Mobile Commerce: Assessing New Business Opportunities

Mobile commerce has become the latest topic for today. Business organizations have been restlessly evaluating the revenue potential of the m-commerce market and developing business models to exploit the huge profit potential of this new market. In this project we try to provide an overview of the fundamentals about m-commerce. This paper attempts to help business managers, particularly those without IT background, to understand the key elements and basic concepts of m-commerce and to assess the impact of m-commerce on current and future businesses as well as to identify new business opportunities

The Case for Liberal Spectrum Licenses: A Technical and Economic Perspective

The traditional system of radio spectrum allocation has inefficiently restricted wireless services. Alternatively, liberal licenses ceding de facto spectrum ownership rights yield incentives for operators to maximize airwave value. These authorizations have been widely used for mobile services in the U.S. and internationally, leading to the development of highly productive services and waves of innovation in technology, applications and business models. Serious challenges to the efficacy of such a spectrum regime have arisen, however. Seeing the widespread adoption of such devices as cordless phones and wi-fi radios using bands set aside for unlicensed use, some scholars and policy makers posit that spectrum sharing technologies have become cheap and easy to deploy, mitigating airwave scarcity and, therefore, the utility of exclusive rights. This paper evaluates such claims technically and economically. We demonstrate that spectrum scarcity is alive and well. Costly conflicts over airwave use not only continue, but have intensified with scientific advances that dramatically improve the functionality of wireless devices and so increase demand for spectrum access. Exclusive ownership rights help direct spectrum inputs to where they deliver the highest social gains, making exclusive property rules relatively more socially valuable. Liberal licenses efficiently accommodate rival business models (including those commonly associated with unlicensed spectrum allocations) while mitigating the constraints levied on spectrum use by regulators imposing restrictions in traditional licenses or via use rules and technology standards in unlicensed spectrum allocations.

The radio spectrum : opportunities and challenges for the developing world

The radio spectrum is a major component of the telecommunications infrastructure that underpins the information society. Spectrum management, however, has not kept up with major changes in technology, business practice, and economic policy during the past two decades. Traditional spectrum management practice is predicated on the spectrum being a limited resource that must be apportioned among uses and users by government administration. For many years this model worked well, but more recently the spectrum has come under pressure from rapid demand growth for wireless services and changing patterns of use. This has led to growing technical and economic inefficiencies, as well as obstacles to technological innovation. Two alternative approaches are being tried, one driven by the market (spectrum property rights) and another driven by technology innovation (commons). Practical solutions are evolving that combine some features of both. Wholesale replacement of current practice is unlikely, but the balance between administration, property rights, and commons is clearly shifting. Although the debate on spectrum management reform is mainly taking place in high-income countries, it is deeply relevant to developing countries as well.Broadcast and Media,Roads&Highways,Climate Change,Montreal Protocol,ICT Policy and Strategies

Auto ID Paradigm Shifts from Internet of Things to Unique Identification of Individual Decisions in System of Systems

Return on investment (ROI) from radio frequency (RF) based tools of identification may increase with the diffusion of frequency agnostic modes of radio frequency identification (RFID), such as, ultrawideband (UWB). Similarly, fixed frequency readers may be replaced with interrogators that can operate in any frequency, such as software defined radio (SDR). However, mere identification of objects provides data that may not be useful unless the process of data acquisition is further linked to systems where the data can be analysed and useful information extracted. This evolution remains incomplete because data about objects is only a small segment of necessary information. Global businesses and systems, such as healthcare, demand much more than object data. Often processes and plans as well as prior decisions are taken into account when deciding on a future course of action or may be the next step in a transaction. Current practice of auto id, although useful in some instances, remains only a small part of what is necessary for identification of information in complex system of systems. Identification, therefore, must encompass the ability both tangible and intangible elements that contribute to decisions. The unique “address” must be preserved during information exchange and decision support between system of systems

The Question of Spectrum: Technology, Management, and Regime Change

There is general agreement that the traditional command-and-control regulation of radio spectrum by the FCC (and NTIA) has failed. There is no general agreement on which regime should succeed it. Property rights advocates take Ronald Coase's advice that spectrum licenses should be sold off and traded in secondary markets, like any other assets. Commons advocates argue that new technologies cannot be accommodated by a licensing regime (either traditional or property rights) and that a commons regime leads to the most efficient means to deliver useful spectrum to the American public. This article reviews the scholarly history of this controversy, outlines the revolution of FCC thinking, and parses the question of property rights vs. commons into four distinct parts: new technology, spectrum uses, spectrum management, and the overarching legal regime. Advocates on both sides find much to agree about on the first three factors; the disagreement is focused on the choice of overarching regime to most efficiently and effectively make spectrum and its applications available to the American public. There are two feasible regime choices: a property rights regime and a mixed licensed/commons regime subject to regulation. The regime choice depends upon four factors: dispute resolution, transactions costs, tragedies of the commons and anticommons, and flexibility to changing technologies and demands. Each regime is described and analyzed against these four factors. With regard to pure transactions costs, commons may hold an advantage but it appears quite small. For all other factors, the property rights regime holds very substantial advantages relative to the mixed regime. I conclude that the choice comes down to markets vs. regulation as mechanism for allocating resources.

Footstep Power Generation using Piezo Ceramic

People move all the time. Wouldn’t it be great to harness that movement and help to power our cities with the movement of people living in them? Piezoelectric harvesting is one of the most reliable and energy efficient method. The crystalline structure of piezoelectric material provides the ability to transform mechanical strain energy into electrical energy. The power generated by piezo is D.C signal with A.C ripples, which is not used directly for battery charging so hence we use rectifier and filter to get pure D.C signal. Further boost converter circuit is used to step up the D.C signal and through battery charger circuit, battery is charged. This charge can be used to drive the a.c loads by converting D.C signal to A.C with help of inverter circuit

Design and Implement a Cost-Effective Wireless Communication Project on a PIC Training System

Wireless communication becomes popular and widely used in almost every electronic product in our daily life. The RF communication is one of the major wireless applications in consumer products. Usually, it is integrated with an embedded system (microcontroller) to control various applications such as temperature sensing, data logging, data exchange, actuator activation, and user interaction wirelessly. A project based model can be used as an effective instructional strategy to enhance learning about complex RF concepts and technologies. The project method can lead to improved understanding and create interest by actively engaging the student with hands-on and problem solving and critical thinking activities. This project is based on a previously developed low cost PIC microcontroller training system that is coupled with RF communication that can be used in a variety of hands-on applications in designing senior capstone projects. A 2.4 GHz RF transceiver package (RF24J40MA) that was developed by Microchip, Inc. provides the benefits of a compact, low-cost, and easy to use product with a few or small additional parts count that includes all components less the power supply. Integrating this RF module with the PIC trainer basically requires no extra hardware, the learning of the RF concept and software development becomes the focus of the design work. The IEEE 802.15.4TM-2003 rules, standards, and software protocols designs with SPI interfacing are the center of the project. The student assessment process includes a live demonstration of the student-designed functions using a pair of the RF modules with PIC trainers. Engineering technology focuses on both hands-on and mind-on design work and the practice is to integrate existing technology products into real world applications. Teaching the RF concepts can be complex, tedious, and sometimes confusing. However, if it is implemented in a real-world project approach to learning by using an existing RF modules that lead to developing clear understanding and meaningful experiences in successfully applying the concepts that makes these subjects interesting as well as challenging to learn. Using the existing RF transceiver module reduces many unmanageable interferences and integrating it with microcontroller via software controls make the designs flexible to fit various needs. By integrating the RF transceiver module with a pre-developed PIC training system eliminates many uncontrollable variables. This project provides useful tools that make teaching of complex RF subjects appealing and it can easily be adopted in many potential applications. Through the implementation of this project has provided the opportunities for students to learn about current technological concepts and to prepare and qualify for high-tech jobs for today and in the future

Analysis and characterization of wireless smart power meter

2014 Summer.No supplementary documents submitted.Includes bibliographical references.Recent increases in the demand for and price of electricity has stimulated interest in monitoring energy usage and improving efficiency. This research work supports development of a low-cost wireless smart power meter capable of measuring RMS Values of voltage and current, real power, and reactive power. The proposed smart power meter features include matching by-device rate of consumption and usage patterns to assist users in monitoring the connected devices. The meter also includes condition monitoring to detect harmonics of interest in the connected circuits which can give vital clues about the defects in machines connected to the circuits. This research work focuses on estimating communicational and computational requirements of the smart power meter and optimization of the system based on the estimated communication and computational requirements. The wireless communication capabilities investigated here are limited to existing wireless technologies in the environment where the power meters will be deployed. Field tests are performed to measure the performance of selected wireless standard in the deployment environment. The test results are used to understand the distance over which the smart power meters can communicate and where it is necessary to utilize repeaters or range extenders to reduce the data loss. Computational requirements included analysis of smart meter front-end sampling of analog data from both current and voltage sensors. Digitized samples stored in a buffer which is further processed by a microcontroller for all the desired results from the power meter. The various stages for processing the data require computational bandwidth and memory dependent on the size of the data stream and calculations involved in the particular stage. A Simulink-based system model of the power meter was developed to report a statistic of computational bandwidth demanded by each stage of data processing. The developed smart meter works in an environment with other wireless devices which include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The data loss caused when the smart power meter transmits the data depends on the architecture of the wireless network and also pre-existing wireless technology working in the same environment and while operating in the same frequency band. The best approach in developing a wireless network should reduce the hardware cost of the network and to reduce the data loss in the wireless network. A wireless sensor network is simulated in OMNET++ platform to measure the performance of wireless standard used in smart power meters. Scenarios involving the number of routers in the network and varying throughput between devices are considered to measure the performance of wireless power meters. Supplementary documents provided with the electronic version of this thesis contain program codes which were developed in Simulink and OMNET++

Application priority framework for fixed mobile converged communication networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.The current prospects in wired and wireless access networks, it is becoming increasingly important to address potential convergence in order to offer integrated broadband services. These systems will need to offer higher data transmission capacities and long battery life, which is the catalyst for an everincreasing variety of air interface technologies targeting local area to wide area connectivity. Current integrated industrial networks do not offer application aware context delivery and enhanced services for optimised networks. Application aware services provide value-added functionality to business applications by capturing, integrating, and consolidating intelligence about users and their endpoint devices from various points in the network. This thesis mainly intends to resolve the issues related to ubiquitous application aware service, fair allocation of radio access, reduced energy consumption and improved capacity. A technique that measures and evaluates the data rate demand to reduce application response time and queuing delay for multi radio interfaces is proposed. The technique overcomes the challenges of network integration, requiring no user intervention, saving battery life and selecting the radio access connection for the application requested by the end user. This study is split in two parts. The first contribution identifies some constraints of the services towards the application layer in terms of e.g. data rate and signal strength. The objectives are achieved by application controlled handover (ACH) mechanism in order to maintain acceptable data rate for real-time application services. It also looks into the impact of the radio link on the application and identifies elements and parameters like wireless link quality and handover that will influence the application type. It also identifies some enhanced traditional mechanisms such as distance controlled multihop and mesh topology required in order to support energy efficient multimedia applications. The second contribution unfolds an intelligent application priority assignment mechanism (IAPAM) for medical applications using wireless sensor networks. IAPAM proposes and evaluates a technique based on prioritising multiple virtual queues for the critical nature of medical data to improve instant transmission. Various mobility patterns (directed, controlled and random waypoint) has been investigated and compared by simulating IAPAM enabled mobile BWSN. The following topics have been studied, modelled, simulated and discussed in this thesis: 1. Application Controlled Handover (ACH) for multi radios over fibre 2. Power Controlled Scheme for mesh multi radios over fibre using ACH 3. IAPAM for Biomedical Wireless Sensor Networks (BWSN) and impact of mobility over IAPAM enabled BWSN. Extensive simulation studies are performed to analyze and to evaluate the proposed techniques. Simulation results demonstrate significant improvements in multi radios over fibre performance in terms of application response delay and power consumption by upto 75% and 15 % respectively, reduction in traffic loss by upto 53% and reduction in delay for real time application by more than 25% in some cases

A socio-technical investigation into the electrical end use patterns of information, communication and entertainment technologies in UK homes.

Information, communication and entertainment (ICE) appliances are consumer electronics and information and communication technologies (ICT). Forecasts suggest that ICE appliance use will soon become the most significant domestic electricity end-use in the UK. Knowledge concerning “real world” ICE electricity consumption is currently limited and it has been suggested that this deficiency could lead to ineffective policy programmes. This socio-technical study measured ICE appliance electricity consumption in fourteen UK households’ and undertook household interviews to explore the behavioural factors that influenced the measurements recorded. The interviews were informed by two social psychology theories: (i) Triandis’ (1977) Theory of Interpersonal Behaviour (TIB); (ii) Rogers’ (2003) Diffusion of Innovations Theory (DIT). The study supports the position that ICE appliance use and standby power consumption are significant electricity end-uses in UK homes. Key appliances that contributed to the sample’s average electricity consumption are identified. Inconspicuous electricity consumption from network appliances is an issue of particular concern due to policy gaps. The interviews found that a range of internal and external factors influenced ICE appliance use. Behavioural intentions and habits were found to be facilitated or impeded by personal ability, knowledge and physical constraints. Social structures and expectations also supported the more expansive ownership and use of ICE appliances and energy consumption was an issue largely excluded from adoption decisions. The findings imply that a multifaceted approach is required to reduce household ICE appliance electricity consumption. This study supports the recent implementation of minimum energy performance standards and provides further recommendations that include: (i) improved product design; (ii) the expansion of mandatory energy labelling; (iii) improved electricity consumption feedback in UK homes; (iv) the use of behaviour change campaigns; (v) the integration of ICE appliance energy saving objectives into UK policies