On Content-centric Wireless Delivery Networks

The flux of social media and the convenience of mobile connectivity has created a mobile data phenomenon that is expected to overwhelm the mobile cellular networks in the foreseeable future. Despite the advent of 4G/LTE, the growth rate of wireless data has far exceeded the capacity increase of the mobile networks. A fundamentally new design paradigm is required to tackle the ever-growing wireless data challenge. In this article, we investigate the problem of massive content delivery over wireless networks and present a systematic view on content-centric network design and its underlying challenges. Towards this end, we first review some of the recent advancements in Information Centric Networking (ICN) which provides the basis on how media contents can be labeled, distributed, and placed across the networks. We then formulate the content delivery task into a content rate maximization problem over a share wireless channel, which, contrasting the conventional wisdom that attempts to increase the bit-rate of a unicast system, maximizes the content delivery capability with a fixed amount of wireless resources. This conceptually simple change enables us to exploit the "content diversity" and the "network diversity" by leveraging the abundant computation sources (through application-layer encoding, pushing and caching, etc.) within the existing wireless networks. A network architecture that enables wireless network crowdsourcing for content delivery is then described, followed by an exemplary campus wireless network that encompasses the above concepts.Comment: 20 pages, 7 figures,accepted by IEEE Wireless Communications,Sept.201

Context-Aware Hierarchical Online Learning for Performance Maximization in Mobile Crowdsourcing

In mobile crowdsourcing (MCS), mobile users accomplish outsourced human intelligence tasks. MCS requires an appropriate task assignment strategy, since different workers may have different performance in terms of acceptance rate and quality. Task assignment is challenging, since a worker's performance (i) may fluctuate, depending on both the worker's current personal context and the task context, (ii) is not known a priori, but has to be learned over time. Moreover, learning context-specific worker performance requires access to context information, which may not be available at a central entity due to communication overhead or privacy concerns. Additionally, evaluating worker performance might require costly quality assessments. In this paper, we propose a context-aware hierarchical online learning algorithm addressing the problem of performance maximization in MCS. In our algorithm, a local controller (LC) in the mobile device of a worker regularly observes the worker's context, her/his decisions to accept or decline tasks and the quality in completing tasks. Based on these observations, the LC regularly estimates the worker's context-specific performance. The mobile crowdsourcing platform (MCSP) then selects workers based on performance estimates received from the LCs. This hierarchical approach enables the LCs to learn context-specific worker performance and it enables the MCSP to select suitable workers. In addition, our algorithm preserves worker context locally, and it keeps the number of required quality assessments low. We prove that our algorithm converges to the optimal task assignment strategy. Moreover, the algorithm outperforms simpler task assignment strategies in experiments based on synthetic and real data.Comment: 18 pages, 10 figure

Proximity as a Service via Cellular Network-Assisted Mobile Device-to-Device

PhD ThesisThe research progress of communication has brought a lot of novel technologies to meet the multi-dimensional demands such as pervasive connection, low delay and high bandwidth. Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is a way to no longer treat the User Equipment (UEs) as a terminal, but rather as a part of the network for service provisioning. This thesis decouples UEs into service providers (helpers) and service requesters. By collaboration among proximal devices, with the coordination of cellular networks, some local tasks can be achieved, such as coverage extension, computation o oading, mobile crowdsourcing and mobile crowdsensing. This thesis proposes a generic framework Proximity as a Service (PaaS) for increasing the coverage with demands of service continuity. As one of the use cases, the optimal helper selection algorithm of PaaS for increasing the service coverage with demands of service continuity is called ContAct based Proximity (CAP). Mainly, fruitful contact information (e.g., contact duration, frequency, and interval) is captured, and is used to handle ubiquitous proximal services through the optimal selection of helpers. The nature of PaaS is evaluated under the Helsinki city scenario, with movement model of Points Of Interest (POI) and with critical factors in uencing the service demands (e.g., success ratio, disruption duration and frequency). Simulation results show the advantage of CAP, in both success ratio and continuity of the service (outputs). Based on this perspective, metrics such as service success ratio and continuity as a service evaluation of the PaaS are evaluated using the statistical theory of the Design Of Experiments (DOE). DOE is used as there are many dimensions to the state space (access tolerance, selected helper number, helper access limit, and transmit range) that can in uence the results. A key contribution of this work is that it brings rigorous statistical experiment design methods into the research into mobile computing. Results further reveal the influence of four factors (inputs), e.g., service tolerance, number of helpers allocated, the number of concurrent devices supported by each helper and transmit range. Based on this perspective, metrics such as service success ratio and continuity are evaluated using DOE. The results show that transmit range is the most dominant factor. The number of selected helpers is the second most dominant factor. Since di erent factors have di erent regression levels, a uni ed 4 level full factorial experiment and a cubic multiple regression analysis have been carried out. All the interactions and the corresponding coe cients have been found. This work is the rst one to evaluate LTE-Direct and WiFi-Direct in an opportunistic proximity service. The contribution of the results for industry is to guide how many users need to cooperate to enable mobile computing and for academia. This reveals the facts that: 1, in some cases, the improvement of spectrum e ciency brought by D2D is not important; 2, nodal density and the resources used in D2D air-interfaces are important in the eld of mobile computing. This work built a methodology to study the D2D networks with a di erent perspective (PaaS)

Vehicle as a Service (VaaS): Leverage Vehicles to Build Service Networks and Capabilities for Smart Cities

Smart cities demand resources for rich immersive sensing, ubiquitous communications, powerful computing, large storage, and high intelligence (SCCSI) to support various kinds of applications, such as public safety, connected and autonomous driving, smart and connected health, and smart living. At the same time, it is widely recognized that vehicles such as autonomous cars, equipped with significantly powerful SCCSI capabilities, will become ubiquitous in future smart cities. By observing the convergence of these two trends, this article advocates the use of vehicles to build a cost-effective service network, called the Vehicle as a Service (VaaS) paradigm, where vehicles empowered with SCCSI capability form a web of mobile servers and communicators to provide SCCSI services in smart cities. Towards this direction, we first examine the potential use cases in smart cities and possible upgrades required for the transition from traditional vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) to VaaS. Then, we will introduce the system architecture of the VaaS paradigm and discuss how it can provide SCCSI services in future smart cities, respectively. At last, we identify the open problems of this paradigm and future research directions, including architectural design, service provisioning, incentive design, and security & privacy. We expect that this paper paves the way towards developing a cost-effective and sustainable approach for building smart cities.Comment: 32 pages, 11 figure

Unleashing the Power of Edge-Cloud Generative AI in Mobile Networks: A Survey of AIGC Services

Artificial Intelligence-Generated Content (AIGC) is an automated method for generating, manipulating, and modifying valuable and diverse data using AI algorithms creatively. This survey paper focuses on the deployment of AIGC applications, e.g., ChatGPT and Dall-E, at mobile edge networks, namely mobile AIGC networks, that provide personalized and customized AIGC services in real time while maintaining user privacy. We begin by introducing the background and fundamentals of generative models and the lifecycle of AIGC services at mobile AIGC networks, which includes data collection, training, finetuning, inference, and product management. We then discuss the collaborative cloud-edge-mobile infrastructure and technologies required to support AIGC services and enable users to access AIGC at mobile edge networks. Furthermore, we explore AIGCdriven creative applications and use cases for mobile AIGC networks. Additionally, we discuss the implementation, security, and privacy challenges of deploying mobile AIGC networks. Finally, we highlight some future research directions and open issues for the full realization of mobile AIGC networks