companies to develop personalization and customization services through big data and artificial intelligence techniques when they want to design travel recommendation systems.

Evaluating the Collaborative Innovation Performance of Advanced Manufacturing Industry and Modern Service Industry Based on Extension Method

With the increasing convergence of service and manufacturing industry, service industry plays an important role in the value chain of modern manufacturing industry, advancing the transition from traditional manufacturing pattern to the service-manufacturing integration. This paper employed extension method to assess the collaborative innovation performance of advanced manufacturing industry and modern service industry and conducted case study for model demonstration and validation. This study provided a new approach for the decision makings in the collaborative innovation of advanced manufacturing industry and modern service industry.

Social mining-based clustering process for big-data integration

With the development of information technology, ambient intelligence has been combined with various application areas so as to create new convergence service industries. Through IT convergence, human-oriented technologies for improving people’s quality of life has continued to be developed. Healthcare service that has been provided along with the development of various smart IT devices makes it possible to realize more efficient healthcare of people. Therefore, along with such a medical service, the advanced lifecare service for physical and mental health has been demanded. In order to meet the healthcare demands, an advanced healthcare platform has been developed. Lifecare service has been expanded to healthcare, the disease with the highest mortality induced by complications so that the service for disease survivals have been offered. Accordingly, a big-data integration and advanced healthcare platform based on patients’ life logs are developed in order for health service. In this platform, it is possible to establish an optimized model with the knowledge base and predict diseases and complications and judge a degree of risk with the use of information filtering. The conventional filtering based on a data model using scatter life logs makes use of user attribute information only for clustering so that it has low accuracy. Also, in calculating the similarity of actual users, such a method does not apply social relationships. Therefore, this study proposes a social mining based cluster process for big-data integration. The proposed method uses conventional static model information and the information extracted from the social network in order to create reliable user modeling and applies a different level of weight depending on users’ relations. In the clustering process for disease survivals’ health conditions, it is possible to predict their health risk. Based on the risk and expectation of healthcare event occurrence, their health conditions can be improved. Lifecare forecasting model that uses social relation performs social sequence mining using PrefixSpan to complement the weak point that spends a long time to scan it repeatedly in the candidate pattern. For performance evaluation, the social mining based cluster process was compared with a conventional cluster method. More specifically, the estimation accuracy of the conventional model-based cluster method was compared with the accuracy of the social mining based cluster process. As a result, the proposed method in the mining-based healthcare platform had better performance than the conventional model-based cluster method.

Does industrial convergence promote regional metabolism? Evidence from China

Industrial convergence is one of the important strategies to promote China’s sustainable development, and its development is phased. In order to better explore the heterogeneous effect of industrial convergence on regional metabolism in different stages, we takes the convergence of manufacturing and producer services in 26 provinces of China as the research object, and for the first time attempt to empirically test the impact of industrial convergence at different stages on metabolic efficiency. In this paper, we measure metabolic efficiency using emergy analysis and index data envelopment analysis (Index-DEA) and measure the convergence degree of the two industries using the coupling evaluation model. Then, we analyze the effects of industrial convergence on metabolic efficiency using the Tobit model. The results show that industrial convergence can significantly promote the metabolic efficiency of China. Specifically, in the emerging industry convergence zone, industry convergence has a significant promoting effect on the advancement of metabolic efficiency, while in the mature industry convergence zone, industry convergence has no effect on metabolic efficiency. Moreover, this paper considers six other factors that affect regional metabolism. In addition to government interaction, the other five factors have an impact on metabolism efficiency. Finally, special issues are briefly discussed. The results provide important insights for policy makers to better promote industrial convergence and improve regional metabolism.

Intent-based networks for 6G: Insights and challenges

Intent-Based Networks (IBNs), which are originally proposed to introduce Artificial Intelligence (AI) into the sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks, can effectively solve the challenges of traditional networks in terms of efficiency, flexibility, and security. IBNs are mainly used to transform users’ business intent into network configuration, operation, and maintenance strategies, which are prominent for designing the AI-enabled 6G networks. In particular, in order to meet the massive, intelligent service demands and overcome the time-varying radio propagation, IBNs can continuously learn and adapt to the time-varying network environment based on the massive collected network data in real-time. From the aspects of both the core network and radio access network, this article comprehensively surveys the architectures and key techniques of IBNs for 6G. In particular, the demonstration platforms of IBNs, such as the Apstra Operating System, Forward Networks Verification Platform, and One Convergence Service Interaction Platform, are presented. Moreover, the industrial development of IBNs is elaborated, including the emerging new products and startups to solve the problems of open data platforms, automated network operations, and preemptive network fault diagnosis. Finally, several open issues and challenges are identified as well to spur future researches.

Research on Trans-Boundary Convergence of Different Service Chains in Health Service Ecosystem

With the aging of the population and the development of modern service industries, the health service ecosystem (HSE) is beginning to emerge. As a new form of healthcare industry in the Internet era, HSE has its inherent “social cyber” complexity: the source of healthcare service is social, and such sociality aggravates the diversity, uncertainty, and dynamics of service supply. This poses new challenges to the service matching between diverse supply and personalized requirements for aged persons. In order to meet this challenge, it is necessary to conduct the trans-boundary cooperation and integration between service chains in different domains, including business convergence, interface convergence and value convergence. This task is very difficult and there is currently no common method. In order to change such a situation, this paper proposes an interactive trans-boundary convergence method for health service ecosystem based on micro-service architecture. Firstly, the method confirms the value of service convergence, and then uses this as a driving force to achieve business process integration of different service chains. Then, the business coupling between different service chains is converted into asynchronous data communication to achieve interface convergence. Finally, the value assessment of service convergence is given to realize the value convergence. This method has been verified in the construction of National healthcare service platform for the elderly in China. The results demonstrate that our method has a substantial promise.

Convergence of mobile broadband and broadcast services: A cognitive radio sensing and sharing perspective

With next generation networks driving the confluence of multi-media, broadband, and broadcast services, Cognitive Radio (CR) networks are positioned as a preferred paradigm to address spectrum capacity challenges. CRs address these issues through dynamic spectrum access. However, the main challenges faced by the CR pertain to achieving spectrum efficiency. As a result, spectrum efficiency improvement models based on spectrum sensing and sharing models have attracted a lot of research attention in recent years, including CR learning models, network densification architectures, and massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO), and beamforming techniques. This paper provides a survey of recent CR spectrum efficiency improvement models and techniques, developed to support ultra-reliable low latency communications that are resilient to surges in traffic and competition for spectrum. These models and techniques, broadly speaking, enable a wide range of functionality ranging from enhanced mobile broadband to large scale Internet of Things (IoT) type communications. In addition and given the strong correlation between the typical size of a spectrum block and the achievable data rate, the models studied in this paper are applicable in ultra-high frequency band. This study therefore provides a good review of CRs and direction for future investigations into newly identified 5G research areas, applicable in industry and in academia.

Using Layered Division Multiplexing for Wireless In-Band Distribution Links in Next Generation Broadcast Systems

To meet the ever increasing demand for better service quality and availability, the next generation digital TV (DTV) broadcast, a.k.a., the ATSC 3.0, is developed with new capabilities to deliver 4K ultra-high-definition (4K-UHD) services to fixed receivers, robust HD-quality services to mobile receivers, as well as non-broadcast services (e.g., broadband), including Internet of Things (IoT), Connected Vehicles, etc. To realize these capabilities, it becomes necessary to evolve the existing single-transmitter high-power-high-tower (HPHT) network to multi-transmitter low-power-low-tower single-frequency-networks (SFN), which requires installing new transmitters. Each new transmitter needs a feederlink to receive the service data from the broadcast gateway (BG) for transmission. This feederlink contributes to a significant portion of installation and operational costs of the new transmitters. This paper proposes a wireless in-band distribution link (WIDL) technology, where the distribution data is delivered to the newly deployed transmitters from the existing DTV towers wirelessly sharing the same TV band with the broadcast services. The distribution signal is multiplexed with service signal in the same ATSC 3.0 waveform. Layered division multiplexing (LDM) technology is proposed to achieve more efficient transmission of the distribution signal. The WIDL offers better performance and more robust operation than the on-channel repeater (OCR) technologies. More importantly, it offers the possibility of delivering backhaul data for future applications over the DTV infrastructure, such as IoT and connected vehicles. Therefore, the proposed WIDL is one enabling technology to achieve convergence of broadcast services with broadband and other wireless services on the DTV spectrum.

Research and Application of Soft Switching Technology in Power Dispatching Communication Network

Softswitch is the development direction of next-generation networks, which can better achieve network convergence and service convergence. Soft switching technology has gradually replaced circuit switching technology has become an inevitable trend. This paper analyzes the meaning of softswitch technology and the problems existing in China’s electric power dispatching network, and elaborates the specific application of softswitch in the electric power dispatching communication private network, and hopes to provide some inspiration for the research in this field.

스마트욕실환경을 위한 ICT융합 서비스모델개발

스마트욕실환경을 위한 ICT융합 서비스모델개발

5G Xhaul and Service Convergence: Transmission, Switching and Automation Enabling Technologies

The article provides a review of the Xhaul network in terms of architecture, transmission, switching, and service provisioning automation, with the objective to illustrate the state of the art and indicate the open issues to be addressed. Xhaul is the new transport network segment that covers the first 15-20 km from the access site, replacing today point-to-point fronthaul connections. Due to the high level of capillarity of deployed equipment in this network segment, a simple downsize of the technology used in metro and aggregation networks cannot achieve sufficient cost effectiveness: cost reduction, both in opex and capex, must indeed not compromise the demanding requirements of low latency and high bandwidth. Enabling service convergence is the key feature of Xhaul. The considered network scenario starts from an initial phase, where the Xhaul infrastructure is designed to carry only mobile fronthaul and backhaul traffic, evolving to support enterprises services, as well as vertical services. Such a convergent infrastructure has to support any kind of 5G service, including massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC), extreme Mobile Broad-Band (eMBB), and Ultra-Reliable Low Latency Communication (URLLC). The most important challenges and significant features are illustrated through relevant examples and experiments.

The Causes and Consequences of Growth in the Cable Television Industry

The cable television industry is a large, integral part of the information technology industry in the United States. The purpose of this paper is to describe the development of the cable television industry and analyze the institutional and economic determinants of its growth. As will be shown, the growth in the number of subscribers to cable television services was moderate from its inception until the late 1970s, enjoyed a period of substantial gain from that time until the mid-1980s, and subsequently flattened. While not inconsistent with the natural, unfettered development of nascent industries, the determinants of these periods of growth match closely with the developments in three related areas. These are (1) the seemingly boundless demand for new and varied video programming by consumers, (2) technological innovations in communication distribution technologies, including technological spillovers from other telecommunications industries, and (3) changes in the regulatory environment, or rules of the game, governing both the structure of cost and the competitive environment in the industry. An ancillary goal of this paper is to also consider the implications of the existing institutional structure of the cable television industry in the context of the convergence of telecommunications services mentioned above.

Software-Defined Time-Shifted IPTV architecture for locality-awareness TWDM-PON

IPTV brought great potential to give network providers the capacity to expand their market value and revenue generated by increasing the number of users. Time-shifted IPTV (TS-IPTV) is one way of accomplishment through IP multicasting. Amongst the access network solutions, Ethernet passive optical network (EPON) is regarded as one of the best solutions due to its high bandwidth provision, low operation and maintenance cost. Software-Defined Networking (SDN) separates the network control plane from the data-forwarding plane with the promise to dramatically improve the network resource utilization. Time and wavelength division multiplexed access passive optical network (TWDM-PON) is the ultimate solution for the next generation PON (NG-PON2), in which each wavelength is shared between multiple optical network units (ONUs) by employing the time division and multiplexing access mechanism. Local-awareness based TWDM-PON allows for the higher bandwidth and optimal flexibility, fiber management, service convergence and resources sharing. In this paper, the SDN is integrated into the TWDM-PON architecture to facilitate an orchestrated multicasting time shifted IPTV through the SDN controller to control and manage the traffic. The simulation results show that the proposed architecture and mechanism improves the quality of service (QoS) requirements in terms of the mean packet delay, jitter, throughput and packet loss.

인공지능산업과 디자인융합 연구

A study on the design convergence in the AI industry is important. The method and purpose of this study are to present the direction of next generation of AI convergence design based on the important issues and alternatives by field obtained through the analysis of the characteristics, features and design convergence of AI industry.<BR> The study results are as follows:<BR> First, the AI industry is characterized by providing users with optimal customized services through high-quality automation of predictability (analytic work), maximization of excellence, maximization of hyper connectivity, and maximization of hyper-intelligence.<BR> Second, coexistence efforts on human safety and ethical issues, which are threat (risk) factors of the AI industry, are essential.<BR> Third, the AI industry focuses on: convergence of products and services, strengthening of service design activities, ‘service-oriented manufacturing model’, research and development of computing technology sources of a new paradigm centered on brain research, development of AI semiconductor R & D and material technology, convergence of manufacturing industry and service design related to strengthening open source platform.<BR> Fourth, the results of the analysis of specific AI design convergence cases, R & D, and professional human resource development in the finance, tourism, marketing, arts & culture (exhibition and performance) industry, education, and other industries showed that the challenges of emotions and feelings, such as humans, should be solved and further research is needed for the age of "superhuman intelligence" where AI and humans can coexist.<BR> It is expected that the alternatives for each of the important issues obtained from the study results will be used for establishing policy guidelines and detailed directions for the next generation of AI design convergence.

Study on the Development Path of Homestay Industry in Ancient Town Under the Background of Integration of Culture and Tourism —— Take Dujiangyan as an Example

In recent years, Sichuan Province has vigorously promoted the integration of cultural and tourism development and actively guided the transformation and development of the tourism industry in various regions. The development of the homestay industry has ushered in new development opportunities. Based on the research and analysis of the development status of the homestay industry in the ancient town of Dujiangyan, this study puts forward the path exploration of the integrated development of the homestay industry and the cultural tourism industry based on the background of the integration of cultural and tourism development, it is expected to serve as a reference for the development of the local homestay industry. Through literature research, field research and in-depth interviews and other research methods, it is found that Dujiangyan ancient town homestay exists in the development:(1) Single homestays are in their own ranks, and brand awareness is weak; (2) The market access threshold is low and lack of professional talents; (3) The regional cultural characteristics are not obvious, and the convergence of products and services is gradually revealed; (4) The uneven operation level of shared homestay network. In order to promote the development of the local homestay industry in ancient towns, it is recommended that homestays and cultural industries be integrated and developed. Through the forms of homestay + regional culture, homestay+ digitalization, homestay + brand culture, etc., promote the transformation and upgrading of the homestay industry, broaden the homestay industry chain, and promote the integration of tourism and regional economy in the ancient town.

How can Urban Manufacturing contribute to a more sustainable energy system in cities?

The paper explores future opportunities as well as challenges arising from urban manufacturing (UM) regarding the design of sustainable energy systems for cities. Global trends affect the type of production (e.g. Industry 4.0) as well as the industrial structure (e.g. convergence of services and production) of UM in cities. This causes new requirements but also new options for the urban energy system. The study presented in this paper examines this area of tension and explores not only the potentials of waste heat use, but also additional electricity demand trough steadily advancing digitalisation. The study illustrates, that over the next few years it will be key to improve the interfaces between actors and sectors: between companies (energy communities), between industry and grid/energy supply company/neighbouring settlement areas and between the sectors heat-electricity-gas-mobility through e.g. power-to-x and possible uses of hydrogen. The paper concludes with a concept for integrating urban manufacturing optimally in the urban energy system for a sustainable energy transition in the future.

Using artificial intelligence to optimize intermodal networking of organizational agents within the digital economy

The problems of forming a digital economy supersystem have been analyzed by the authors using a key business model of sharing digital assets by organizational agents based on the convergence of telematic, computing and information services with the final output of a complex of managed digital objects to a new quality control based on the M2M principle integration. The integration of standardized network infrastructures allows the transformation of traditional linear-hierarchical chains of management transactions in a network of transactions of digital objects that perform intelligent interaction without human intervention through IP-like connections. The introduction of universal shells of any business process from the processing of primary data to processing in the deep region with the use of advanced multi-agent optimization algorithms of the next [after 3G] generation [based on 4G, 5G, etc.], implemented within the electronic micro-, meso-and macrocontent allows us to ensure the stability of the super system within the optimal values of the activities of controlled digital objects due to the increased possibilities of observation and control.

Analysis of protocols and techniques for transmission of voice over internet protocol

The purpose of the article is to present the process of the evolution of telecommunication networks across the years and are developing at a very rapid pace, with a tendency towards convergence of services. Voice over IP is the preferred method for more and more telecommunications operators, replacing standard telephony and networking. As a result, it can be noted that VoIP technology allows much more information to be transmitted over the network to serve and improve communication needs than traditional telephony. The authors' contribution is the analysis of voice over IP protocols, which clarifies the concepts and rules in this type of communication and presents the functionalities and components of these communications.

Determinants of Innovation Strategy in Indonesia Telecommunication Industry

On the last ten years, telecommunication industry in Indonesia has passed through several transformations on network and service convergence. In this digitally disrupted era, there is change of communication trends from voice and text message communication to data-based application communication (Over-the-Top communications) resulted decline of company revenue. However, telecommunication should have had big role, therefore company should adapt the strategy to catch that opportunity. The aim of this research is to investigate the determinants of innovation strategy in Indonesia telecommunication industry. This research is conducted qualitatively with semi-structured interviews. Strong evidences are shown that product innovation is done the most both in Indonesia and other developed countries. The results indicate that the criteria information technology infrastructure, digital customer experience, business process, profitability, and the quality of product/service are the determinants on the design of innovation strategy in Indonesia telecommunication industry.

Smart Media Transport: A Burgeoning Intelligent System for Next Generation Multimedia Convergence Service Over Heterogeneous Networks in China

Convergence service (CS), which integrates broadband and broadcast services, is considered promising in bridging the gap between scarce bandwidth and user demands for real-time, immersive, and super high-quality service in a ubiquitous environment. However, many urgent issues remain to be tackled in media transport system (MTS) to support CS. In this paper, the challenges MTS would entail over a heterogeneous network to diverse users are first analyzed. The architecture and functionalities of the smart media transport (SMT) system are then advocated and reviewed. Several key technologies in the SMT system, including hierarchical media-aware data model for content encapsulation, context-aware data protection mechanism for reliable transmission, and media synchronization control based on network condition estimation, are discussed. Field trial results on campus for certain CS are provided to validate the system design and illustrate the performance of the SMT system.