Mobile Wireless Technologies Research Articles

Delegation with Technology Migration: An Empirical Analysis of Mobile Virtual Network Operators

This study examines the impact of mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs) on the performance of mobile network operators (MNOs) in the presence of overlapping generations of wireless mobile technologies (2G and 3G). MVNOs distribute MNOs’ mobile services to customers without owning any spectrum or network infrastructures. Some MVNOs are wholly owned by MNOs with a revenue-sharing mechanism (branded MVNOs), while others operate through wholesale agreements with MNOs (third-party MVNOs). By focusing on the impact of MVNOs on MNOs’ performance, we investigate governance issues, e.g., delegation vs. ownership, in value chains with overlapping generations of technologies. Using proprietary data, we design a quasi-experiment to analyze branded and third-party MVNOs. First, we use a sliding window adjusted difference-in-differences model as an exploratory analysis. Next, in the main analysis, we employ dynamic propensity score matching, which allows us to explore the variation of the impact over time. We find that branded and third-party MVNO launches both increase an MNO's 2G market share, whereas its 3G market share increases only with a branded MVNO launch. In addition, the positive effects diminish over time for branded MVNOs, but strengthen for third-party MVNOs. These results suggest that, when launching MVNOs, managers should decide on value chain governance based on technology migration and market maturity. If the focus is to quickly seize the market share with new mobile technologies, branded MVNOs are preferred. On the other hand, if the focus is to expand in a niche, mature market, delegating to third-party MVNOs may be more effective.

5G New Radio Evaluation Against IMT-2020 Key Performance Indicators

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile radio technologies has been defined as a new delivery model where services are tailored to specific vertical industries. 5G supports three types of services with different and heterogeneous requirements, i.e. enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communications (URLLC) and massive Machine-Type Communications (mMTC). These services are directly related to exemplary verticals such as media, vehicular communications or the Industry 4.0. This work provides a detailed analysis and performance evaluation of 5G New Radio (NR) against a set of Key Performance Indicators (KPI), as defined in the International Mobile Telecommunications 2020 (IMT-2020) guidelines, and provides an overview about the fulfillment of their associated requirements. The objective of this work is to provide an independent evaluation, complementing the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) contribution. From the original group of sixteen KPIs, eleven of them have been carefully selected, paying special attention to eMBB services. Results show that 5G NR achieves all considered requirements, therefore fulfilling the specific market's needs for years to come.

Analysis of the Effectiveness of the Utilization of Power Monitoring Devices in Reducing Electric Energy Consumption

Huge amount of energy consumptions in electrical households appliances are greatly influenced by the behaviors of people who live there. Unawareness in the use of the electrical appliances made a surge in electrical bills each month. To make savings, a technology to monitor the electrical energy consumptions is needed. This research focuses on analyzing the use of energy consumption control devices combined with wireless fidelity (WiFi) and mobile phones technology. These devices combine monitoring, reporting and control functions. Any electrical appliances that uses electrical energy from Electricity Company will be connected to this system for monitoring energy consumption. It is recorded and subsequently reported to the user for savings measurement. After the installment of these devices, the test results showed that the savings measurements have decrease the daily energy consumption by 15.88%. While the weekly consumption shows a decrease of 6.43%. Within three months of observation from there was a decrease in energy consumption by 33.77%.

Silicon Photonics for 5G and Future Networks

The evolution of mobile radio technologies towards the realization and deployment of 5G networks is creating relevant opportunities in the Industry and Society worldwide. On the other hand, the network infrastructure that will have to sustain many applications, including the ones requiring challenging network performance, in different terms, is leading to a network transformation and the capacity to handle bigger and bigger volumes of traffic at a reasonable cost and consumption of energy. Photonic technology will play a key role in 5G networks in different segments. In 5G transport it will allow the transmission and routing of huge amounts of data traffic at an acceptable cost, and the transformation of the radio access network. In data center photonic interconnect and switching will allow the realization of new architecture able to strongly reduce the energy consumption while providing high level of flexibility in resource utilization. In future HW platform photonic chip-to-chip interconnect will allow a significant increase of bandwidth density so leading to dramatically scale up the global capacity of those platforms. In addition, photonics is a valid technology to achieve some functions of future radio systems that will enable the further evolution towards what will be the 6th generation of mobile networks. In all the above integrated photonics, and particularly silicon photonics, will be the key technology to realize components and modules at the right costs, while greatly reducing energy consumption and footprint and the desired performance.

Effective Packet Loss Elimination in IP Mobility Support for Vehicular Networks

With the remarkable advances in wireless communications and mobile electronic technologies, traveling users have been demanding continuous and seamless Internet access to enjoy multimedia services such as video streaming, voice over IP, online gaming, and so on, through handheld smart devices. Providing ubiquitous wireless connectivity to mobile users is indispensable to support continuous online services when vehicles move across various kinds of access networks. However, the high vehicle velocity and complex user mobility in the urban environment impose great challenges on designing an efficient mobility management scheme. In this article, we study the packet loss issue in IP mobility support for vehicular networks. We first give detailed descriptions of some major mobility management solutions. Then, we analyze user mobility models in the urban environment and identify the packet loss issue when traveling users roam across various access networks. By flexibly utilizing tunneling and buffering technologies, we correspondingly design a comprehensive solution to eliminate packet loss in each handover scenario of the urban environment. Finally, performance comparisons between the proposed scheme and related proposals have been conducted, which demonstrate a noteworthy potential of the presented scheme in eliminating packet loss and improving handover performance in urban vehicular communications.

QoS‐aware LTE‐A downlink scheduling algorithm: A case study on edge users

Summary4G/LTE‐A (Long‐Term Evolution—Advanced) is the state of the art wireless mobile broadband technology. It allows users to take advantage of high Internet speeds. It makes use of the OFDM technology to offer high speed and provides the system resources both in time and frequency domain. A scheduling algorithm running on the base station holds the allocation of these resources. In this paper, we investigate the performance of existing downlink scheduling algorithms in two ways. First, we look at the performance of the algorithms in terms of throughput and fairness metrics. Second, we suggest a new QoS‐aware fairness criterion, which accepts that the system is fair if it can provide the users with the network traffic speeds that they demand and evaluate the performance of the algorithms according to this metric. We also propose a new QoS‐aware downlink scheduling algorithm (QuAS) according to these two metrics, which increases the QoS‐fairness and overall throughput of the edge users without causing a significant degradation in overall system throughput when compared with other schedulers in the literature.

Cooperative Learning for Spectrum Management in Railway Cognitive Radio Network

High-speed rail public broadband wireless access requires communication terminals with high mobility to perform seamless cell switching in a harsh and fast time-varying environment. However, frequent switching caused by fast motion inevitably leads to unpredictable high volatility of the available spectrum, resulting in inefficient wireless communication. The application of highly mobile cognitive radio technology may address this challenge. This paper first analyzes the physical structure of the existing railway wireless communication network, and determines the characteristics of chainlike distribution and cascade operation of the base stations along the railway. Furthermore, using Bayesian reinforcement learning and multi-agent theory, a distributed cognitive base station model suitable for railway wireless environment is constructed. Based on the joint spectrum management of cascaded base station groups, this model proposes a multi-agent coordination algorithm with the goal of global optimal communication performance of the entire rail line. Finally, this paper evaluates the network performance of various test scenarios, and proves that the cognitive base station multi-agent cascade cooperative system can significantly increase the probability of successful data transmission and greatly reduce wireless spectrum handovers. This proposed scheme provides a brand-new solution for solving the problem of low wireless spectrum efficiency in the typical railway wireless network.

MOBILE BROADBAND AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN NIGERIA

The scale of diffusion of mobile wireless broadband technology and its transformational effect across all sectors of the economy cannot be over emphasised. It enables the creation of new business processes/product innovation, thereby boosting job creation, as well as raising economic growth and productivity. This suggests that the mobile broadband is a general-purpose technology capable of producing a protracted critical mass effect at a certain threshold of penetration. It is against this backdrop that this paper examines the impact of mobile broadband on economic growth in Nigeria. Using the Endogenous Growth Model, we employ ARDL Bounds Testing Approach and Toda Yamamoto Granger Causality test on quarterly data from 2001 to 2016, to estimate the growth effect of mobile broadband. The findings show that mobile broadband is impacting economic growth positively in the Nigerian economy. It is therefore imperative for policymakers to design policies that will increase access to broadband infrastructure to both the unserved and underserved. It is also imperative to enact policies and regulations that can stimulate the economic impact of mobile broadband technology by strengthening the capacity of the economy to fully absorb the transformational benefits and make productive use of it as a General-Purpose Technology.

NB-IoT and eMTC: Engineering results towards 5G/IoT Mobile Technologies

5G RF technology is an essential part of the wireless mobile technology. Technically, 5G is predicted to empower people-thing and thing-thing interconnections by combining wireless technologies and networks. Our university has been actively support research on 4G/5G/IoT, in which the NB-IoT, eMTC and Massive Carrier Aggregation new features challenge are of big interest. New 5G trials put forward a lot of prerequisites for new RF interface in terms of radio bandwidth, power issues, as well as the huge number of connections for IoT capacity management and optimization. Based on Morocco’s current situation, this paper first discusses the 5G technologies; In addition, we will discuss IoT SoftRadio application support, and NB-IoT master plan recap. At last, based on the current plan of 5G RF KPIs management according to first Morocco 5G trail Results and Deployment plans.

Effects of a personalised ubiquitous learning support system based on learning style-preferred technology type decision model on university students' SQL learning performance

With the advancement of mobile device and wireless communication technologies, personalised ubiquitous learning support systems providing learning material corresponding student preference have been becoming an important research issue. This study focuses on developing such a learning support system based on learning styles and preferred technology types to recommend a proper digital learning material. A two-step experiment was conducted: the first study, involving 190 university students, explored a learning style-preferred technology type decision model for recommending digital learning material to individual students. The second study, involving 39 university students, empirically evaluated the effectiveness of the decision model-based personalised ubiquitous learning support system and the experiment was based on a pre-test and post-test design. The results of the two-part experiments showed that (a) the decision model is able to recommend proper learning material to individual students based on their learning style and preferred technology type, and (b) the learning support system demonstrated good performance concerning the gain of knowledge and learning motivations.

An Improved Authentication Scheme for Internet of Vehicles Based on Blockchain Technology

Thanks to the rapid development in mobile vehicles and wireless technologies, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) has become an attractive application that can provide a large number of mobile services for drivers. Vehicles can be informed of the mobile position, direction, speed, and other real-time information of nearby vehicles to avoid traffic jams and accidents. However, the environments of IoV could be dangerous in the absence of security protections. Due to the openness and self-organization of IoV, there are enormous malicious attackers. To guarantee the safety of mobile services, we propose an effective decentralized authentication mechanism for IoV on the basis of the consensus algorithm of blockchain technology. The simulation under the veins framework is carried out to verify the feasibility of the scheme in reducing the selfish behavior and malicious attacks in IoV.

Effects of a personalised ubiquitous learning support system based on learning style-preferred technology type decision model on university students' SQL learning performance

With the advancement of mobile device and wireless communication technologies, personalised ubiquitous learning support systems providing learning material corresponding student preference have been becoming an important research issue. This study focuses on developing such a learning support system based on learning styles and preferred technology types to recommend a proper digital learning material. A two-step experiment was conducted: the first study, involving 190 university students, explored a learning style-preferred technology type decision model for recommending digital learning material to individual students. The second study, involving 39 university students, empirically evaluated the effectiveness of the decision model-based personalised ubiquitous learning support system and the experiment was based on a pre-test and post-test design. The results of the two-part experiments showed that (a) the decision model is able to recommend proper learning material to individual students based on their learning style and preferred technology type, and (b) the learning support system demonstrated good performance concerning the gain of knowledge and learning motivations.

Energy efficient virtual network embedding for wireless multi-hop cellular networks using multi-commodity flow algorithm

With the rapid development of wireless mobile communication technologies, the trend of generalisation and centralisation requires variable communication devices and flexible network structures. To improve the transmission quality and extend the cell coverage, multi-hop relay network, as a wireless access network, has become an important part of communication system framework. Furthermore, to support seamless communication of multiple devices and services in heterogenous wireless networks with high resources utilisation, network virtualisation has been proposed to offer a flexible and scalable management. In this paper, we study the wireless multi-hop cellular network and the problem of virtual network embedding. We first analyse the wireless multi-hop cellular network scenario and establish a virtual network embedding model. After that we propose a minimum cost flow algorithm based on the multi-commodity flow algorithm. Thus the problem is transformed into a multi-commodity flow problem. We finally put forward an optimisation algorithm of Lagrange relaxation and sub-gradient algorithm to solve the problem. The simulation results show that the proposed multi-commodity flow algorithm can make full use of network resources, and improve the acceptance rate of virtual network requests, so as to improve the quality of service.

LTE-Based Public Safety Networks: A Survey

Public safety networks (PSNs) are very crucial for public protection and disaster relief (PPDR). land mobile radio (LMR) technologies have been used extensively in the deployment of PSNs so far. LMR networks support sophisticated voice applications that can, to some extent, deal with the mission-critical nature of PPDR services. However, LMR networks lack technological advancements to support broadband (BB) applications. Due to this limitation, the attention is drawn to the long-term evolution (LTE) technology for public safety (PS) deployment as it has the potential to support various narrowband and BB applications and services. LTE-based PSNs should have strict requirements in terms of scalability, robustness, and resilience. In this survey, we will highlight the history of PSNs, including LMR and LTE-based PSNs, discuss the requirements that have to be inherited in PSNs, and examine the spectrum allocated for PS use. Moreover, we will study the architecture of LTE-based PSNs and provide deployment and migration solutions. Furthermore, voice delivery over LTE and LTE standardized solutions tailored to support PS services are discussed. Finally, rapid emergency deployment, spectrum management, priority management, and radio resource management schemes in LTE-based PSNs are discussed as well. At the end of the survey, we present PSNs simulation environment using network simulator and provide the results of multiple disaster scenarios.

Determinants of birth registration of children under 5 years in Uganda

Background: In Uganda, only about one-third (32%) of children under age 5 have their births registered with the civil authority. There is limited information on factors linked to birth registration in Uganda. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to identify the factors associated with birth registration in Uganda. Methods: Data from the Uganda Demographic and Health Survey 2016 were analyzed. The study sample comprised only women from 16,206 households who had children &#88145 years, selected using two-stage stratified sampling with probability proportional to size. A logistic regression model was used to study the determinants of birth registration. Results: The overall coverage of birth registration was 32.7%. Child's age, health-care provider, ownership of a radio or mobile phone, and region of residence were significantly associated with birth registration. On the contrary, relationship to the household head, age of the household head, television ownership, wealth index, and residence had no association with birth registration status. Conclusion: Birth registration is relatively still low in Uganda. The Government of Uganda should bring the birth registration services closer to health facilities, especially low-level health centers. The government should utilize mobile phone and radio technologies to promote and sensitize communities about birth registration due to their mass coverage and positive association with birth registration.

SDN Based End-to-End Inter-Domain Routing Mechanism for Mobility Management and Its Evaluation.

Nowadays, due to the widespread usage of mobile devices and wireless network technologies, we can use various ICT services almost anytime, anywhere even if we are changing our location at that moment. Therefore, mobility management technology have been attracting attention. This technology is to keep communication alive even when a mobile node (MN), which is communicating with the server or some nodes, moves to another network domain. Software Defined Networking (SDN) is used for mobility management to realize effective intra-domain routing that optimizes routes when an MN moves inside an SDN domain. However, many of the approaches mainly focus on intra-domain routing and it is difficult to optimize inter-domain route. In this paper, we focus on this routing optimization problem and propose an SDN based end-to-end routing mechanism specified for mobility management. The proposed routing mechanism can optimize an end-to-end route based on various parameters such as bandwidth, number of domains, and flow operations for mobility after an MN has moved across SDN domains. We carried out some simulational experimentations to evaluate the effect of proposal. It is shown that the proposed routing mechanism can reduce communication delay and enhance network performance. Thus, the proposed routing mechanism can realize effective ICT services.

A Bigraphical Reactive Systems with Sharing for modeling Wireless Mesh Networks

Recently, various types of wireless networks and mobile communication technologies have emerged; particularly the Wireless Mesh Networks (WMN) improving significantly the capacities of mobile communications. This paper aims to propose new insights on theoretical aspects of WMN by giving a novel modeling approach.We lean on formal methods to show how to define a precise semantics for WMN and how to formally analyze their routing protocols. We combine the logical reflection of Maude language and the hierarchical structure of the Bigraphical Reactive Systems (BRS) to provide an executable formal model for WMN. This model, called Bis-WMN specifies both the WMN topology and any behavior which may be observed during its routing process. Some inherent properties have been then checked with the LTL model checker of Maude.

The influence of information technology on the development of medicine

The review of mobile devices and wireless technologies used today in medicine developed countries in two main areas: treatment and care for patients and maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Tendencies of the further development of mobile technologies in medicine are indicated. The role of artificial intelligence in the treatment of patients at the present stage and in the future is shown. Problems that inhibit the further development of artificial intelligence in medicine are identified. It is indicated that mobile health technologies can be applied to the aging part of the world's population to solve the problems associated with raising the retirement age. The directions of modern telemedicine are described as one of the ways to solve the issue of increasing life expectancy. Particular attention is paid to 3D printing of human organs with the help of a bioprinter. New professions are listed at the intersection of medicine and computer technologies, which should appear in the future for the introduction of IT technologies into traditional medicine. The main directions of future medicine development are outlined.

Linked Data Aware Agent Development Framework for Mobile Devices

Due to advances in mobile device and wireless networking technologies, it has already been possible to transfer agent technology into mobile computing environments. In this paper, we introduce the Linked Data Aware Agent Development Framework for Mobile Devices (LDAF-M), which is an agent development framework that supports the development of linked data aware agents that run on mobile devices. Linked data, which is the realization of the semantic web vision, refers to a set of best practices for publishing, interconnecting and consuming structured data on the web. An agent developed using LDAF-M has the ability to obtain data from the linked data environment and internalize the gathered data as its beliefs in its belief base. Besides linked data support, LDAF-M has also other prominent features which are its peer-to-peer based communication infrastructure, compliancy with Foundation for Intelligent Physical Agents (FIPA) standards and support for the Belief Desire Intention (BDI) model of agency in mobile device agents. To demonstrate use of LDAF-M, an agent based auction application has been developed as a case study. On the other hand, LDAF-M can be used in any scenario where systems consisting of agents in mobile devices are to be developed. There is a close relationship between agents and linked data, since agents are considered as the autonomous computing entities that will process data in the linked data environment. However, not much work has been conducted on connecting these two related technologies. LDAF-M aims to contribute to the establishment of the connections between agents and the linked data environment by introducing a framework for developing linked data aware agents.

Effect of early and intensive nutrition care, delivered via telephone or mobile application, on quality of life in people with upper gastrointestinal cancer: study protocol of a randomised controlled trial

BackgroundA major challenge for those living with cancers of the upper gastrointestinal tract (oesophagus, stomach and pancreas), is the impact of the disease and treatment on nutritional status and quality of life. People with cancer and malnutrition have a greater risk of morbidity and mortality. Nutrition intervention is recommended to commence immediately in those who are malnourished or at risk of malnutrition. Novel cost-effective approaches that can deliver early, pre-hospital nutrition intervention before usual hospital dietetic service is commenced are needed. Linking clinicians and patients via mobile health (mHealth) and wireless technologies is a contemporary solution not yet tested for delivery of nutrition therapy to people with cancer. The aim of this study is to commence nutrition intervention earlier than usual care and evaluate the effects of using the telephone or mHealth for intervention delivery. It is hypothesised that participants allocated to receive the early and intensive pre-hospital dietetic service will have more quality-adjusted life years lived compared with control participants. This study will also demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of mHealth for the nutrition management of patients at home undergoing cancer treatment.MethodsThis study is a prospective three-group randomised controlled trial, with a concurrent economic evaluation. The 18 week intervention is provided in addition to usual care and is delivered by two different modes, via telephone (group 1) or via mHealth (group 2), The control group receives usual care alone (group 3). The intervention is an individually tailored, symptom-directed nutritional behavioural management program led by a dietitian. Participants will have at least fortnightly reviews. The primary outcome is quality adjusted life years lived and secondary outcomes include markers of nutritional status. Outcomes will be measured at three, six and 12 months follow up.DiscussionThe findings will provide evidence of a strategy to implement early and intensive nutrition intervention outside the hospital setting that can favourably impact on quality of life and nutritional status. This patient-centred approach is relevant to current health service provision and challenges the current reactive delivery model of care.Trial registration27th January 2017 Australian and New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry (ACTRN12617000152325).