Power Systems Monitoring and Control using Telecom Network Management Standards

Historically, different solutions have been developed for power systems control and telecommunications network management environments. The former was characterized by proprietary solutions, while the latter has been involved for years in a strong standardization process guided by criteria of openness. Today, power systems control standardization is in progress, but it is at an early stage compared to the telecommunications management area, especially in terms of information modeling. Today, control equipment tends to exhibit more computational power, and communication lines have increased their performance. These trends hint at some conceptual convergence between power systems and telecommunications networks from a management perspective. This convergence leads us to suggest the application of well-established telecommunications management standards for power systems control. This paper shows that this is a real medium-to-long term possibility

Outflow Dynamics in Modeling Oligopoly Markets: The Case of the Mobile Telecommunications Market in Poland

In this paper we introduce two models of opinion dynamics in oligopoly markets and apply them to a situation, where a new entrant challenges two incumbents of the same size. The models differ in the way the two forces influencing consumer choice -- (local) social interactions and (global) advertising -- interact. We study the general behavior of the models using the Mean Field Approach and Monte Carlo simulations and calibrate the models to data from the Polish telecommunications market. For one of the models criticality is observed -- below a certain critical level of advertising the market approaches a lock-in situation, where one market leader dominates the market and all other brands disappear. Interestingly, for both models the best fits to real data are obtained for conformity level $p \in (0.3,0.4)$. This agrees very well with the conformity level found by Solomon Asch in his famous social experiment

Customer-oriented risk assessment in Network Utilities

For companies that distribute services such as telecommunications, water, energy, gas, etc., quality perceived by the customers has a strong impact on the fulfillment of financial goals, positively increasing the demand and negatively increasing the risk of customer churn (loss of customers). Failures by these companies may cause customer affection in a massive way, augmenting the intention to leave the company. Therefore, maintenance performance and specifically service reliability has a strong influence on financial goals. This paper proposes a methodology to evaluate the contribution of the maintenance department in economic terms, based on service unreliability by network failures. The developed methodology aims to provide an analysis of failures to facilitate decision making about maintenance (preventive/predictive and corrective) costs versus negative impacts in end-customer invoicing based on the probability of losing customers. Survival analysis of recurrent failures with the General Renewal Process distribution is used for this novel purpose with the intention to be applied as a standard procedure to calculate the expected maintenance financial impact, for a given period of time. Also, geographical areas of coverage are distinguished, enabling the comparison of different technical or management alternatives. Two case studies in a telecommunications services company are presented in order to illustrate the applicability of the methodology

A framework for modelling mobile radio access networks for intelligent fault management

Postprin

Business model requirements and challenges in the mobile telecommunication sector

The telecommunications business is undergoing a critical revolution, driven by innovative technologies, globalization, and deregulation. Cellular networks and telecommunications bring radical changes to the way telecom businesses are conducted. Globalization, on the other hand, is tearing down legacy barriers and forcing monopolistic national carriers to compete internationally. Moreover, the noticeable progress of many countries towards deregulation coupled with liberalization is significantly increasing telecom market power and allowing severe competition. The implications of this transition have changed the business rules of the telecom industry. In addition, entrants into the cellular industry have had severe difficulties due to inexistent or weak Business Models (BMs). Designing a BM for a mobile network operator is complex and requires multiple actors to balance different and often conflicting design requirements. Hence, there is a need to enhance operators’ ability in determining what constitutes the most viable business model to meet their strategic objectives within this turbulent environment. In this paper, the authors identify the main mobile BM dimensions along with their interdependencies and further analysis provides mobile network operators with insights to improve their business models in this new ‘boundary-less’ landscape

Intersystem soft handover for converged DVB-H and UMTS networks

Digital video broadcasting for handhelds (DVB-H) is the standard for broadcasting Internet Protocol (IP) data services to mobile portable devices. To provide interactive services for DVB-H, the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) can be used as a terrestrial interaction channel for the unidirectional DVB-H network. The converged DVB-H and UMTS network can be used to address the congestion problems due to the limited multimedia channel accesses of the UMTS network. In the converged network, intersystem soft handover between DVB-H and UMTS is needed for an optimum radio resource allocation, which reduces network operation cost while providing the required quality of service. This paper deals with the intersystem soft handover between DVB-H and UMTS in such a converged network. The converged network structure is presented. A novel soft handover scheme is proposed and evaluated. After considering the network operation cost, the performance tradeoff between the network quality of service and the network operation cost for the intersystem soft handover in the converged network is modeled using a stochastic tree and analyzed using a numerical simulation. The results show that the proposed algorithm is feasible and has the potential to be used for implementation in the real environment

State-of-the-art in Power Line Communications: from the Applications to the Medium

In recent decades, power line communication has attracted considerable attention from the research community and industry, as well as from regulatory and standardization bodies. In this article we provide an overview of both narrowband and broadband systems, covering potential applications, regulatory and standardization efforts and recent research advancements in channel characterization, physical layer performance, medium access and higher layer specifications and evaluations. We also identify areas of current and further study that will enable the continued success of power line communication technology.Comment: 19 pages, 12 figures. Accepted for publication, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. Special Issue on Power Line Communications and its Integration with the Networking Ecosystem. 201