Context-Aware Telco Outdoor Localization

Recent years have witnessed the fast growth in telecommunication (Telco) techniques from 2G to upcoming 5G. Precise outdoor localization is important for Telco operators to manage, operate and optimize Telco networks. Differing from GPS, Telco localization is a technique employed by Telco operators to localize outdoor mobile devices by using measurement report (MR) data. When given MR samples containing noisy signals (e.g., caused by Telco signal interference and attenuation), Telco localization often suffers from high errors. To this end, the main focus of this paper is how to improve Telco localization accuracy via the algorithms to detect and repair outlier positions with high errors. Specifically, we propose a context-aware Telco localization technique, namely RLoc, which consists of three main components: a machine-learning-based localization algorithm, a detection algorithm to find flawed samples, and a repair algorithm to replace outlier localization results by better ones (ideally ground truth positions). Unlike most existing works to detect and repair every flawed MR sample independently, we instead take into account spatio-temporal locality of MR locations and exploit trajectory context to detect and repair flawed positions. Our experiments on the real MR data sets from 2G GSM and 4G LTE Telco networks verify that our work RLoc can greatly improve Telco location accuracy. For example, RLoc on a large 4G MR data set can achieve 32.2 meters of median errors, around 17.4 percent better than state-of-the-art.Peer reviewe

Indoor Location-Based Services In The Telecommunications Network

‘Location-based services’ are services that take the location of mobile devices into account. Traditionally, these services have revolved around positioning and navigation. However, with the advent of smartphones equipped with GPS receivers, a number of innovative location-based services have come into the market and caught users’ interest. Users spend nearly 90% of their time indoors and GPS receivers do not function well within buildings. Hence, there is a need for a reliable indoor positioning system. Alongside technological research, a study of indoor location-based services is also necessary. ‘Open Telco’ refers to the endeavour by mobile operators to follow in the footsteps of internet companies and embrace open innovation and open APIs (Application Programming Interfaces). Network service exposure and the ecosystem approach are believed to be critical to the future success of mobile operators. This Thesis attempts to bring together these three dissimilar but related topics- indoor positioning, location-based services and network service exposure. This is done via the study of existing literature and the implementation of a service prototype

Critical Success Factors of Location-Based Services

Location-based services evolved with the advancement in mobile technology and wireless technology. Researchers have studied location-based services in terms of privacy, trust, and user acceptance. Statistics suggest the percentage of location-based services users is still relatively low. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to gain a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the critical success factors of location-based services. The electronic brainstorming approach was used to gather the opinions of an expert group of practitioners, researchers, and users on the critical success factors of location-based services. Through grouping similar factors together based on past literature, 15 categories of critical success factors were developed. These 15 categories were ranked and rated according to importance. The results showed that speed, real-time or up-to-date information, cost, usefulness or benefits, and simple or ease of use are the five most important critical success factors. The results of this research highlight potential areas of research, and research and development. The results of this study also provide guidelines for practitioners to create a competitive location-based services strategy to increase consumer adoption. Advisor: Keng L. Sia

Architecture landscape

The network architecture evolution journey will carry on in the years ahead, driving a large scale adoption of 5th Generation (5G) and 5G-Advanced use cases with significantly decreased deployment and operational costs, and enabling new and innovative use-case-driven solutions towards 6th Generation (6G) with higher economic and societal values. The goal of this chapter, thus, is to present the envisioned societal impact, use cases and the End-to-End (E2E) 6G architecture. The E2E 6G architecture includes summarization of the various technical enablers as well as the system and functional views of the architecture

From grids to clouds: recap on challenges and solutions

Grid Computing is a set of resources; the separate computational power of these resources has combination to execute a huge task. Usually, in a Computational Grid environment, the main resource is the Central Processing Unit (CPU), mostly used in research fields that demand high computational power to perform massive and complicated calculations. Cloud Computing is a promising computing pattern which offers facilities and common resources on demand over the Web. The implementation of cloud computing applications has high priority, especially in the modern world, for example in providing adequate funding for social services and purchasing programs. In this paper, we discuss the implementation of cloud computing over a Smart Grid: reliable, guaranteed and efficient with low cost, it is expected to offer Long Term Evolution (LTE). This allows larger pieces of the spectrum, or bands, to be used, with greater coverage and less latency. The third technology is the Vehicular Network, an important research area because of its unique features and potential applications. In this survey, we present an overview of the smart grid, LTE and vehicular network integrated with cloud computing. We also highlight the open issues and research directions in implementing these technologies with cloud computing in terms of energy and information management for smart grids; applying cloud computing platforms for 4G networks to achieve specific criteria; and finally architectural formation, privacy and security for vehicular cloud computing

Telecommunication data monetization

The aim of the study was to find out what kind of telecommunication data monetization models are interesting and potential. The focus was on finding out what kind of business model trends there are already, how telco data can be collected and monetized, how mature telco data monetization is and how telco data monetization can be advanced by adopting already existing models or creating innovative ways to do business from scratch. Empirical part consisted of theme interviews and workshops on the topics. The study indicates that internal telco data monetization is quite mature and it has been developed for a long time but many of the external telco data monetization projects are in piloting and testing phase. Telecommunication data monetization is quite similar with other data monetization processes, so already existing effective and profitable models can be adopted and clear need for creating totally new business models was not found. Location telco data based insight was seen as the most valuable way to do external monetization while also IoT and sensor telco data as a value were seen potential in the future. In telco data monetization projects, one of the biggest key activities is to fulfill data privacy regulations and still keep the business profitable

Stay Healthy: Slovenian users\u27 Opinions about the Covid-19 Contact-Tracing Mobile Application

This paper aims to provide a systemic vision of the role and specifics of a Covid-19 contact-tracing mobile application, which can be presented as a data-driven mobile application for citizens in urban data management processes and is essential for a sustainable urban ecosystem to inform the user about contact with a potentially infected person. The study aims to reveal the behaviour of adults when using such an application. We also attempt to discover how the Covid 19 pandemic has changed communication and why users use mobile phones and their features, such as Bluetooth and GPS. The research focused on Slovenia and was conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic in April 2021. Five hundred adults were surveyed. The mixed-method survey investigates the determinants of adult citizens’ behaviour in the Republic of Slovenia concerning the #Ostanizdrav application from three perspectives (installed app, activated app, and app used to report infection). In addition, the study examines the barriers and levers to using a contact tracing application to combat the pandemic in Slovenia. The second part of the study involves developing a Deep Learning-based predictive model trained on the data collected due to the survey. &nbs