Deploying a middleware architecture for next generation mobile systems

Although 2G systems quite adequately cater for voice communications, today demand is for high-speed access to data centric applications and multimedia. Future networks have been designed to provide higher rates for data transmission, but this will be complemented by higher speed access to services via hotspots using secondary wireless interfaces such as Bluetooth or WLAN. With a wide range of applications that may be developed, a growing number of short range wireless interfaces that may be deployed, and with mobile terminals of different capabilities, a means to integrate all these variables in order to facilitate provision of services is desirable. This paper describes an architecture involving the use of middleware that makes software development independent of the specific wireless platfor

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

Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

In this chapter we describe the concept of MobiHealth and the approach developed during the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002). The concept was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable medical devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. These technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. Because the patient is free to move anywhere whilst wearing the MobiHealth BAN, patient mobility is maximised. The vision is that patients can enjoy enhanced freedom and quality of life through avoidance or reduction of hospital stays. For the health services it means that pressure on overstretched hospital services can be alleviated

Utilizing artificial neural networks for WLAN positioning

Short range wireless technologies such as WLAN, Bluetooth, RFID, ultrasound and IrDA can be used to supply location information in indoor areas in which their coverage is assured. With respect to outdoor techniques, these technologies are more accurate but with smaller covering areas. In this paper, we present the comparison of the existing location techniques in WLAN networks and a novel approach of utilizing artificial neural networks for positioning purposes. In addition to estimating WLAN client's position, neural networks have been employed to estimate the room and type of the room the client resides in. Extensive measurements were conducted to evaluate these approaches and the obtained results indicate performances sufficient for real case use

Transparent Location Fingerprinting for Wireless Services

Detecting the user location is crucial in a wireless environment, not only for the choice of first-hop communication partners, but also for many auxiliary purposes: Quality of Service (availability of information in the right place for reduced congestion/delay, establishment of the optimal path), energy consumption, automated insertion of location-dependent info into a web query issued by a user (for example a tourist asking informations about a monument or a restaurant, a fireman approaching a disaster area). The technique we propose in our investigation tries to meet two main goals: transparency to the network and independence from the environment. A user entering an environment (for instance a wireless-networked building) shall be able to use his own portable equipment to build a personal map of the environment without the system even noticing it. Preliminary tests allow us to detect position on a map with an average uncertainty of two meters when using information gathered from three IEEE802.11 access points in an indoor environment composed of many rooms on a 625sqm area. Performance is expected to improve when more access points will be exploited in the test area. Implementation of the same techniques on Bluetooth are also being studied