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

3G - chance for take-off in mobile

It became clear early on that UMTS, also known as 3G (third-generation mobile phone systems), would be a key technology for profitable markets of the future. However UMTS technology offers some major advantages that can be demonstrated under laboratory conditions but which it will not be possible to use fully in the mass market in the medium term. There is a need for services that emphasise the specific advantages of mobile phones and complement conventional wired services. Business models stand a particular chance of success if network operator, content providers and manufacturers of terminals coordinate the steps they take. In summary it may be said, that it is not certain that UMTS will be a success in m-business, but there is a strong chance.ICT, mobile telephony, UMTS

WiMax - a critical view of the technology and its economics

University of the Witwatersrand Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment School of Information and Electrical EngineeringMobile Broadband is now more of a necessity than a luxury, especially amongst the younger generation, irrespective of where they live. Mobile WiMax and LTE, the latest and fastest Mobile Broadband technologies, mark significant improvements over 3G networks because they use IP (Internet Protocol) end-to-end. To end-users, this means faster network speeds, better quality services, and increased coverage area. To the Network Operators, this means simplified network architectures, efficient use of resources, and improved security. In this report, the different issues and challenges related to deploying Mobile WiMax (802.16e or 802.16m) in rural South Africa, were identifed and explored. In this project, Atoll, SONAR, and Touch Point analysis tools were used to determine which Mobile Broadband technology is economically and technically suited for rural South Africa. It was found that LTE yields superior performance results than WiMax, which in turn yields superior performance results to all other existing 3G technologies. However it will take time for LTE to reach rural areas therefore WiMax can be considered as a solution to extend Broadband services to rural South Africa and thus assist in bridging the digital divide. Recommendations on how best to deploy Mobile WiMax are made based on observations made from the experimental work.MT201

Performance analysis of multiple radio-access provision in a multicore-fibre optical fronthaul

[EN] In this work we report a comprehensive experimental study targeting the dimensioning of the next-generation multicore-fibre (MCF) optical fronthaul employing space-division multiplexing (SDM). This fronthaul is capable of simultaneous provision of multiple radio-access technologies (multi-RATs) with advanced multi-antenna MIMO capabilities per RAT. The different parameters required for fronthaul dimensioning are evaluated considering state-of-the-art 4G LTE-Advanced altogether other legacy wireless standards in operation nowadays. In particular, the modulation characteristics, the antenna quality requirements (in terms of EVM, phase error or rho) and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) thresholds are evaluated employing fully-standard cellular signals transmitted on a multicore fibre (MCF) fronthaul. The study includes bi-directional signal transmission and multi-antenna MIMO multiplexing. The MCF optical fronthaul is evaluated with a multiplexed transmission of 2G, 3G, 3.9G and 4G MIMO signals in radio-over-multicore-fibre (RoMCF) employing a commercially available four-core MCF. The SNR requirements at the transmitter antenna are obtained for each cellular signal considering GSM, EDGE, EGPRS2-A, cdma2000 1xEV-DO, UMTS HSPA+ and LTE-Advanced standards. LTE-Advanced singleantenna and two-antenna systems implementing 2 x 2 MIMO transmission can be accomplished with SNR levels over 25 dB. In the case of LTE-Advanced 4 x 4 MIMO multiplexing over four cores of MCF media, 32 dB SNR is needed to achieve almost four times provided bitrate per user.This research was supported in part by Spain National Plan MINECO/FEDER UE TEC2015-70858-C2-1-R XCORE and GVA AICO/2018/324 NXTIC projects. The work of M. Morant is supported by Spain Juan de la Cierva, Spain IJCI-2016-27578 grant and Fundacion BBVA Leonardo 2018 HYPERCONN project.Morant, M.; Llorente, R. (2019). Performance analysis of multiple radio-access provision in a multicore-fibre optical fronthaul. Optics Communications. 436:161-167. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.optcom.2018.11.036S16116743

Power consumption in wireless access networks

The power consumption of wireless access networks will become an important issue in the coming years. In this paper the power consumption of base stations for mobile WiMAX, fixed WiMAX and UMTS is modelled. This power consumption is evaluated in relation to the coverage. For a physical bit rate of 2 Mbps, a power consumption of approximately 5600 W and a range of 1 km is obtained with UMTS. Fixed WiMAX covers 70 % and mobile WiMAX only 40 % of this range. However, fixed and mobile WiMAX consume roughly 50 % less than UMTS. In a suburban area and for a physical bitrate of 2 Mbps, fixed WiMAX base stations consume approximately 6 W per user, mobile WiMAX base stations 17 W per user, and UMTS base stations 5 W per user. The power consumption of these wireless access networks is compared with other access network technologies and research challenges concerning these access networks are presented

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

Technoligical Life Cycles Regional Clusters Facing Disruption

The phenomenon of technological life cycles is argued to be of great importance in the development of regional clusters. New 'disruptive' technologies may initiate the emergence of new regional industrial clusters and/or create new opportunities for further development of existing ones. However, they may also result in stagnation and decline of the latter. The term disruptive refers to such significant changes in the basic technologies that may change the industrial landscape, even in the shorter run. The paper examines the key features of a regional cluster, where the economic development patterns are quite closely related to the emergence of new key technologies.Technological life cycles, regional clusters, communication technology

Enhanced analysis of WCDMA networks with repeaters deployment

This paper addresses the analysis of WCDMA systems with repeaters deployment. A generic and compact expression for up- and downlinks evaluation has been mathematically derived so that transmission powers and other radio resource management parameters can be calculated without simplifications. In particular, the real different path delays, taking into account the repeaters presence and the finite nature of the time window of Rake receivers are considered. This allows an enhanced analysis with respect to classical approaches from a system level viewpoint. Furthermore, higher reliable and accurate predictions on network performance can be obtained, which can be remarkably useful for network planning and management. By using these expressions, relevant network parameters have been evaluated and compared with the ones obtained using the classical approximations. The differences in the obtained metrics are highlighted, putting in evidence the improvement provided by the proposed analysis.Peer Reviewe