An evaluation of location management procedures

This paper gives a comparative description of two scenarios for location management in a mobile telecommunications system. The first scenario uses fixed location and paging areas. Mobiles perform a location update as they enter a new location area. The second scenario uses a time-out based location updating scheme. Mobiles start their timer as they leave the paging area they are currently registered in. As the timer elapses, the mobile performs a location update. Both scenarios also differ in the way paging is performed. In the first scenario it is only necessary to page in the location area the mobile is currently registered in. In order to do this efficiently, the paging is done in a 2-step fashion: mobiles are paged first in the paging area in which they were registered in, and next in the entire location area they are registered in. In the second scenario the mobile is paged in multiple steps: first in the paging area it is registered in, next in a circle of paging areas surrounding that area, and so on, until the mobile is found, or the number of steps has reached a certain upper limit. Results comprise a quantitative and qualitative comparison of these scenarios, and guidelines for optimal applicatio

A business planning framework for WiMAX applications

Mobile networking refers to wireless technologies which provide communications between devices. Applications for mobile networking have a broad scope as they can be applied to many situations in either industrial or commercial sectors. The challenge for firms is to better match market-induced variability to the organizational issues and systems necessary for technological innovation. This chapter develops a business planning framework for mobile networking applications. This framework recognises the fluidity of the situation when trying to anticipate and model emerging wireless applications. The business planning framework outlined in this chapter is a generic model which can be used by companies to assess the business case for applications utilizing mobile networking technologies

Knowing Your Population: Privacy-Sensitive Mining of Massive Data

Location and mobility patterns of individuals are important to environmental planning, societal resilience, public health, and a host of commercial applications. Mining telecommunication traffic and transactions data for such purposes is controversial, in particular raising issues of privacy. However, our hypothesis is that privacy-sensitive uses are possible and often beneficial enough to warrant considerable research and development efforts. Our work contends that peoples behavior can yield patterns of both significant commercial, and research, value. For such purposes, methods and algorithms for mining telecommunication data to extract commonly used routes and locations, articulated through time-geographical constructs, are described in a case study within the area of transportation planning and analysis. From the outset, these were designed to balance the privacy of subscribers and the added value of mobility patterns derived from their mobile communication traffic and transactions data. Our work directly contrasts the current, commonly held notion that value can only be added to services by directly monitoring the behavior of individuals, such as in current attempts at location-based services. We position our work within relevant legal frameworks for privacy and data protection, and show that our methods comply with such requirements and also follow best-practice

Wireless communication, identification and sensing technologies enabling integrated logistics: a study in the harbor environment

In the last decade, integrated logistics has become an important challenge in the development of wireless communication, identification and sensing technology, due to the growing complexity of logistics processes and the increasing demand for adapting systems to new requirements. The advancement of wireless technology provides a wide range of options for the maritime container terminals. Electronic devices employed in container terminals reduce the manual effort, facilitating timely information flow and enhancing control and quality of service and decision made. In this paper, we examine the technology that can be used to support integration in harbor's logistics. In the literature, most systems have been developed to address specific needs of particular harbors, but a systematic study is missing. The purpose is to provide an overview to the reader about which technology of integrated logistics can be implemented and what remains to be addressed in the future

Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogeneous network deployment based on micro, pico and femto-cells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technologyComment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 2 table