Mass Customization in Wireless Communication Services: Individual Service Bundles and Tariffs

This paper presents results on mass customization of wireless communications services and tariffs. It advocates for a user-centric view of wireless service configuration and pricing as opposed to present-day service catalog options. The focus is on design methodology and tools for such individual services and tariffs, using altogether information compression, negotiation algorithms, and risk portfolio analysis. We first analyze the user and supplier needs and aspirations. We then introduce the systematic design-oriented approach which can be applied. The implications of this approach for users and suppliers are discussed based on an end-user survey and on model-based calculations. It is shown that users can achieve desired service bundle cost reduction, while suppliers can improve significantly their risk-profit equilibrium points, reduce churn and simplify provisioning.negotiation;mass customization;service configuration;mobile communication services;individual tariffs

Mass Customization in Wireless Communication Services: Individual Service Bundles and Tariffs

This paper presents results on mass customization of wireless communications services and tariffs. It advocates for a user-centric view of wireless service configuration and pricing as opposed to present-day service catalog options. The focus is on design methodology and tools for such individual services and tariffs, using altogether information compression, negotiation algorithms, and risk portfolio analysis. We first analyze the user and supplier needs and aspirations. We then introduce the systematic design-oriented approach which can be applied. The implications of this approach for users and suppliers are discussed based on an end-user survey and on model-based calculations. It is shown that users can achieve desired service bundle cost reduction, while suppliers can improve significantly their risk-profit equilibrium points, reduce churn and simplify provisioning

A user centric approach to the development and testing of a home energy management system

The development and small scale field trial in Flanders of a home energy management system is presented. During the development, a user-centric approach was used to create interaction between developers and possible end-users in a living lab setting. This allowed actively addressing people’s needs and wants in the development process and testing the system in their homes. The preliminary results of the field trial indicate a high usage during the starting week, which gradually slows down over the weeks that follow. Usage of the different elements in the system varies over the weeks but a consistent “top 3” of elements remains. Dynamic pricing is used by a small but consistent part of the participants. They actively adapt their appliance usage to these prices

Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks: An Overview of Game-Theoretic Approaches

An overview of game-theoretic approaches to energy-efficient resource allocation in wireless networks is presented. Focusing on multiple-access networks, it is demonstrated that game theory can be used as an effective tool to study resource allocation in wireless networks with quality-of-service (QoS) constraints. A family of non-cooperative (distributed) games is presented in which each user seeks to choose a strategy that maximizes its own utility while satisfying its QoS requirements. The utility function considered here measures the number of reliable bits that are transmitted per joule of energy consumed and, hence, is particulary suitable for energy-constrained networks. The actions available to each user in trying to maximize its own utility are at least the choice of the transmit power and, depending on the situation, the user may also be able to choose its transmission rate, modulation, packet size, multiuser receiver, multi-antenna processing algorithm, or carrier allocation strategy. The best-response strategy and Nash equilibrium for each game is presented. Using this game-theoretic framework, the effects of power control, rate control, modulation, temporal and spatial signal processing, carrier allocation strategy and delay QoS constraints on energy efficiency and network capacity are quantified.Comment: To appear in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine: Special Issue on Resource-Constrained Signal Processing, Communications and Networking, May 200

Cloud Index Tracking: Enabling Predictable Costs in Cloud Spot Markets

Cloud spot markets rent VMs for a variable price that is typically much lower than the price of on-demand VMs, which makes them attractive for a wide range of large-scale applications. However, applications that run on spot VMs suffer from cost uncertainty, since spot prices fluctuate, in part, based on supply, demand, or both. The difficulty in predicting spot prices affects users and applications: the former cannot effectively plan their IT expenditures, while the latter cannot infer the availability and performance of spot VMs, which are a function of their variable price. To address the problem, we use properties of cloud infrastructure and workloads to show that prices become more stable and predictable as they are aggregated together. We leverage this observation to define an aggregate index price for spot VMs that serves as a reference for what users should expect to pay. We show that, even when the spot prices for individual VMs are volatile, the index price remains stable and predictable. We then introduce cloud index tracking: a migration policy that tracks the index price to ensure applications running on spot VMs incur a predictable cost by migrating to a new spot VM if the current VM's price significantly deviates from the index price.Comment: ACM Symposium on Cloud Computing 201

Improving perceptual multimedia quality with an adaptable communication protocol

Copyrights @ 2005 University Computing Centre ZagrebInnovations and developments in networking technology have been driven by technical considerations with little analysis of the benefit to the user. In this paper we argue that network parameters that define the network Quality of Service (QoS) must be driven by user-centric parameters such as user expectations and requirements for multimedia transmitted over a network. To this end a mechanism for mapping user-oriented parameters to network QoS parameters is outlined. The paper surveys existing methods for mapping user requirements to the network. An adaptable communication system is implemented to validate the mapping. The architecture adapts to varying network conditions caused by congestion so as to maintain user expectations and requirements. The paper also surveys research in the area of adaptable communications architectures and protocols. Our results show that such a user-biased approach to networking does bring tangible benefits to the user

A Case for Cooperative and Incentive-Based Coupling of Distributed Clusters

Research interest in Grid computing has grown significantly over the past five years. Management of distributed resources is one of the key issues in Grid computing. Central to management of resources is the effectiveness of resource allocation as it determines the overall utility of the system. The current approaches to superscheduling in a grid environment are non-coordinated since application level schedulers or brokers make scheduling decisions independently of the others in the system. Clearly, this can exacerbate the load sharing and utilization problems of distributed resources due to suboptimal schedules that are likely to occur. To overcome these limitations, we propose a mechanism for coordinated sharing of distributed clusters based on computational economy. The resulting environment, called \emph{Grid-Federation}, allows the transparent use of resources from the federation when local resources are insufficient to meet its users' requirements. The use of computational economy methodology in coordinating resource allocation not only facilitates the QoS based scheduling, but also enhances utility delivered by resources.Comment: 22 pages, extended version of the conference paper published at IEEE Cluster'05, Boston, M