Toward Universal Broadband in Rural Alaska

The TERRA-Southwest project is extending broadband service to 65 communities in the Bristol Bay, Bethel and Yukon-Kuskokwim regions. A stimulus project funded by a combination of grants and loans from the Rural Utilities Service (RUS), TERRA-Southwest has installed a middle-mile network using optical fiber and terrestrial microwave. Last-mile service will be through fixed wireless or interconnection with local telephone networks. The State of Alaska, through its designee Connect Alaska, also received federal stimulus funding from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) for tasks that include support for an Alaska Broadband Task Force “to both formalize a strategic broadband plan for the state of Alaska and coordinate broadband activities across relevant agencies and organizations.” Thus, a study of the impact of the TERRA project in southwest Alaska is both relevant and timely. This first phase provides baseline data on current access to and use of ICTs and Internet connectivity in rural Alaska, and some insights about perceived benefits and potential barriers to adoption of broadband. It is also intended to provide guidance to the State Broadband Task Force in determining how the extension of broadband throughout the state could contribute to education, social services, and economic activities that would enhance Alaska’s future. Results of the research could also be used proactively to develop strategies to encourage broadband adoption, and to identify applications and support needed by users with limited ICT skills.Connect Alaska. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration. General Communications Incorporated.Part 1: An Analysis of Internet Use in Southwest Alaska / Introduction / Previous Studies / Current Connectivity / Analytical Framework and Research Methodology / Demographics / Mobile Phones: Access and Use / Access to the Internet / Internet Useage / Considerations about Internet Service / Interest in Broadband / Sources of News / Comparison with National Data / Internet Use by Businesses and Organizations / What Difference may Broadband make in the Region? / Conclusiongs / Part 2 Literature Review / Reference

A Survey of Anticipatory Mobile Networking: Context-Based Classification, Prediction Methodologies, and Optimization Techniques

A growing trend for information technology is to not just react to changes, but anticipate them as much as possible. This paradigm made modern solutions, such as recommendation systems, a ubiquitous presence in today's digital transactions. Anticipatory networking extends the idea to communication technologies by studying patterns and periodicity in human behavior and network dynamics to optimize network performance. This survey collects and analyzes recent papers leveraging context information to forecast the evolution of network conditions and, in turn, to improve network performance. In particular, we identify the main prediction and optimization tools adopted in this body of work and link them with objectives and constraints of the typical applications and scenarios. Finally, we consider open challenges and research directions to make anticipatory networking part of next generation networks

Vehicle as a Service (VaaS): Leverage Vehicles to Build Service Networks and Capabilities for Smart Cities

Smart cities demand resources for rich immersive sensing, ubiquitous communications, powerful computing, large storage, and high intelligence (SCCSI) to support various kinds of applications, such as public safety, connected and autonomous driving, smart and connected health, and smart living. At the same time, it is widely recognized that vehicles such as autonomous cars, equipped with significantly powerful SCCSI capabilities, will become ubiquitous in future smart cities. By observing the convergence of these two trends, this article advocates the use of vehicles to build a cost-effective service network, called the Vehicle as a Service (VaaS) paradigm, where vehicles empowered with SCCSI capability form a web of mobile servers and communicators to provide SCCSI services in smart cities. Towards this direction, we first examine the potential use cases in smart cities and possible upgrades required for the transition from traditional vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) to VaaS. Then, we will introduce the system architecture of the VaaS paradigm and discuss how it can provide SCCSI services in future smart cities, respectively. At last, we identify the open problems of this paradigm and future research directions, including architectural design, service provisioning, incentive design, and security & privacy. We expect that this paper paves the way towards developing a cost-effective and sustainable approach for building smart cities.Comment: 32 pages, 11 figure

Enhancing UAV Communication through Novel Algorithm Integration

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have experienced a tremendous surge in deployment across numerous applications, including surveillance, agriculture, and delivery services. Despite their rising prominence, establishing resilient and efficient communication links between the UAVs and Ground Base Stations (GBS) is a critical challenge. To address this challenge, my study explored analyzing and elevating the association strategies of UAVs with optimal communication nodes. These nodes span from a direct connection to a Ground Base Station to utilizing other UAVs as relays for establishing communication. MATLAB emerged as the principal simulation environment for the rigorous assessment and evaluation of my research problem. I meticulously designed three specific scenarios to replicate real-world conditions: 1.A static UAV associating with a Static Ground Station 2.A dynamic UAV with the capability to move and adjust its position, connecting to a Static Ground Station 3.A dynamic UAV establishing a connection with another dynamic UAV, which subsequently acts as a relay to relay the communication to the Ground Base Station Integral to the simulations was the seamless integration of Dijkstra's algorithm, renowned for its shortest path determination, combined with the Free Space Path Loss model. This amalgamation was instrumental in determining the most apt node for UAV association, taking into account factors like signal strength and geographical proximity. Preliminary results from the simulations exhibited a significant enhancement in the communication capabilities of UAVs, regardless of the scenario in consideration. This enhancement is fundamentally attributed to the UAVs' newfound ability to discern and associate with the nearest optimal node. This holds true even when UAVs find themselves positioned at vast distances from the Ground Base Station. The introduction of multiple association options, facilitated by the combined algorithms, offers UAVs the flexibility of connecting to the closest Ground Station or the nearest relay UAV. Further validation of the proposed method is ascertained through a signal-to-noise ratio analysis, which echoes the algorithmic approach's reliability and efficacy. To summarize, the exhaustive research accentuates the pivotal role of integrated algorithms in optimizing the communication avenues for UAV networks. The proposed methodology not only presents a tangible solution to current communication hurdles but also paves the way for the future, expanding the horizons of UAV-based applications

Resource and Service Management for Fog Infrastructure as a Service

Cloud computing stops short in its offerings towards deployment of latency-critical and bandwidth-intensive applications. Fog computing is emerging as complementary to cloud computing in realizing the deployment of large-scale Internet of Things (IoT) environments for such applications. It supports geographically dispersed IoT devices and users leveraging compute nodes of varied resource capacities in vicinity of the devices/users. Researchers have demonstrated the necessity of fog computing towards deployment of latency-critical and bandwidth-intensive applications. Fog computing infrastructure is recommended for hosting the new generation application environments such as autonomous vehicles, emergency services and personalized healthcare. The Fog Infrastructure as a Service (FIaaS) model facilitates leasing of shared infrastructure resources such as compute, network, and storage on fog nodes which are deployed by Fog Service Providers. Several research problems must to be solved prior to the real-world deployment of large-scale fog computing environments. This research identified and attempted to solve some of them in the FIaaS model. It has developed an event-driven simulator, PFogSim, to facilitate the simulation of large-scale, dynamic, and mobile fog computing environments comprising thousands of devices with defined multi-layered hierarchical structure representing smart city deployments using IoTs. Towards efficient management of fog, this research proposes a Hierarchical and Autonomous Fog Architecture (HAFA) to organize heterogeneous fog nodes into multi-layered connected hierarchy based on several parameters such as location, distance from IoT devices and/or users, resource configuration, privacy and security. It groups fog nodes to facilitate resource pooling and local control, and logically links such groups to facilitate disaster readiness and autonomy. Leveraging HAFA, this research proposes and tests a distributed approach to select a cost-efficient fog node to host any given application service among prospective fog nodes with available infrastructure resources considering both computation and communication costs. To cater to the unique needs of the fog environment, it also develops a novel location and network-aware approach for service pricing in FIaaS environments

Development and Performance Evaluation of Urban Mobility Applications and Services

L'abstract è presente nell'allegato / the abstract is in the attachmen