Improving Air Interface User Privacy in Mobile Telephony

Although the security properties of 3G and 4G mobile networks have significantly improved by comparison with 2G (GSM), significant shortcomings remain with respect to user privacy. A number of possible modifications to 2G, 3G and 4G protocols have been proposed designed to provide greater user privacy; however, they all require significant modifications to existing deployed infrastructures, which are almost certainly impractical to achieve in practice. In this article we propose an approach which does not require any changes to the existing deployed network infrastructures or mobile devices, but offers improved user identity protection over the air interface. The proposed scheme makes use of multiple IMSIs for an individual USIM to offer a degree of pseudonymity for a user. The only changes required are to the operation of the authentication centre in the home network and to the USIM, and the scheme could be deployed immediately since it is completely transparent to the existing mobile telephony infrastructure. We present two different approaches to the use and management of multiple IMSIs

Optimization and Performance Analysis of High Speed Mobile Access Networks

The end-to-end performance evaluation of high speed broadband mobile access networks is the main focus of this work. Novel transport network adaptive flow control and enhanced congestion control algorithms are proposed, implemented, tested and validated using a comprehensive High speed packet Access (HSPA) system simulator. The simulation analysis confirms that the aforementioned algorithms are able to provide reliable and guaranteed services for both network operators and end users cost-effectively. Further, two novel analytical models one for congestion control and the other for the combined flow control and congestion control which are based on Markov chains are designed and developed to perform the aforementioned analysis efficiently compared to time consuming detailed system simulations. In addition, the effects of the Long Term Evolution (LTE) transport network (S1and X2 interfaces) on the end user performance are investigated and analysed by introducing a novel comprehensive MAC scheduling scheme and a novel transport service differentiation model

Hop-Based dynamic fair scheduler for wireless Ad-Hoc networks

In a typical multihop Ad-Hoc network, interference and contention increase when flows transit each node towards destination, particularly in the presence of cross-traffic. This paper observes the relationship between throughput and path length, self-contention and interference and it investigates the effect of multiple data rates over multiple data flows in the network. Drawing from the limitations of the 802.11 specification, the paper proposes a scheduler named Hop Based Multi Queue (HBMQ), which is designed to prioritise traffic based on the hop count of packets in order to provide fairness across different data flows. The simulation results demonstrate that HBMQ performs better than a Single Drop Tail Queue (SDTQ) scheduler in terms of providing fairness. Finally, the paper concludes with a number of possible directions for further research, focusing on cross-layer implementation to ensure the fairness is also provided at the MAC layer. © 2013 IEEE

Resource allocation for multimedia messaging services over EGPRS

The General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) is a new bearer service for GSM that greatly simplifies wireless access to packet data networks, such as the Internet, corporate LANs or to mobile portals. It applies a packet radio standard to transfer user data packets in wellorganized way between Mobile Stations (MS) and external packet data networks. The Enhanced General Packet Radio Service (EGPRS) is an extension of GPRS, offering much greater capacity. These enhancements have allowed the introduction of new services like Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS). MMS enables messaging with full content versatility, including images, audio, video, data and text, from terminal to terminal or from terminal to e-mail. The Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is the WAP Forum standard for the presentation and delivery of wireless information and telephony services on mobile phones and other wireless terminals. In this thesis it is indicated that efficient radio resource allocation is necessary for managing different types of traffic in order to maintain the quality demands for different types of services. A theoretical model of MMS and WAP traffic is developed, and based on this model a simulator is implemented in Java programming language. This thesis proposes two techniques to improve the radio resource allocation algorithm performance called "radio link condition diversification" and "interactive traffic class prioritization". The radio link condition diversification technique defines minimum radio link quality that allows the user to receive their packets. The interactive traffic class prioritization technique defines different priorities for WAP packets and for MMS packets. Both techniques give good results in increasing user's perception of services and increasing network efficiency. This thesis indicates also that the prioritization mechanism successfully improves the response time of the interactive service by up to 80% with a setting of priority for interactive traffic class and decreasing the performance of the background traffic. This decrease is within a range acceptable by the end-user and that the link conditions limit mechanism has an advantage in terms of resource utilization

Novel Model of Adaptive Module for Security and QoS Provisioning in Wireless Heterogeneous Networks

Considering the fact that Security and Quality-Of-Service (QoS) provisioning for multimedia traffic in Wireless Heterogeneous Networks are becoming increasingly important objectives, in this paper we are introducing a novel adaptive Security and QoS framework. This framework is planned to be implemented in integrated network architecture (UMTS, WiMAX and WLAN). The aim of our novel framework is presenting a new module that shall provide the best QoS provisioning and secure communication for a given service using one or more wireless technologies in a given time

Reliable machine-to-machine multicast services with multi-radio cooperative retransmissions

The final publication is available at Springer via http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11036-015-0575-6The 3GPP is working towards the definition of service requirements and technical solutions to provide support for energy-efficient Machine Type Communications (MTC) in the forthcoming generations of cellular networks. One of the envisioned solutions consists in applying group management policies to clusters of devices in order to reduce control signaling and improve upon energy efficiency, e.g., multicast Over-The-Air (OTA) firmware updates. In this paper, a Multi-Radio Cooperative Retransmission Scheme is proposed to efficiently carry out multicast transmissions in MTC networks, reducing both control signaling and improving energy-efficiency. The proposal can be executed in networks composed by devices equipped with multiple radio interfaces which enable them to connect to both a cellular access network, e.g., LTE, and a short-range MTC area network, e.g., Low-Power Wi-Fi or ZigBee, as foreseen by the MTC architecture defined by ETSI. The main idea is to carry out retransmissions over the M2M area network upon error in the main cellular link. This yields a reduction in both the traffic load over the cellular link and the energy consumption of the devices. Computer-based simulations with ns-3 have been conducted to analyze the performance of the proposed scheme in terms of energy consumption and assess its superior performance compared to non-cooperative retransmission schemes, thus validating its suitability for energy-constrained MTC applications.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Testing cooperative communication schemes in a virtual distributed testbed of wireless networks

It is expected that Next Generation Networks (NGNs) will offer seamless interoperability among heterogeneous access technologies in order to provide ubiquitous access. In such settings, short range technologies may be used in order to extend the coverage area of cellular systems while cooperative diversity can improve the efficiency of the wireless systems. An advanced, backward compatible, with the 802.11 standard, MAC protocol for cooperative ARQ scenarios in NGNs sets the research framework for this work. The functionalities of the RCSMA protocol 1 will be enhanced and the derived analytical models will be validated at the UNITE Virtual Distributed Testbed (VDT) (2).Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version