3G migration in Pakistan

The telecommunication industry in Pakistan has come a long way since the country\u27s independence in 1947. The initial era could be fairly termed as the PTCL (Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited) monopoly, for it was the sole provider of all telecommunication services across the country. It was not until four decades later that the region embarked into the new world of wireless communication, hence ending the decades old PTCL monopoly. By the end of the late 1990\u27s, government support and international investment in the region opened new doors to innovation and better quality, low cost, healthy competition. Wireless licenses for the private sector in the telecommunication industry triggered a promising chain of events that resulted in a drastic change in the telecommunication infrastructure and service profile. The newly introduced wireless (GSM) technology received enormous support from all stakeholders (consumers, regulatory body, and market) and caused a vital boost in Pakistan\u27s economy. Numerous tangential elements had triggered this vital move in the history of telecommunications in Pakistan. Entrepreneurs intended to test the idea of global joint ventures in the East and hence the idea of international business became a reality. The technology had proven to be a great success in the West, while Pakistan\u27s telecom consumer had lived under the shadow of PTCL dominance for decades and needed more flexibility. At last the world was moving from wired to wireless! Analysts termed this move as the beginning of a new era. The investors, telecommunication businesses, and Pakistani treasury prospered. It was a win-win situation for all involved. The learning curve was steep for both operators and consumers but certainly improved over time. In essence, the principle of deploying the right technology in the right market at the right time led to this remarkable success. The industry today stands on the brink of a similar crossroads via transition from second generation to something beyond. With the partial success of 3G in Europe and the USA, the government has announced the release of three 3G licenses by mid 2009. This decision is not yet fully supported by all but still initiated parallel efforts by the operators and the vendors to integrate this next move into their existing infrastructure

A novel approach to emergency management of wireless telecommunication system

The survivability concerns the service continuity when the components of a system are damaged. This concept is especially useful in the emergency management of the system, as often emergencies involve accidents or incident disasters which more or less damage the system. The overall objective of this thesis study is to develop a quantitative management approach to the emergency management of a wireless cellular telecommunication system in light of its service continuity in emergency situations – namely the survivability of the system. A particular wireless cellular telecommunication system, WCDMA, is taken as an example to ground this research.The thesis proposes an ontology-based paradigm for service management such that the management system contains three models: (1) the work domain model, (2) the dynamic model, and (3) the reconfiguration model. A powerful work domain modeling tool called Function-Behavior-Structure (FBS) is employed for developing the work domain model of the WCDMA system. Petri-Net theory, as well as its formalization, is applied to develop the dynamic model of the WCDMA system. A concept in engineering design called the general and specific function concept is applied to develop a new approach to system reconfiguration for the high survivability of the system. These models are implemented along with a user-interface which can be used by emergency management personnel. A demonstration of the effectiveness of this study approach is included.There are a couple of contributions with this thesis study. First, the proposed approach can be added to contemporary telecommunication management systems. Second, the Petri Net model of the WCDMA system is more comprehensive than any dynamic model of the telecommunication systems in literature. Furthermore, this model can be extended to any other telecommunication system. Third, the proposed system reconfiguration approach, based on the general and specific function concept, offers a unique way for the survivability of any service provider system.In conclusion, the ontology-based paradigm for a service system management provides a total solution to service continuity as well as its emergency management. This paradigm makes the complex mathematical modeling of the system transparent to the manager or managerial personnel and provides a feasible scenario of the human-in-the-loop management

IMPROVING QoS OF VoWLAN VIA CROSS-LAYER BASED ADAPTIVE APPROACH

Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) is a technology that allows the transmission of voice packets over Internet Protocol (IP). Recently, the integration of VoIP and Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), and known as Voice over WLAN (VoWLAN), has become popular driven by the mobility requirements ofusers, as well as by factor of its tangible cost effectiveness. However, WLAN network architecture was primarily designed to support the transmission of data, and not for voice traffic, which makes it lack ofproviding the stringent Quality ofService (QoS) for VoIP applications. On the other hand, WLAN operates based on IEEE 802.11 standards that support Link Adaptive (LA) technique. However, LA leads to having a network with multi-rate transmissions that causes network bandwidth variation, which hence degrades the voice quality. Therefore, it is important to develop an algorithm that would be able to overcome the negative effect of the multi-rate issue on VoIP quality. Hence, the main goal ofthis research work is to develop an agent that utilizes IP protocols by applying a Cross-Layering approach to eliminate the above-mentioned negative effect. This could be expected from the interaction between Medium Access Control (MAC) layer and Application layer, where the proposed agent adapts the voice packet size at the Application layer according to the change of MAC transmission data rate to avoid network congestion from happening. The agent also monitors the quality of conversations from the periodically generated Real Time Control Protocol (RTCP) reports. If voice quality degradation is detected, then the agent performs further rate adaptation to improve the quality. The agent performance has been evaluated by carrying out an extensive series ofsimulation using OPNET Modeler. The obtained results of different performance parameters are presented, comparing the performance ofVoWLAN that used the proposed agent to that ofthe standard network without agent. The results ofall measured quality parameters hav

Comparison of vertical handover decision-based techniques in heterogeneous networks

Industry leaders are currently setting out standards for 5G Networks projected for 2020 or even sooner. Future generation networks will be heterogeneous in nature because no single network type is capable of optimally meeting all the rapid changes in customer demands. Heterogeneous networks are typically characterized by some network architecture, base stations of varying transmission power, transmission solutions and the deployment of a mix of technologies (multiple radio access technologies). In heterogeneous networks, the processes involved when a mobile node successfully switches from one radio access technology to the other for the purpose of quality of service continuity is termed vertical handover or vertical handoff. Active calls that get dropped, or cases where there is discontinuity of service experienced by mobile users can be attributed to the phenomenon of delayed handover or an outright case of an unsuccessful handover procedure. This dissertation analyses the performance of a fuzzy-based VHO algorithm scheme in a Wi-Fi, WiMAX, UMTS and LTE integrated network using the OMNeT++ discrete event simulator. The loose coupling type network architecture is adopted and results of the simulation are analysed and compared for the two major categories of handover basis; multiple and single criteria based handover methods. The key performance indices from the simulations showed better overall throughput, better call dropped rate and shorter handover time duration for the multiple criteria based decision method compared to the single criteria based technique. This work also touches on current trends, challenges in area of seamless handover and initiatives for future Networks (Next Generation Heterogeneous Networks)