Mobile communication systems

The research proposed and elaborated in this dissertation is concerned with the development of new decision algorithms for hard handoff strategies in mobile communication systems. Specifically, the research tasks envisaged include the following: (1) Use of information-theoretics based statistical distance measures as a metric for hard handoff decisions; (2) A study to evaluate the log-likelihood criterion towards decision considerations to perform the hard handoff; (3) Development of a statistical model to evaluate optimum instants of measurements of the metric used for hard handoff decision. The aforesaid objectives refer to a practical scenario in which a mobile station (MS) traveling away from a serving base station (BS-I) may suffer communications impairment due to interference and shadowing affects, especially in an urban environment. As a result, it will seek to switch over to another base station (BS-II) that facilitates a stronger signal level. This is called handoff procedure. (The hard handoff refers to the specific case in which only one base station serves the mobile at the instant of handover). Classically, the handoff decision is done on the basis of the difference between received signal strengths (RSS) from BS-I and BS-II. The algorithms developed here, in contrast, stipulate the decision criterion set by the statistical divergence and/or log-likelihood ratio that exists between the received signals. The purpose of the present study is to evaluate the relative efficacy of the conventional and proposed algorithms in reference to: (i) Minimization of unnecessary handoffs ("ping-pongs"); (ii) Minimization of delay in handing over; (iii) Ease of implementation and (iv) Minimization of possible call dropouts due to ineffective handover envisaged. Simulated results with data commensurate with practical considerations are furnished and discussed. Background literature is presented in the introductory chapter and scope for future work is identified via open questions in the concluding chapter.

In this dissertation, new semi-analytical expressions for the diversity bit error rate performance of asynchronous direct sequence-code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems in multipath fading channels are derived. Also, the PN acquisition time of a DS system with offset frequency periods greater than the code period in a AWGN channel is measured via laboratory experiments. In Part I we consider DS-CDMA systems operating in a cellular environment with multipath reception. Multipath propagation is exploited through the use of RAKE receivers. Coherent, differentially coherent and noncoherent binary demodulation schemes are considered. The multiple access interference is modeled as AWGN, conditioned on the fading statistics of the received signal. The mobile radio channel introduces selective fading, and is modeled as a tapped delay line. The amplitude of each resolvable path is statistically described by the Nakagami distribution, which is a general solution to the random vector problem that causes rapid fading. However, we assume independent but nonidentical fading along the RAKE branches. Therefore our analysis supports unequal mean powers and different amount of fading in the multipath components combined by the receiver. Also, the results can be easily extended to account for diversity from multiple antennas or coding in the generalized Nakagami multipath fading environment. In Part II we consider a land mobile satellite channel. First, a laboratory experiment is setup to evaluate the PN acquisition performance of a digital IF receiver in a AWGN channel with large Doppler offset. The digital conversion receiver uses the inherent aliasing property of sampling to realize the baseband conversion using a single analog-to-digital converter. Thereafter, digital signal processing on the I and Q samples enable for design trade-offs in the acquisition of the PN code with Doppler periods greater than the code period. Two code phase selection criterions, namely the maximum criterion and the threshold crossing criterion, are investigated and their acquisition time is measured for different frequency offsets and input IF signal to noise ratios. We also derive semi-analytical expressions for the BER performance of coherent and differentially coherent systems operating in a mobile satellite channel. In this case the channel is modeled as a multipath nonselective channel, but diversity gain can still be obtained through path diversity. This is the scenario when a signal is transmitted to all satellites in view and the received replicas are independently demodulated and combined at the receiver. Our analysis extends previous results to the case of unequal mean powers and Rice factors in the combined signals; a valid assumption if we consider that the satellites are in view at different elevation angles. Furthermore, the effect of imperfect power control in such mobile satellite DS-CDMA systems is also considered.

This dissertation is concerned with studies on the performance aspects of mobile LEO satellite cellular systems. Relevant performance measures studied in the dissertation include new call blocking probability, handoff failure probability, call termination probability, and call dropping probability. The analytical teletraffic models available in the literature are generalized in this work in order to characterize the 3G systems more realistically. The effect of earth rotation on cell residence time is also investigated and a new cell residence time model is developed. The new model proposed uses right-truncated gamma distribution to describe the statistics of residence time in the origination cell; and, the generalized beta distribution is used to model the residence time in subsequent cells. A closed-form expression to determine the premature call termination and call dropping probabilities is proposed. The proposed expression requires only the cumulative distribution function of the call holding time and the first four moments of the cell residence time. In all the above probabilistic considerations, the arrival process is regarded as: (i) Poissonian implying voice-like traffic and (ii) non-Poissonian depicting inhomogeneous mix of voice, data, and video transmissions expected on a trunk traffic. The effect of factors that may affect the signal intensity on the performance of mobile LEO satellite cellular systems is also investigated. In particular, a mathematically tractable expression to approximate the moments of cell residence time in origination cell as well as in subsequent cells is developed based on the received signal power.

The broadcast operation has a most fundamental role in mobile ad hoc networks because of the broadcasting nature of radio transmission, i.e., when a sender transmits a packet, all nodes within the sender's transmission range will be affected by this transmission. The benefit of this property is that one packet can be received by all neighbors while the negative effect is that it interferes with other transmissions. Flooding ensures that the entire network receives the packet but generates many redundant transmissions which may trigger a serious broadcast storm problem that may collapse the entire network. The broadcast storm problem can be avoided by providing efficient broadcast algorithms that aim to reduce the number of nodes that retransmit the broadcast packet while still guaranteeing that all nodes receive the packet. This dissertation focuses on providing several efficient localized broadcast algorithms to reduce the broadcast redundancy in mobile ad hoc networks. In my dissertation, the efficiency of a broadcast algorithm is measured by the number of forward nodes for relaying a broadcast packet. A classification of broadcast algorithms for mobile ad hoc networks has been provided at the beginning. Two neighbor-designating broadcast algorithms, called total dominant pruning and partial dominant pruning, have been proposed to reduce the number of the forward nodes. Several extensions based on the neighbor-designating approach have also been investigated. The cluster-based broadcast algorithm shows good performance in dense networks, and it also provides a constant upper bound approximation ratio to the optimum solution for the number of forward nodes in the worst case. A generic broadcast framework with K hop neighbor information has a trade-off between the number of the forward nodes and the size of the K-hop zone. A reliable broadcast algorithm, called double-covered broadcast, is proposed to improve the delivery ratio of a broadcast package when the transmission error rate of the network is high. The effectiveness of all these algorithms has been confirmed by simulations.

The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) is one of the core protocols of the Internet protocol suite, which is used by major Internet applications such as World Wide Web, email, remote administration and file transfer. TCP implements scalable and distributed end-to-end congestion control algorithms to share network resources among competing users. TCP was originally designed primarily for wired networks, and it has performed remarkably well as the Internet scaled up by six orders of magnitude in the past decade. However, many studies have shown that the unmodified standard TCP performs poorly in networks with large bandwidth-delay products and/or lossy wireless links. In this thesis, we analyze the problems TCP exhibits in the wireless communication environment, and develop joint TCP congestion control and wireless-link scheduling schemes for mobile applications. ... Different from the existing solutions, the proposed schemes can be asynchronously implemented without message passing among network nodes; thus they are readily deployable with current infrastructure. Moreover, global convergence/stability of the proposed schemes to optimal equilibrium is established using the Lyapunov method in the network fluid model. Simulation results are provided to evaluate the proposed schemes in practical networks.

While new technologies are often used to facilitate regular people's lives, they often fail to see their potential in helping disabled people. Augmented reality, one of the newest state-of-the-art technologies, offers users the opportunity to add virtual information to their real world surroundings in real time. It also has the potential to not only augment the sense of sight, but also other senses such as hearing. Augmented reality could be used to offer the opportunity to complement users' missing sense. In this thesis, we study augmented reality technologies, systems and applications, and suggest the future of AR applications. We explain how to integrate augmented reality into iOS applications and propose an augmented reality application for hearing augmentation using an iPad2. We believe mobile devices are the best platform for augmented reality as they are widespread and their computational power is rapidly growing to be able to handle true AR applications.

This work presents the development of the Statistical Location-Assisted Broadcast (SLAB) protocol, a multi-hop wireless broadcast protocol designed for vehicular ad-hoc networking (VANET). Vehicular networking is an important emerging application of wireless communications. Data dissemination applications using VANET promote the ability for vehicles to share information with each other and the wide-area network with the goal of improving navigation, fuel consumption, public safety, and entertainment. A critical component of these data dissemination schemes is the multi-hop wireless broadcast protocol. Multi-hop broadcast protocols for these schemes must reliably deliver broadcast packets to vehicles in a geographically bounded region while consuming as little wireless bandwidth as possible. This work contains substantial research results related to development of multi-hop broadcast protocols for VANET, culminating in the design of SLAB. Many preliminary research and development efforts have been required to arrive at SLAB. First, a high-level wireless broadcast simulation tool called WiBDAT is developed. Next, a manual optimization procedure is proposed to create efficient threshold functions for statistical broadcast protocols. This procedure is then employed to design the Distribution-Adaptive Distance with Channel Quality (DADCQ) broadcast protocol, a preliminary cousin of SLAB. DADCQ is highly adaptive to node density, node spatial distribution pattern, and wireless channel quality in realistic VANET scenarios. However, the manual design process used to create DADCQ has a few deficiencies. In response to these problems, an automated design procedure is created that uses a black-box global optimization algorithm to search for efficient threshold functions that are evaluated using WiBDAT. SLAB is finally designed using this procedure.

Games have become important applications on mobile devices. A mobile gaming approach known as remote gaming is being developed to support games on low cost mobile devices. In the remote gaming approach, the responsibility of rendering a game and advancing the game play is put on remote servers instead of the resource constrained mobile devices. The games rendered on the servers are encoded as video and streamed to mobile devices. Mobile devices gather user input and stream the commands back to the servers to advance game play. With this solution, mobile devices with video playback and network connectivity can become game consoles. In this thesis, we present the design and development of such a system and evaluate the performance and design considerations to maximize the end user gaming experience. A gaming user experience model capable of predicting the user experience for a given gaming session is developed and verified.

Web services have become increasingly important over the past decades. Versatility and platform independence are just some of their advantages. On the other hand, grid computing enables the efficient distribution of computing resources. Together, they provide a great source of computing power that can be particularly leveraged by mobile devices. Mobile computing enables information creation, processing, storage and communication without location constraints [63], not only improving business' operational efficiency [63] but actually changing a way of life. However, the convenience of anytime and anywhere communication is counterbalanced by small screens, limited computing power and battery life. Despite these limitations, mobile devices can extend grid functionality by bringing to the mix not only mobile access but sensing capabilities as well, gathering information from their surroundings through built in mechanisms, such as microphone, camera, GPS and even accelerometers. Prior work has already demonstrated the possibility of enabling Web Services Resource Framework (WSRF) access to grid resources from mobile device clients in the WSRF-ME project [39], where a representative Nokia S60 Smartphone application was created on a framework, which extends the JSR-172 functionality to achieve WSRF compliance. In light of today's mobile phone market diversity, this thesis extends the solution proposed by WSRF-ME to non-Java ME phones and to Android devices in particular. Android-based device numbers have grown considerably over the past couple of years despite its recent creation and reduced availability of mature software tools.

IEEE 802.11 networks successfully satisfy high data demands and are cheaper compared to cellular networks. Modern mobile computers and phones are equipped with 802.11 and are VoIP capable. Current network designs do not dynamically accommodate changes in the usage. We propose a dynamic power control algorithm that provides greater capacity within a limited geographic region. Most other power algorithms necessitate changes in 802.11 requiring hardware changes. Proposed algorithm only requires firmware updates to enable dynamic control of APs transmit power. We use earlier studies to determine the limit of the number of users to optimize power. By lowering transmit power of APs with large number of users, we can effectively decrease the cell size. The resulting gap is then covered by dynamically activating additional APs. This also provides greater flexibility and reduces the network planning costs.