Currently, tens of millions of devices around the world communicate with/ each other via cellular networks. In this paper, we study the stability of network content delivery protocols to the effects of network interference. To conduct the research, a tool was developed that allows testing of protocols, such as TCP, UDP, and QUIC. The analysis and comparison of the obtained test results were carried out. In the conclusion, the best protocols for content delivery were shown
Fifth generation (5G) networks are expected to connect a huge number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in many usage scenarios. The challenges of typical massive IoT applications with sporadic and short packet uplink transmissions are well studied, while not enough attention is given to the delivery of content of common interest, such as software/firmware updates and remote control, towards IoT devices in emerging point-to-multipoint scenarios. Moreover, the delivery of delay-sensitive IoT traffic is not sufficiently addressed in the literature. In this work we (i) identify the drawbacks of …
This article proposes an edge content delivery framework (ECD) based on mobile edge computing in the era of Internet of Things (IOT), to alleviate the load of the core network and improve the quality of experience (QoE) of mobile users. Considering mobile devices become both the content consumers and providers, and majority of the contents are unnecessary to be uploaded to the cloud datacenter, at the network edge, we deploy a content server to store the raw contents generated from the mobile users, and a cache pool to store the contents that are frequently requested by mobile users in the ECD…
We present and evaluate a procedure that utilizes mobility and throughput prediction to prefetch video streaming data in integrated cellular and WiFi networks. The effective integration of such heterogeneous wireless technologies will be significant for supporting high performance and energy efficient video streaming in ubiquitous networking environments. Our evaluation is based on trace-driven simulation considering empirical measurements and shows how various system parameters influence the performance, in terms of the number of paused video frames and the energy consumption; these parameter…
Emergency communications requires reliability and flexibility for disaster recovery and relief operation. Based upon existing commercial portable devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops), we propose a network architecture that uses cellular networks and WiFi connections to deliver large files in emergency scenarios under the impairments of wireless channel such as packet losses and intermittent connection issues. Network coding (NC) is exploited to improve the delivery probability. We first review the state-of-the-art of NC for emergency communications. Then, we present the proposed netwo…
An exponential increase in mobile video delivery will continue with the demand for higher resolution, multi-view and large-scale multicast video services. Novel fifth generation (5G) 3GPP New Radio (NR) standard will bring a number of new opportunities for optimizing video delivery across both 5G core and radio access networks. One of the promising approaches for video quality adaptation, throughput enhancement and erasure protection is the use of packet-level random linear network coding (RLNC). In this review paper, we discuss the integration of RLNC into the 5G NR standard, building upon th…
The market size of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs, a.k.a drones) can reach up to 10% of the global market value. In particular, drone delivery is one of the most attractive applications. The growing number of drones requires appropriate traffic management systems that will rely on cellular networks. However, it has been shown in the literature that these networks cannot provide reliable communication due to low coverage probability and frequent handovers. This article presents a potential solution targeting these problems while requiring no modifications of the existing infrastructure. Namely,…
Future wireless networks are expected to provide high bandwidth multimedia services in extended areas with homogeneous Quality of Service (QoS) levels. Conventional cellular architectures might not be able to satisfy these requirements due to the effect of surrounding obstacles and the signal attenuation with distance, in particular under Non Line of Sight (NLOS) propagation conditions. Recent studies have investigated the potential of Multi-hop Cellular Networks (MCNs) to overcome the traditional cellular architecture limitations through the integration of cellular and ad-hoc networking techn…
The reliability of current virtual reality (VR) delivery is low due to the limited resources on VR head-mounted displays (HMDs) and the transmission rate bottleneck of sub-6 GHz networks. In this paper, we propose a dual-connectivity sub-6 GHz and mmWave heterogeneous network architecture empowered by mobile edge capability. The core idea of the proposed architecture is to utilize the complementary advantages of sub-6 GHz links and mmWave links to conduct a collaborative edge resource design, which aims to improve the reliability of VR delivery. From the perspective of stochastic geometry, we …
To improve capacity and overcome some of the limitations of cellular wireless networks, drones with aerial base stations can be deployed to assist the terrestrial cellular wireless networks. The mobility of drones allows flexible network reconfiguration to adapt to dynamic traffic and channel conditions. However, this is achieved at the expense of more handovers since even a static user may experience a handover when the drones are mobile. In this letter, we provide an exact analysis of the handover rate and sojourn time (time between two subsequent handovers) for a network of drone base stati…
Mobile data traffic is growing exponentially and it is even more challenging to distribute content efficiently while users are "on the move" such as in public transport.The use of mobile devices for accessing content (e.g. videos) while commuting are both expensive and unreliable, although it is becoming common practice worldwide. Leveraging on the spatial and temporal correlation of content popularity and users' diverse network connectivity, we propose a novel content distribution system, \textit{uStash}, which guarantees better QoE with regards to access delays and cost of usage. The propose…
Mobile edge computing (MEC) has attracted great interests as a promising approach to augment computational capabilities of mobile devices. An important issue in the MEC paradigm is computation offloading. In this paper, we propose an integrated framework for computation offloading and interference management in wireless cellular networks with mobile edge computing. In this integrated framework, the MEC server makes the offloading decision according to the local computation overhead estimated by all user equipments (UEs) and the offloading overhead estimated by the MEC server itself. Then, the …
Mobile media has undoubtedly become the predominant source of traffic in wireless networks. The result is not only congestion and poor Quality-of-Experience, but also an unprecedented energy drain at both the network and user devices. In order to sustain this continued growth, novel disruptive paradigms of media delivery are urgently needed. We envision that two key contemporary advancements can be leveraged to develop greener media delivery platforms: 1) the proliferation of navigation hardware and software in mobile devices has created an era of location-awareness, where both the current and…
In recent years, network deployment based on High Altitude Platforms (HAPs) has gained momentum through several initiatives where air vehicles and telecommunications payloads have been adapted and refined, resulting in more efficient and less expensive platforms. In this paper, we study HAP as an alternative or complementary fast-evolving technology to provide mobile services in rural areas of emerging countries, where business models need to be carefully tailored to the reality of their related markets. In these large areas with low user density, mobile services uptake is likely to be slowed …
Location information is the major component in location based applications. This information is used in different safety and service oriented applications to provide users with services according to their Geolocation. There are many approaches to locate mobile nodes in indoor and outdoor environments. In this paper, we are interested in outdoor localization particularly in cellular networks of mobile nodes and presented a localization method based on cell and user location information. Our localization method is based on hello message delay (sending and receiving time) and coordinate informati…
Opportunistic mobile networks consisting of intermittently connected mobile devices have been exploited for various applications, such as computational offloading and mitigating cellular traffic load. In contrast to existing work, in this paper, we focus on cooperatively offloading data among mobile devices to maximally improve the probability of data delivery from a mobile device to intermittently connected infrastructure within a given time constraint, which is referred to as the \textit{cooperative offloading} problem. Unfortunately, the estimation of data delivery probability over an oppor…
As an alternative to downloading content from a cellular access network, mobile devices could be used to store data files and distribute them through device-to-device (D2D) communication. We consider a D2D-based storage community that is comprised of mobile users. Assuming that transmitting data from a base station to a mobile user consumes more energy than transmitting data between two mobile users, we show that it can be beneficial to use redundant storage to ensure that data files stay available to the community even if some of the storing users leave the network. We derive a tractable clos…
We propose behavior-oriented services as a new paradigm of communication in mobile human networks. Our study is motivated by the tight user-network coupling in future mobile societies. In such a paradigm, messages are sent to inferred behavioral profiles, instead of explicit IDs. Our paper provides a systematic framework in providing such services. First, user behavioral profiles are constructed based on traces collected from two large wireless networks, and their spatio-temporal stability is analyzed. The implicit relationship discovered between mobile users could be utilized to provide a ser…
This paper focuses on edge caching in dense heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets), in which small base stations (SBSs) with limited cache size store the popular contents, and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) aided macro base stations provide wireless self-backhaul when SBSs require the non-cached contents. Our aim is to address the effects of cell load and hit probability on the successful content delivery (SCD), and present the minimum required base station density for avoiding the access overload in an arbitrary small cell and backhaul overload in an arbitrary macrocell. The…
Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a cellular network that is popular and has been growing in recent years. It was developed to solve fragmentation issues of the first cellular system, and it addresses digital modulation methods, level of the network structure, and services. It is fundamental for organizations to become learning organizations to keep up with the technology changes for network services to be at a competitive level. A simulation analysis using the NetSim tool in this paper is presented for comparing different cellular network codecs for GSM network performance. The…
In this work, we study the joint optimization of edge caching and data sponsoring for a video content provider (CP), aiming at reducing the content delivery cost and increasing the CP's revenue. Specifically, we formulate the joint optimization problem as a two-stage decision problem for the CP. In Stage I, the CP determines the edge caching policy (for a relatively long time period). In Stage II, the CP decides the real-time data sponsoring strategy for each content request within the period. We first propose a Lyapunov-based online sponsoring strategy in Stage II, which reaches 90% of the of…
The increasing popularity of applications such as video streaming in today's mobile devices introduces higher demand for throughput, and puts a strain especially on cellular links. Cooperation among mobile devices by exploiting both cellular and local area connections is a promising approach to meet the increasing demand. In this paper, we consider that a group of cooperative mobile devices, exploiting both cellular and local area links and within proximity of each other, are interested in the same video content. Traditional network control algorithms introduce high overhead and delay in this …
The current Evolved Packet Core (EPC) 4th generation (4G) mobile network architecture features complicated control plane protocols and requires expensive equipment. Data delivery in the mobile packet core is performed based on a centralized mobility anchor between eNode B (eNB) elements and the network gateways. The mobility anchor is performed based on General Packet Radio Service tunnelling protocol (GTP), which has numerous drawbacks, including high tunnelling overhead and suboptimal routing between mobile devices on the same network. To address these challenges, here we describe new mobile…
Cloud computing is an emerging concept combining many fields of computing. The foundation of cloud computing is the delivery of services, software and processing capacity over the Internet, reducing cost, increasing storage, automating systems, decoupling of service delivery from underlying technology, and providing flexibility and mobility of information. However, the actual realization of these benefits is far from being achieved for mobile applications and open many new research questions. In order to better understand how to facilitate the building of mobile cloud-based applications, we ha…
Understanding mobile traffic patterns of large scale cellular towers in urban environment is extremely valuable for Internet service providers, mobile users, and government managers of modern metropolis. This paper aims at extracting and modeling the traffic patterns of large scale towers deployed in a metropolitan city. To achieve this goal, we need to address several challenges, including lack of appropriate tools for processing large scale traffic measurement data, unknown traffic patterns, as well as handling complicated factors of urban ecology and human behaviors that affect traffic patt…
We envision future mobile networks to be human-centric supporting interest-aware delivery, where an interest maybe based on behavior, such as mobility pattern, location, or web browsing (or user profile) such as affiliation, attributes, or activity. An essential capability in future networks will be the ability to provide scalable group communication. Current communication paradigms, including unicast and multicast, require explicit identification of destination nodes (through node IDs or group membership protocols), while directory services translate logical, interest-specific queries into de…
The volume and types of traffic data in mobile cellular networks have been increasing continuously. Meanwhile, traffic data change dynamically in several dimensions such as time and space. Thus, traffic modeling is essential for theoretical analysis and energy efficient design of future ultra-dense cellular networks. In this paper, the authors try to build a tractable and accurate model to describe the traffic variation pattern for a single base station in real cellular networks. Firstly a sinusoid superposition model is proposed for describing the temporal traffic variation of multiple base s…
Technological developments alongside VLSI achievements enable mobile devices to be equipped with multiple radio interfaces which is known as multihoming. On the other hand, the combination of various wireless access technologies, known as Next Generation Wireless Networks (NGWNs) has been introduced to provide continuous connection to mobile devices in any time and location. Cognitive radio networks as a part of NGWNs aroused to overcome spectrum inefficiency and spectrum scarcity issues. In order to provide seamless and ubiquitous connection across heterogeneous wireless access networks in th…
Similar to the evolution from the wired Internet to mobile Internet (MI), the growing demand for power delivery anywhere and anytime appeals for power grid transformation from wired to mobile domain. We propose here the next generation of power delivery network -- mobile power network (MPN) for wireless power transfer within a mobile range from several meters to tens of meters. At first, we present the MPN's concept evolution and application scenarios. Then, we introduce the MPN's supporting technology, namely resonant beam charging (RBC). As a long-range wireless power transfer (WPT) method, …
We consider location-dependent opportunistic bandwidth sharing between static and mobile downlink users in a cellular network. Each cell has some fixed number of static users. Mobile users enter the cell, move inside the cell for some time and then leave the cell. In order to provide higher data rate to mobile users, we propose to provide higher bandwidth to the mobile users at favourable times and locations, and provide higher bandwidth to the static users in other times. We formulate the problem as a long run average reward Markov decision process (MDP) where the per-step reward is a linear …
This paper presents cniCloud, a cloud-based platform for mobile devices to share and query the fine-grained cellular information at scale. cniCloud extends the single-device cellular analytics via crowdsourcing: It collects the fine-grained cellular network data from massive mobile devices, aggregates them in a cloud-based database, and provides interfaces for end users to run an SQL-like query over the cellular data. It offers efficient and responsive processing by optimizing the database storage and adopting the domain-specific optimizations. Our preliminary deployments and experiments valid…
Ever since the inception of mobile telephony, the downlink and uplink of cellular networks have been coupled, i.e. mobile terminals have been constrained to associate with the same base station (BS) in both the downlink and uplink directions. New trends in network densification and mobile data usage increase the drawbacks of this constraint, and suggest that it should be revisited. In this paper we identify and explain five key arguments in favor of Downlink/Uplink Decoupling (DUDe) based on a blend of theoretical, experimental, and logical arguments. We then overview the changes needed in cur…
We consider a group of mobile users, within proximity of each other, who are interested in watching the same online video at roughly the same time. The common practice today is that each user downloads the video independently on her mobile device using her own cellular connection, which wastes access bandwidth and may also lead to poor video quality. We propose a novel cooperative system where each mobile device uses simultaneously two network interfaces: (i) the cellular to connect to the video server and download parts of the video and (ii) WiFi to connect locally to all other devices in the…
The emerging technologies related to mobile data especially CDR data has great potential for mobility and transportation applications. However, it presents some challenges due to its spatio-temporal characteristics and sparseness. Therefore, in this article, we introduced a new model to refine the positioning accuracy of mobile devices using only CDR data and coverage areas locations. The adopted method has three steps: first, we discovered which model of movement (Move, Stay) is associated with the coverage areas where the mobile device was connected using a Kalman filter. Then, simultaneousl…
Handoff decisions are usually signal strength based because of simplicity and effectiveness. Apart from the conventional techniques, such as threshold and hysteresis based schemes, recently many artificial intelligent techniques such as Fuzzy Logic, Artificial Neural Network (ANN) etc. are also used for taking handoff decision. In this paper, an Artificial Neural Network based handoff algorithm is proposed and its performance is studied. We have used ANN here for taking fast and accurate handoff decision. In our proposed handoff algorithm, Backpropagation Neural Network model is used.The advan…
In future mobility support will require handling roaming in heterogeneous access networks. In order to enable seamless roaming it is necessary to minimize the impact of the vertical handoffs. Localized mobility management schemes such as FMIPv6 and HMIPv6 do not provide sufficient handoff performance, since they have been designed for horizontal handoffs. In this paper, we propose the SafetyNet protocol, which allows a Mobile Node to perform seamless vertical handoffs. Further, we propose a handoff timing algorithm which allows a Mobile Node to delay or even completely avoid upward vertical ha…
During the past few decades wireless technology has seen a tremendous growth. The recent introduction of high-end mobile devices has further increased subscriber's demand for high bandwidth. Current cellular systems require manual configuration and management of networks, which is now costly, time consuming and error prone due to exponentially increasing rate of mobile users and nodes. This leads to introduction of self organizing capabilities for network management with minimum human involvement. It is expected to permit higher end user Quality of Service (QoS) along with less operational and…
Merging Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), which is an emerging paradigm to meet the increasing computation demands from mobile devices, with the dense deployment of Base Stations (BSs), is foreseen as a key step towards the next generation mobile networks. However, new challenges arise for designing energy efficient networks since radio access resources and computing resources of BSs have to be jointly managed, and yet they are complexly coupled with traffic in both spatial and temporal domains. In this paper, we address the challenge of incorporating MEC into dense cellular networks, and propose a…
Rural areas continue to be plagued by limited data connectivity due to poor and unreliable power infrastructure, poor backhaul connectivity and lack of economic incentives for telecom providers. These factors continue to be an impediment to providing reliable, highly available and bandwidth intensive mobile services and applications to function well in such contexts. This paper presents the design, implementation and deployment of GreenLinks, a new ground-up platform that enables intermittency-aware, reliable and available cellular services and application support in rural contexts under extre…
Utilizing device-to-device (D2D) connections among mobile devices is promising to meet the increasing throughput demand over cellular links. In particular, when mobile devices are in close proximity of each other and are interested in the same content, D2D connections such as Wi-Fi Direct can be opportunistically used to construct a cooperative (and jointly operating) cellular and D2D networking system. However, it is crucial to understand, quantify, and exploit the potential of network coding for cooperating mobile devices in the joint cellular and D2D setup. In this paper, we consider this p…
Most cellular network communication strategies are focused on data traffic scenarios rather than energy balance and efficient utilization. Thus mobile users in hot cells may suffer from low throughput due to energy loading imbalance problem. In state of art cellular network technologies, relay stations extend cell coverage and enhance signal strength for mobile users. However, busy traffic makes the relay stations in hot area run out of energy quickly. In this paper, we propose an energy balancing strategy in which the mobile nodes are able to dynamically select and hand over to the relay stat…
The performance of a cellular network can be significantly improved by employing many base stations (BSs), which shortens transmission distances. However, there exist no known results on quantifying the performance gains from deploying many BSs. To address this issue, we adopt a stochastic-geometry model of the downlink cellular network and analyze the mobile outage probability. Specifically, given Poisson distributed BSs, the outage probability is shown to diminish inversely with the increasing ratio between the BS and mobile densities. Furthermore, we analyze the optimal tradeoff between the…
The flux of social media and the convenience of mobile connectivity has created a mobile data phenomenon that is expected to overwhelm the mobile cellular networks in the foreseeable future. Despite the advent of 4G/LTE, the growth rate of wireless data has far exceeded the capacity increase of the mobile networks. A fundamentally new design paradigm is required to tackle the ever-growing wireless data challenge. In this article, we investigate the problem of massive content delivery over wireless networks and present a systematic view on content-centric network design and its underlying chall…
In this paper, we present PCNM, a new mobile platform for cellular networks measurements. PCNM is based on a set of techniques that tailors theoretical calculations and simulations to the real cellular network environment. It includes: (a) modules that measure different parameters of a base station (BS) such as localization, cells identification, time advance information, reception level and quality, (b) a new protocol that optimizes the task of network measurement by monitoring a set of mobile nodes and finally (c) the ability to extend an existing cellular network by adding new base stations…
Study on human mobility is gaining increasing attention from the research community with its multiple applications to use in mobile networks, particularly for the purpose of message delivery in the Delay Tolerant Networks. To better understand the potential of mobile nodes as message relays, our study investigates the encounter pattern of mobile devices. Specifically, we examine the extensive network traces that reflect mobility of communication devices. We analyze the periodicity in encounter pattern by using power spectral analysis. Strong periodicity was observed among rarely encountering m…
Content-centric networking (CCN) introduces a paradigm shift from a host centric to an information centric communication model for future Internet architectures. It supports the retrieval of a particular content regardless of the physical location of the content. Content caching and content delivery networks are the most popular approaches to deal with the inherent issues of content delivery on the Internet that are caused by its design. Moreover, intermittently connected mobile environments or disruptive networks present a significant challenge to CCN deployment. In this paper, we consider th…
Since the last few years there has been a phenomenal growth in the wireless industry. Widespread wireless technologies, increasing variety of user-friendly and multimedia- enabled terminals and wider availability of open source tools for content generation has lead encouraged user-centric networks resulting in a need for efficient network design. The objective of this paper is comprehensive study related to 5G technology of mobile communication. Existing research work in mobile communication is related to 5G technology. The major contribution of this study is the key provisions of 5G (Fifth Ge…
Mobile edge caching is a promising technology for the next-generation mobile networks to effectively offer service environment and cloud-storage capabilities at the edge of networks. By exploiting the storage and computing resources at the network edge, mobile edge caching can significantly reduce service latency, decrease network load, and improve user experience. On the other hand, edge caching is subject to a number of threats regarding privacy violation and security breach. In this article, we first introduce the architecture of mobile edge caching, and address the key problems regarding w…
With the commercial launch of 5G technologies and fast pace of expansion of cellular network infrastructure, it is expected that cellular and mobile networks traffic will exponentially increase. In addition, new services are expected to spread widely, such as the Internet of Things connected to mobile networks. This will add additional burden in terms of traffic load. As a result, some studies suggest that mobile traffic may increase more than 1000 times compared to the amount of traffic that is generated nowadays. This means that network resources for mobile services must be managed and contr…
This paper investigates the use of WiFi and mobile device-to-device networks, with vehicular ad hoc networks being a typical example, as a complementary means to offload and reduce the traffic load of cellular networks. A novel cooperative content dissemination strategy is proposed for a heterogeneous network consisting of different types of devices with different levels of mobility, ranging from static WiFi access points to mobile devices such as vehicles. The proposed strategy offloads a significant proportion of data traffic from cellular networks to WiFi or device-to-device networks. Detai…
Cooperation among mobile devices and utilizing multiple interfaces such as cellular and local area links simultaneously are promising to meet the increasing throughput demand over cellular links. In particular, when mobile devices are in the close proximity of each other and are interested in the same content, device-to-device connections such as WiFi-Direct, in addition to cellular links, can be utilized to construct a cooperative system. However, it is crucial to understand the potential of network coding for cooperating mobile devices with multiple interfaces. In this paper, we consider thi…
We present PCach, a smartphone-based approach for relieving the congestion in cellular network resulting from the exponential growth in mobile data traffic. The basic idea underlying PCach is simple: use WiFi to proactively cache content on the smartphone's memory, which otherwise would have been delivered through the cellular network. However, it leads to several challenging questions, including how much mobile data actually flows through cellular networks, how much data can be pre-cached, and when and what to pre-cache. We address these questions progressively using a thorough analysis of us…
Mobility management and bandwidth management are two major research issues in a cellular mobile network. Mobility management consists of two basic components: location management and handoff management. To Provide QoS to the users Handoff is a key element in wireless cellular networks. It is often initiated either by crossing a cell boundary or by deterioration in the quality of signal in the current channel. In this paper, a new admission control policy for cellular mobile network is being proposed. Two important QoS parameter in cellular networks are Call Dropping Probability (CDP) and Hando…
Within the framework of a Device-to-Device (D2D) data offloading system for cellular networks, we propose a Content Delivery Management System (CDMS) in which the instant for transmitting a content to a requesting node, through a D2D communication, is selected to minimize the energy consumption required for transmission. The proposed system is particularly fit to highly dynamic scenarios, such as vehicular networks, where the network topology changes at a rate which is comparable with the order of magnitude of the delay tolerance. We present an analytical framework able to predict the system p…
We consider stochastic cellular networks where base stations locations form a homogenous Poisson point process and each mobile is attached to the base station that provides the best mean signal power. The mobile is in outage if the SINR falls below some threshold. The handover decision has to be made if the mobile is in outage for some time slots. The outage probability and the handover probability is evaluated in taking into account the effect of path loss, shadowing, Rayleigh fast fading, frequency factor reuse and conventional beamforming. The main assumption is that the Rayleigh fast fadin…
