Wireless internet architecture and testbed for wineglass

One of the most challenging issues in the area of mobile communication is the deployment of IPbased wireless multimedia networks in public and business environments. The public branch may involve public mobile networks, like UMTS as 3G system, while the business branch introduces local radio access networks by means of W-LANs. Conventional mobile networks realise mobile specific functionality, e.g. mobility management or authentication and accounting, by implementing appropriate mechanisms in specific switching nodes (e.g. SGSN in GPRS). In order to exploit the full potential of IP networking solutions a replacement of these mechanisms by IP-based solutions might be appropriate. In addition current and innovative future services in mobile environments require at least soft-guaranteed, differentiated QoS. Therefore the WINE GLASS project investigates and implements enhanced IP-based techniques supporting mobility and QoS in a wireless Internet architecture. As a means to verify the applicability of the implemented solutions, location-aware services deploying both IP-mobility and QoS mechanisms will be implemented and demonstratedPeer ReviewedPostprint (published version

A Survey on Handover Management in Mobility Architectures

This work presents a comprehensive and structured taxonomy of available techniques for managing the handover process in mobility architectures. Representative works from the existing literature have been divided into appropriate categories, based on their ability to support horizontal handovers, vertical handovers and multihoming. We describe approaches designed to work on the current Internet (i.e. IPv4-based networks), as well as those that have been devised for the "future" Internet (e.g. IPv6-based networks and extensions). Quantitative measures and qualitative indicators are also presented and used to evaluate and compare the examined approaches. This critical review provides some valuable guidelines and suggestions for designing and developing mobility architectures, including some practical expedients (e.g. those required in the current Internet environment), aimed to cope with the presence of NAT/firewalls and to provide support to legacy systems and several communication protocols working at the application layer

Internationalisation of Innovation: Why Chip Design Moving to Asia

This paper will appear in International Journal of Innovation Management, special issue in honor of Keith Pavitt, (Peter Augsdoerfer, Jonathan Sapsed, and James Utterback, guest editors), forthcoming. Among Keith Pavitt's many contributions to the study of innovation is the proposition that physical proximity is advantageous for innovative activities that involve highly complex technological knowledge But chip design, a process that creates the greatest value in the electronics industry and that requires highly complex knowledge, is experiencing a massive dispersion to leading Asian electronics exporting countries. To explain why chip design is moving to Asia, the paper draws on interviews with 60 companies and 15 research institutions that are doing leading-edge chip design in Asia. I demonstrate that "pull" and "policy" factors explain what attracts design to particular locations. But to get to the root causes that shift the balance in favor of geographical decentralization, I examine "push" factors, i.e. changes in design methodology ("system-on-chip design") and organization ("vertical specialization" within global design networks). The resultant increase in knowledge mobility explains why chip design - that, in Pavitt's framework is not supposed to move - is moving from the traditional centers to a few new specialized design clusters in Asia. A completely revised and updated version has been published as: " Complexity and Internationalisation of Innovation: Why is Chip Design Moving to Asia?," in International Journal of Innovation Management, special issue in honour of Keith Pavitt, Vol. 9,1: 47-73.

TINA as a virtual market place for telecommunication and information services: the VITAL experiment

The VITAL (Validation of Integrated Telecommunication Architectures for the Long-Term) project has defined, implemented and demonstrated an open distributed telecommunication architecture (ODTA) for deploying, managing and using a set of heterogeneous multimedia, multi-party, and mobility services. The architecture was based on the latest specifications released by TINA-C. The architecture was challenged in a set of trials by means of a heterogeneous set of applications. Some of the applications were developed within the project from scratch, while some others focused on integrating commercially available applications. The applications were selected in such a way as to assure full coverage of the architecture implementation and reflect a realistic use of it. The VITAL experience of refining and implementing TINA specifications and challenging the resulting platform by a heterogeneous set of services has proven the openness, flexibility and reusability of TINA. This paper describes the VITAL approach when choosing the different services and how they challenge and interact with the architecture, focusing especially on the service architecture and the Ret reference point definitions. The VITAL adjustments and enhancements to the TINA architecture are described. This paper contributes to proving that the TINA-based VITAL ODTA allows for easy and cost-effective development and deployment of advanced end-user and operator services, and can indeed act as the basis for a virtual market place for telecommunications service

Multimedia session continuity in the IP multimedia subsystem : investigation and testbed implementation

Includes bibliographical references (leaves 91-94).The advent of Internet Protocol (IP) based rich multimedia services and applications has seen rapid growth and adoption in recent years, with an equally increasing user base. Voice over IP (VoIP) and IP Television (IPTV) are key examples of services that are blurring the lines between traditional stove-pipe approach network infrastructures. In these, each service required a different network technology to be provisioned, and could only be accessed through a specific end user equipment (UE) technology. The move towards an all-IP core network infrastructure and the proliferation of multi-capability multi-interface user devices has spurred a convergence trend characterized by access to services and applications through any network, any device and anywhere

A personal distributed environment for future mobile systems

A Personal Distributed Environment (PDE) embraces a user-centric view of communications that take place against a backdrop of multiple user devices, each with its distinct capabilities, in physically separate locations. This paper provides an overview of a Personal Distributed Environment and some of the research issues related to the implementation of the PDE concept that are being considered in the current Mobile VCE work programme