The TUCAN3G project: wireless technologies for isolated rural communities in developing countries based on 3G small-cell deployments

Recent years have witnessed a massive penetration of cellular systems in developing countries. However, isolated rural areas (sparsely inhabited by low-income population) have been disregarded because classical access and backhaul technologies do not ensure the return on investment. This article presents innovative techno-economical solutions to provide these areas with cellular voice and data services. We first analyze the general characteristics of isolated rural communities, and based on this information, low-cost solutions are designed for both access (using 3G access points) and backhaul networks (using non-carrier grade equipment as WiFi for long distances or WiMAX in non-licensed bands). Subsequently, a study of population-dependent income vs. costs is presented, and a new business model is proposed involving mobile network operators, rural operators, and infrastructure providers. In order to test these solutions, we have built two demonstration platforms in the Peruvian jungle that have allowed validation of the technical feasibility of the solution, verifying the business model assumptions and the scalability of the initiative.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

WING/WORLD: An Open Experimental Toolkit for the Design and Deployment of IEEE 802.11-Based Wireless Mesh Networks Testbeds

Wireless Mesh Networks represent an interesting instance of light-infrastructure wireless networks. Due to their flexibility and resiliency to network failures, wireless mesh networks are particularly suitable for incremental and rapid deployments of wireless access networks in both metropolitan and rural areas. This paper illustrates the design and development of an open toolkit aimed at supporting the design of different solutions for wireless mesh networking by enabling real evaluation, validation, and demonstration. The resulting testbed is based on off-the-shelf hardware components and open-source software and is focused on IEEE 802.11 commodity devices. The software toolkit is based on an "open" philosophy and aims at providing the scientific community with a tool for effective and reproducible performance analysis of WMNs. The paper describes the architecture of the toolkit, and its core functionalities, as well as its potential evolutions

Modeling the relationship between network operators and venue owners in public Wi-Fi deployment using non-cooperative game theory

Wireless data demands keep rising at a fast rate. In 2016, Cisco measured a global mobile data traffic volume of 7.2 Exabytes per month and projected a growth to 49 Exabytes per month in 2021. Wi-Fi plays an important role in this as well. Up to 60% of the total mobile traffic was off-loaded via Wi-Fi (and femtocells) in 2016. This is further expected to increase to 63% in 2021. In this publication, we look into the roll-out of public Wi-Fi networks, public meaning in a public or semi-public place (pubs, restaurants, sport stadiums, etc.). More concretely we look into the collaboration between two parties, a technical party and a venue owner, for the roll-out of a new Wi-Fi network. The technical party is interested in reducing load on its mobile network and generating additional direct revenues, while the venue owner wants to improve the attractiveness of the venue and consequentially generate additional indirect revenues. Three Wi-Fi pricing models are considered: entirely free, slow access with ads or fast access via paid access (freemium), and paid access only (premium). The technical party prefers a premium model with high direct revenues, the venue owner a free/freemium model which is attractive to its customers, meaning both parties have conflicting interests. This conflict has been modeled using non-cooperative game theory incorporating detailed cost and revenue models for all three Wi-Fi pricing models. The initial outcome of the game is a premium Wi-Fi network, which is not the optimal solution from an outsider's perspective as a freemium network yields highest total payoffs. By introducing an additional compensation scheme which corresponds with negotiation in real life, the outcome of the game is steered toward a freemium solution

Scalability study of backhaul capacity sensitive network selection scheme in LTE-wifi HetNet

Wireless Heterogeneous Network (HetNet) with small cells presents a new backhauling challenge which differs from those of experienced by conventional macro-cells. In practice, the choice of backhaul technology for these small cells whether fiber, xDSL, point–to-point and point-to-multipoint wireless, or multi-hop/mesh networks, is often governed by availability and cost, and not by required capacity. Therefore, the resulting backhaul capacity of the small cells in HetNet is likely to be non-uniform due to the mixture of backhaul technologies adopted. In such an environment, a question then arises whether a network selection strategy that considers the small cells’ backhaul capacity will improve the end users’ usage experience. In this paper, a novel Dynamic Backhaul Capacity Sensitive (DyBaCS) network selection schemes (NSS) is proposed and compared with two commonly used network NSSs, namely WiFi First (WF) and Physical Data Rate (PDR) in an LTE-WiFi HetNet environment. The proposed scheme is evaluated in terms of average connection or user throughput1and fairness among users. The effects of varying WiFi backhaul capacity (uniform and non-uniform distribution), WiFi-LTE coverage ratio, user density and WiFi access points (APs) density within the HetNet form the focus of this paper. Results show that the DyBaCS scheme generally provides superior fairness and user throughput performance across the range of backhaul capacity considered. Besides, DyBaCS is able to scale much better than WF and PDR across different user and WiFi densities

Mobility management in 5G heterogeneous networks

In recent years, mobile data traffic has increased exponentially as a result of widespread popularity and uptake of portable devices, such as smartphones, tablets and laptops. This growth has placed enormous stress on network service providers who are committed to offering the best quality of service to consumer groups. Consequently, telecommunication engineers are investigating innovative solutions to accommodate the additional load offered by growing numbers of mobile users. The fifth generation (5G) of wireless communication standard is expected to provide numerous innovative solutions to meet the growing demand of consumer groups. Accordingly the ultimate goal is to achieve several key technological milestones including up to 1000 times higher wireless area capacity and a significant cut in power consumption. Massive deployment of small cells is likely to be a key innovation in 5G, which enables frequent frequency reuse and higher data rates. Small cells, however, present a major challenge for nodes moving at vehicular speeds. This is because the smaller coverage areas of small cells result in frequent handover, which leads to lower throughput and longer delay. In this thesis, a new mobility management technique is introduced that reduces the number of handovers in a 5G heterogeneous network. This research also investigates techniques to accommodate low latency applications in nodes moving at vehicular speeds

Designing and Implementing Future Aerial Communication Networks

Providing "connectivity from the sky" is the new innovative trend in wireless communications. High and low altitude platforms, drones, aircrafts and airships are being considered as the candidates for deploying wireless communications complementing the terrestrial communication infrastructure. In this article, we report the detailed account of the design and implementation challenges of an aerial network consisting of LTE Advanced (LTE-A) base stations. In particular, we review achievements and innovations harnessed by an aerial network composed of Helikite platforms. Helikites can be raised in the sky to bring Internet access during special events and in the aftermath of an emergency. The trial phase of the system mounting LTE-A technology onboard Helikites to serve users on the ground showed not only to be very encouraging but that such a system could offer even a longer lasting solution provided that inefficiency in powering the radio frequency equipment in the Helikite can be overcome.Comment: IEEE Communications Magazine 201

Experimental analysis of WiMAX and meshed Wi-Fi quality of service

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesA indústria das telecomunicações tem sofrido uma evolução enorme nosúltimos anos. Tanto em termos de comunicações sem fios, como em termos deligações de banda larga, assistiu-se a uma adesão massiva por parte domercado, o que se traduziu num crescimento enorme, já que a tecnologia temque estar um passo à frente da procura, de forma a suprir as carências dosconsumidores. Assim, a evolução persegue um objectivo claro: possibilidadede possuir conectividade de banda larga em qualquer lugar e instante. Nestecontexto, aparecem as tecnologias WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability forMicrowave Access) e WI-FI em Malha como possibilidades para atingir estefim. O tema desta dissertação incide no estudo das tecnologias de WiMAX e WI-FIem Malha, mais concretamente no estudo da Qualidade de Serviço (QoS)providenciada pelas normas IEEE 802.16 e IEEE 802.11s para serviços deVoIP e VoD. Esta tese apresenta a arquitectura desenvolvida para a correcta integração deQoS para serviços em tempo real no acesso à banda larga sem fios depróxima geração. De seguida, apresenta testes efectuados com osequipamentos disponíveis de WiMAX e WI-FI em Malha, de forma a mostrar ocorrecto comportamento da atribuição extremo-a-extremo de QoS nos cenáriosescolhidos com serviços em tempo real, bem como os efeitos da mobilidade natecnologia WI-FI em Malha. ABSTRACT: The telecommunication industry has suffered a massive evolution throughoutpast years. In terms of wireless communications, as well as broadbandconnections, we’ve seen a massive adoption by the market, which conductedinto an enormous growth, since the technology must always be one step aheadof the demand, in order to be to fulfill the needs of the consumers. Therefore,the evolution pursues one clear goal: the possibility to establish a broadbandconnection anywhere and anytime. In this context, the WiMAX (WorldwideInteroperability for Microwave Access) and Meshed WI-FI technologies appearas possibilities to reach this goal. The subject of this thesis is the study of both the WiMAX and Meshed WI-FItechnologies, and more concretely the study of the QoS provided by theIEEE802.16 and IEEE 802.11s standards to VoIP and VoD services. This thesis presents the architecture developed to provide the correctintegration of QoS for real-media traffic in next generation broadband wirelessaccess. It presents tests carried out with the available WiMAX and Meshed WI-FI equipments, to show the correct behavior in the attribution of end-to-endQoS in selected scenarios with real-time services, as well as mobility effects onWI-FI Wireless Mesh technology

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