4,369 research outputs found
Wi-Fi Offload: Tragedy of the Commons or Land of Milk and Honey?
Fueled by its recent success in provisioning on-site wireless Internet
access, Wi-Fi is currently perceived as the best positioned technology for
pervasive mobile macro network offloading. However, the broad transitions of
multiple collocated operators towards this new paradigm may result in fierce
competition for the common unlicensed spectrum at hand. In this light, our
paper game-theoretically dissects market convergence scenarios by assessing the
competition between providers in terms of network performance, capacity
constraints, cost reductions, and revenue prospects. We will closely compare
the prospects and strategic positioning of fixed line operators offering Wi-Fi
services with respect to competing mobile network operators utilizing
unlicensed spectrum. Our results highlight important dependencies upon
inter-operator collaboration models, and more importantly, upon the ratio
between backhaul and Wi-Fi access bit-rates. Furthermore, our investigation of
medium- to long-term convergence scenarios indicates that a rethinking of
control measures targeting the large-scale monetization of unlicensed spectrum
may be required, as otherwise the used free bands may become subject to
tragedy-of-commons type of problems.Comment: Workshop on Spectrum Sharing Strategies for Wireless Broadband
Services, IEEE PIMRC'13, to appear 201
Self-Sustaining Caching Stations: Towards Cost-Effective 5G-Enabled Vehicular Networks
In this article, we investigate the cost-effective 5G-enabled vehicular
networks to support emerging vehicular applications, such as autonomous
driving, in-car infotainment and location-based road services. To this end,
self-sustaining caching stations (SCSs) are introduced to liberate on-road base
stations from the constraints of power lines and wired backhauls. Specifically,
the cache-enabled SCSs are powered by renewable energy and connected to core
networks through wireless backhauls, which can realize "drop-and-play"
deployment, green operation, and low-latency services. With SCSs integrated, a
5G-enabled heterogeneous vehicular networking architecture is further proposed,
where SCSs are deployed along roadside for traffic offloading while
conventional macro base stations (MBSs) provide ubiquitous coverage to
vehicles. In addition, a hierarchical network management framework is designed
to deal with high dynamics in vehicular traffic and renewable energy, where
content caching, energy management and traffic steering are jointly
investigated to optimize the service capability of SCSs with balanced power
demand and supply in different time scales. Case studies are provided to
illustrate SCS deployment and operation designs, and some open research issues
are also discussed.Comment: IEEE Communications Magazine, to appea
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