Integrated Support for Handoff Management and Context-Awareness in Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

The overwhelming success of mobile devices and wireless communications is stressing the need for the development of mobility-aware services. Device mobility requires services adapting their behavior to sudden context changes and being aware of handoffs, which introduce unpredictable delays and intermittent discontinuities. Heterogeneity of wireless technologies (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3G) complicates the situation, since a different treatment of context-awareness and handoffs is required for each solution. This paper presents a middleware architecture designed to ease mobility-aware service development. The architecture hides technology-specific mechanisms and offers a set of facilities for context awareness and handoff management. The architecture prototype works with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, which today represent two of the most widespread wireless technologies. In addition, the paper discusses motivations and design details in the challenging context of mobile multimedia streaming applications

National Hospital Management Portal (NHMP): a framework for e-health implementation

Health information represents the main basis for health decisionmaking process and there have been some efforts to increase access to health information in developing countries. However, most of these efforts are based on the internet which has minimal penetration especially in the rural and sub-urban part of developing countries. In this work, a platform for medical record acquisition via the ubiquitous 2.5G/3G wireless communications technologies is presented. The National Hospital Management Portal (NHMP)platform has a central database at each specific country’s national hospita

Tradeoff Analysis for Combat Service Support Wireless Communications Alternatives

As the Army moves toward more mobile and agile forces and continued sustainment of numerous high-cost legacy logistics management systems, the requirement for wireless connectivity and a wireless network to supporting organizations has become ever more critical. There are currently several Army communications initiatives underway to resolve this wireless connectivity issue. However, to fully appreciate and understand the value of these initiatives, a Tradeoff Analysis is needed. The present study seeks to identify and assess solutions. The analysis identified issues that impede Interim Brigade Combat Team (IBCT) communication system integration and outlined core requirements for sharing of logistics data between the field and Army battle command systems. Then, the analysis examined wireless communication alternatives as possible solutions for IBCT logistics communications problems. The current baseline system was compared with possible alternatives involving tactical radio systems, wireless/near term digital radio, cellular satellite, and third-generation (3G) wireless technologies. Cellular satellite and 3G wireless technologies offer clear advantages and should be considered for later IBCTs

The Design of Efficient Internetwork Authentication for Ubiquitous Wireless Communications

A variety of wireless technologies have been standardized and commercialized, but no single solution is considered the best to satisfy all communication needs due to different coverage and bandwidth limitations. Therefore, internetworking between heterogeneous wireless networks is extremely important for ubiquitous and high performance wireless communications. The security problem is one of the major challenges in internetworking. To date, most research on internetwork authentication has focused on centralized authentication approaches, where the home network participates in each authentication process. For high latency between the home and visiting networks, such approaches tend to be inefficient. In this paper, we describe chained authentication, which requires collaboration between adjacent networks without involvement of the home network. After categorizing chained protocols, we propose a novel design of chained authentication methods under 3G-WLAN internetworking. The experiments show that proactive context transfer and ticket forwarding reduce the 3G authentication latency to 36.8% and WLAN EAP-TLS latency to 23.1% when RTT between visiting and home networks is 200 ms

The Future of Mobile Industry

This paper discusses the future of mobile industry along with some of the background leading to the emergence of wireless technology. First, it gives an overview of today’s telecommunication network and the major differences between fixed wired networks and wireless networks. The discussion then focuses on the challenges facing the wireless industry and the way out through aggressive innovation by employing Wireless Intelligence Network (WIN) technology. The paper also discusses some important trends in wireless industry and the customers expectations which are also part of the challenges for the mobile industry. Finally particular reference is made to the developing nations especially Nigeria in the ongoing trends in mobile communication industry

Mobihealth: mobile health services based on body area networks

In this chapter we describe the concept of MobiHealth and the approach developed during the MobiHealth project (MobiHealth, 2002). The concept was to bring together the technologies of Body Area Networks (BANs), wireless broadband communications and wearable medical devices to provide mobile healthcare services for patients and health professionals. These technologies enable remote patient care services such as management of chronic conditions and detection of health emergencies. Because the patient is free to move anywhere whilst wearing the MobiHealth BAN, patient mobility is maximised. The vision is that patients can enjoy enhanced freedom and quality of life through avoidance or reduction of hospital stays. For the health services it means that pressure on overstretched hospital services can be alleviated