A cross-layer mobility management framework for next-generation wireless roaming

Word processed copy.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 62-64).This thesis proposes a mobility management framework that aims to provide a framework for advanced mobility algorithms that allows the challenges of next-generation roaming to be met. The framework features tools that gather context and content information, guarantee low-level QoS, provide security, and offer link and handoff management. The framework aims to be scalable and reliable for all-IP heterogeneous wireless networks whilst conforming to 4G service requirements

Self organization in 3GPP long term evolution networks

Mobiele en breedbandige internettoegang is realiteit. De internetgeneratie vindt het immers normaal om overal breedbandige internettoegang te hebben. Vandaag zijn er al 5,9 miljard mobiele abonnees ( 87% van de wereldbevolking) en 20% daarvan hebben toegang tot een mobiele breedbandige internetverbinding. Dit wordt aangeboden door 3G (derde generatie) technologieën zoals HSPA (High Speed Packet Access) en 4G (vierde generatie) technologieën zoals LTE (Long Term Evolution). De vraag naar hoogkwalitatieve diensten stelt de mobiele netwerkoperatoren en de verkopers van telecommunicatieapparatuur voor nieuwe uitdagingen: zij moeten nieuwe oplossingen vinden om hun diensten steeds sneller en met een hogere kwaliteit aan te bieden. De nieuwe LTE-standaard brengt niet alleen hogere pieksnelheden en kleinere vertragingen. Het heeft daarnaast ook nieuwe functionaliteiten in petto die zeer aantrekkelijk zijn voor de mobiele netwerkoperator: de integratie van zelfregelende functies die kunnen ingezet worden bij de planning van het netwerk, het uitrollen van een netwerk en het controleren van allerhande netwerkmechanismen (o.a. handover, spreiding van de belasting over de cellen). Dit proefschrift optimaliseert enkele van deze zelfregelende functies waardoor de optimalisatie van een mobiel netwerk snel en automatisch kan gebeuren. Hierdoor verwacht men lagere kosten voor de mobiele operator en een hogere kwaliteit van de aangeboden diensten

A survey of self organisation in future cellular networks

This article surveys the literature over the period of the last decade on the emerging field of self organisation as applied to wireless cellular communication networks. Self organisation has been extensively studied and applied in adhoc networks, wireless sensor networks and autonomic computer networks; however in the context of wireless cellular networks, this is the first attempt to put in perspective the various efforts in form of a tutorial/survey. We provide a comprehensive survey of the existing literature, projects and standards in self organising cellular networks. Additionally, we also aim to present a clear understanding of this active research area, identifying a clear taxonomy and guidelines for design of self organising mechanisms. We compare strength and weakness of existing solutions and highlight the key research areas for further development. This paper serves as a guide and a starting point for anyone willing to delve into research on self organisation in wireless cellular communication networks

Cross-layer Peer-to-Peer Computing in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

The future information society is expected to rely heavily on wireless technology. Mobile access to the Internet is steadily gaining ground, and could easily end up exceeding the number of connections from the fixed infrastructure. Picking just one example, ad hoc networking is a new paradigm of wireless communication for mobile devices. Initially, ad hoc networking targeted at military applications as well as stretching the access to the Internet beyond one wireless hop. As a matter of fact, it is now expected to be employed in a variety of civilian applications. For this reason, the issue of how to make these systems working efficiently keeps the ad hoc research community active on topics ranging from wireless technologies to networking and application systems. In contrast to traditional wire-line and wireless networks, ad hoc networks are expected to operate in an environment in which some or all the nodes are mobile, and might suddenly disappear from, or show up in, the network. The lack of any centralized point, leads to the necessity of distributing application services and responsibilities to all available nodes in the network, making the task of developing and deploying application a hard task, and highlighting the necessity of suitable middleware platforms. This thesis studies the properties and performance of peer-to-peer overlay management algorithms, employing them as communication layers in data sharing oriented middleware platforms. The work primarily develops from the observation that efficient overlays have to be aware of the physical network topology, in order to reduce (or avoid) negative impacts of application layer traffic on the network functioning. We argue that cross-layer cooperation between overlay management algorithms and the underlying layer-3 status and protocols, represents a viable alternative to engineer effective decentralized communication layers, or eventually re-engineer existing ones to foster the interconnection of ad hoc networks with Internet infrastructures. The presented approach is twofold. Firstly, we present an innovative network stack component that supports, at an OS level, the realization of cross-layer protocol interactions. Secondly, we exploit cross-layering to optimize overlay management algorithms in unstructured, structured, and publish/subscribe platforms

Networking Media Abstraction, Device Discovery, and Routing for the Pervasive Middleware PalCom

PalCom is a pervasive middleware that can be used to assemble services provided by networked devices into configurations, called assemblies, for specific use cases by the user. In this dissertation, we present the development of a networking media abstraction framework for PalCom that abstracts different network interfaces in a PalCom device to upper layers of PalCom. The media abstraction framework is documented in paper I. Over the media abstraction layer, we define a device discovery mechanism that enables a PalCom device to discover other devices on its local networks, where it has network interfaces, as well as across interconnected networks. The device discovery mechanism is documented in paper II. On top of the device discovery layer, we implemented support for distance vector routing that enables routing data among discovered devices via the least cost routes. The routing layer is documented in paper III. In the last phase of our work, we refined our device discovery mechanism for PalCom to include a distributed synchronization algorithm that two PalCom nodes can utilize to re-sync their exchanged views of the network to overcome possible loss of device discovery and undiscovery notifications over unreliable channels. The synchronization algorithm is documented in paper IV

Optimization of LTE Network Coverage

The trend of mobile, broadband and IP is becoming more and more prominent. Mobile communication technology is now in acritical period in the evolution of network technology. As such, LTE (Long Term Evolution) comes to light. LTE serves as a unified standardfor the new generation of mobile communications, equipped with high spectral efficiency, high peak rate, high mobility, flat networkarchitecture and other advantages. Huawei has played a very important role in the commercialization of LTE. As a sponsor of NGMN,Huawei has been actively involved in the research of some key projects of NGMN, such as network self-optimization, system architectureand Network performance evaluation and so on. This paper mainly introduces the problems encountered in the optimization of LTEnetwork coverage, the practical problems encountered by the LTE project team in Qingdao and the analysis and solutions to the problems.At the same time, this paper discusses in detail on the LTE network optimization process

Trajectory Aware Macro-cell Planning for Mobile Users

We design and evaluate algorithms for efficient user-mobility driven macro-cell planning in cellular networks. As cellular networks embrace heterogeneous technologies (including long range 3G/4G and short range WiFi, Femto-cells, etc.), most traffic generated by static users gets absorbed by the short-range technologies, thereby increasingly leaving mobile user traffic to macro-cells. To this end, we consider a novel approach that factors in the trajectories of mobile users as well as the impact of city geographies and their associated road networks for macro-cell planning. Given a budget k of base-stations that can be upgraded, our approach selects a deployment that impacts the most number of user trajectories. The generic formulation incorporates the notion of quality of service of a user trajectory as a parameter to allow different application-specific requirements, and operator choices.We show that the proposed trajectory utility maximization problem is NP-hard, and design multiple heuristics. We evaluate our algorithms with real and synthetic data sets emulating different city geographies to demonstrate their efficacy. For instance, with an upgrade budget k of 20%, our algorithms perform 3-8 times better in improving the user quality of service on trajectories in different city geographies when compared to greedy location-based base-station upgrades.Comment: Published in INFOCOM 201