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Network mobility basic support (NEMO-BS) is able to maintain Internet connectivity among a set of mobile network nodes and, hence, has been considered as an intelligent transportation systems standard. However, NEMO-BS often results in unacceptably long handover latency and increased data loss to the vehicle. To address these issues, several schemes have employed a fast handover scheme by using Fast Proxy Mobile IPv6 (FPMIPv6) in NEMO-BS. Because these previous schemes are designed for a single vehicle, they have to establish the tunnel between the mobile access gateways (MAGs) for every single vehicle that moves to a new Internet protocol domain. Thus, these schemes may incur significant signaling overhead in vehicular networks (VNs), where vehicles have high mobility, and the number of vehicles is large. In this paper, we propose a group-based network mobility management scheme that also adopts the approach of FPMIPv6 to mitigate such signaling burden. Our proposed scheme establishes multiple tunnels at once for a group of moving vehicles by sending a single tunnel-establishment message to the next MAG. We also propose to pre-establish the tunnel by considering the geographic characteristics of VNs with the intent to reduce the handover latency. Using analytical models, we evaluate the performance of the proposed network mobility management scheme as compared with other previous schemes in terms of signaling cost, handover latency, and packet delivery cost. Our analytical study is verified by simulation results.

Efforts to improve the potential of 5G networks and machine-to-machine (M2M) communications in a way that could help to develop and evolve mobile health (m-health) applications are still in preliminary stages. This is mainly because the specifications and technical solutions for these technologies are still being defined and are under extensive discussion. Thus, this is an excellent opportunity to establish the needs and requirements that future 5G networks must achieve to improve healthcare solutions. Ideally, future m-health solutions should provide services with near-zero latency, advanced quality-of-service capabilities, and data rates on the order of Gbps. This article presents recent research linking the growing m-health field with the need for 5G and M2M technologies. Moreover, this work explores the multiple benefits that these emerging technologies could bring to enable the broad expansion of m-health solutions.

With the rapid development of mobile Internet, people pay increasing attention to the wireless network security problem. But due to the specificity of the wireless network, at present it is rare to see the research of wireless intrusion alerts clustering method for mobile Internet. This paper proposes a Wireless Intrusion Alert Clustering Method (WIACM) based on the information of the mobile terminal. The method includes alert formatting, alert reduction and alert classification. By introducing key information of the mobile terminal device, this method aggregates the original alerts into hyper alerts. The experimental results show that WIACM would be appropriate for real attack scenarios of mobile Internet, and reduce the amount of alerts with more accuracy of alert analysis.

5G network is anticipated to meet the challenging requirements of mobile traffic in the 2020’s, which are characterized by super high data rate, low latency, high mobility, high energy efficiency, and high traffic density. This paper provides an overview of China Mobile’s 5G vision and potential solutions. Targeting a paradigm shift to user-centric network operation from the traditional cell-centric operation, 5G radio access network (RAN) design considerations are presented, including RAN restructure, Turbo charged edge, core network (CN) and RAN function repartition, and network slice as a service. Adaptive multiple connections in the user-centric operation is further investigated, where the decoupled downlink and uplink, decoupled control and data, and adaptive multiple connections provide sufficient means to achieve a 5G network with “no more cells.” Software-defined air interface (SDAI) is presented under a unified framework, in which the frame structure, waveform, multiple access, duplex mode, and antenna configuration can be adaptively configured. New paradigm of 5G network featuring user-centric network (UCN) and SDAI is needed to meet the diverse yet extremely stringent requirements across the broad scope of 5G scenarios.

Since 2012, 3GPP Release 12 (the beyond fourth generation (B4G) network) has been adopted as the next generation public safety network to be deployed in 2015. In addition to conventional high data rate transmissions in LTE-A, a public safety network is required to further support communications for users out of base station (BS) coverage. Avoiding any signal relay via BSs, direct data exchanges among users, known as deviceto- device (D2D) communications, have consequently emerged as the most crucial innovation and the mandatory technology for a public safety network. However, due to the tight schedule for standardization, a special form of "broadcasting" communications has been adopted by D2D communications in Release 12. To fully comprehend such an unprecedented technology in cellular networks, this article provides a comprehensive overview of D2D operations in Release 12. From the system architecture to the radio interface, the provided insights boost the knowledge to practice D2D communications over cellular networks.

Mobile database is a kind of distributed database which is able to support mobile computing. For traditional mobile database model, there are some problems in Ad hoc network such as significant increase in the number of transaction conflicts, in communication costs, etc. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the traditional mobile database model. The paper aims at proposing algorithms of data synchronization and transaction redo etc. to enable mobile host to get access to the database efficiently and correctly. The experimental results show that the new mobile database model has good stability. 1. Preface With the development of network technology, information technology and database technology, mobile application has gradually changed people's life and work. However, as a main support of mobile application -- mobile database is able to meets the needs of getting the information that one needs anytime and anywhere. That is to say a new era has opened up and it would have gradual impact on us in every aspect. Traditional mobile database model mainly includes server, mobile support node and mobile host. The traditional mobile database has the following problems: the location of the mobile node is not fixed, the network communication is not symmetrical, and disconnections of the network occur frequently, the storage capacity and the processing ability are limited. However, the network based on traditional mobile database model has a large number of basic communication facilities such as base stations, mobile switching centers, etc., and most of them have been built around the city. Therefore, it is not necessary to consider too much about the effects of environment. As a multi-hop, centerless, self-organizing wireless network, Ad hoc network is adopted mostly because the environment or other factors are not conducive to laying infrastructure or the infrastructure has been damaged. In reality, one of the typical applications of Ad hoc network is for the investigation teams to perform field missions, to help disaster relief, and mine surveying, etc. In Ad hoc network, in view of the reasons such as limited capacity of energy and storage of the mobile host, limited bandwidth, and frequent disconnections with the master server, etc., it will bring about a lot of problems to apply the traditional database model to Ad hoc networks, it is necessary to improve the traditional mobile database model to accommodate Ad hoc network. Many experts have done in-depth study on mobile database, including Mallikharjuna Rao, N. Naidu, etc. who have applied fuzzy database to mobile database model, thus it solved the problem of uncertain data storage, improved the performance of mobile database model; Le Gruenwald, Shankar M. Banik, who also provides the methods of

In this paper, an extensive review has been carried out on the trends of existing as well as proposed potential enabling technologies that are expected to shape the fifth generation (5G) mobile wireless networks. Based on the classification of the trends, we develop a 5G network architectural evolution framework that comprises three evolutionary directions, namely, (1) radio access network node and performance enabler, (2) network control programming platform, and (3) backhaul network platform and synchronization. In (1), we discuss node classification including low power nodes in emerging machine-type communications, and network capacity enablers, e.g., millimeter wave communications and massive multiple-input multiple-output. In (2), both logically distributed cell/device-centric platforms, and logically centralized conventional/wireless software defined networking control programming approaches are discussed. In (3), backhaul networks and network synchronization are discussed. A comparative analysis for each direction as well as future evolutionary directions and challenges toward 5G networks are discussed. This survey will be helpful for further research exploitations and network operators for a smooth evolution of their existing networks toward 5G networks.

A mobile telephone system is designed to facilitate better communication among 8000 users in the centre of Roma. The network performance prediction tool was used to determine the best location for deployment of the base station. It was based on some parameters or predictions which were obtained by calculating needed data to construct the base station. Theoretically call planning, cell splitting, frequency re-use, offered traffic etc. techniques are used to obtain a good coverage for a certain city. In order to find the best cell cluster, many calculations were also implemented. The objective achieved was designing a network system in city centre of Roma. The 7 cell cluster and 12 cell cluster was selected for its overall efficiency. In addition to this, co-channel interference, best server, maximum received power etc. were examined for deployment of the base station with help of Winprop.

The suitability of EGNSS (including EGNOS and Galileo early services) for safety railway applications has been analysed by several European projects such as Grail, Grail-2, Satloc, 3InSat, and it is currently being analysed by ERSAT EAV. ERSAT EAV in particular is addressing the following three challenges beyond the state-of-the-art: a) reuse of ETCS odometry by adding the virtual balise concept to eliminate the fixed balise along the line; b) adoption of the public EGNOS Augmentation network “upgraded” with Local augmentation networks to fulfil the railways’ requirements; c) verification and validation of alternative GNSS solutions to guarantee localization functions in areas where the GNSS signal is not available and/or subject to interference. This paper focuses on the third of these challenges, addressing the design and the implementation of a complementary positioning system (CPS) for GNSS-denied areas. This system is based mainly on the Public Land Mobile Network (PLMN) information but also incorporates additional source information (such as predefined GNSS blocked zone information and GNSS positioning information for calibration purposes, when available) in order to enhance positioning performance. This paper deals with the different steps taken to create the CPS: 1. Analysis of the alternatives for complementary positioning systems when GNSS is not available 2. Simulation and development of algorithms for the CPS in the lab 3. Creation of a prototype for the CPS based on COTS components More specifically, after analysing the state-of-the-art technologies, the algorithms for the selected solution will be implemented in the laboratory. In order to analyse the theoretical performance of the algorithms, the environment and observables for the algorithms will also be modelled in the simulation platform. The performance of the CPS will be analysed in terms of accuracy, reliability, continuity and integrity in a way similar to the GNSS systems. Finally, the algorithms will be implemented in a prototype based on COTS components so that the CPS will not be a theoretical solution but also a real solution that could be useful for the on-board positioning function in trains when GNSS solutions are not available.

In the wake of the extensive application of the fourth generation system, investigations of new technologies have been moving ahead vigorously to embrace the next generation communications in 2020. Thereinto, the technique of ultra-dense networks (UDNs) serves as a key enabler in meeting the roaring mobile traffic demands. With the prevalence of mobile Internet services especially those involve the mobile payment, security has gained an unprecedented amount of attention and become a highlighted feature for the fifth generation. Resource allocation, one of the most significant tools on getting over the obstacle of ubiquitous interference as well as elevating the spectrum/energy efficiency, has attracted substantial efforts, whereas not much of them consider the information security. In a word, security-oriented resource allocation is a non-ignorable field in UDNs resource management, which still needs further study. This paper takes the safety performance as the pivotal issue and refers to the core idea of physical layer security, trying to pave a way for the security design under the framework of the densified networks. In particular, a review of the classical techniques in physical layer security is given from the perspective of resource allocation, which may enlighten the security-based resource management in UDNs. Besides, the challenges as well as potential problems are identified on the basis of the characteristics of UDNs, which can be favorable for targeting the future efforts. In a case study, it is shown that effective blockage of the eavesdropper in UDNs is achievable with the aid of physical layer security, and that the spectrum efficiency is also improved through the careful resource allocation.

Online video service has become prevalent in recent years. A better understanding of the user behavior of such service is crucial for allocating the network resources and adjusting the service design. While there are some measurement studies on the non-mobile video services in fixed network, the usage of video service in mobile network is yet to be explored. In this paper, we present a detailed analysis of the user behavior characteristics of a leading comprehensive online video service, namely Youku, in cellular network. This paper is based on a large-scale data set containing over 17 billion traffic traces, collected from a major cellular network in Northeastern China. We analyze the user behavior from three key aspects: data consumption, service usage, and mobility. We provide an insight into how the mobile video service is utilized by users (especially the heavy users), by measuring the user intensities and various representative behavior features in each analysis aspect, such as active time, replay rate, video category, access location, and residence time. We reveal the patterns of different user behaviors, and discuss the implications for practical application. The findings of this paper can provide direct help for network operators and service providers to improve the network performance and user experience.

Next-generation mobile networks (5G) are defined to provide access in the framework of heterogeneous systems where it is crucial to have “always on” and “everywhere connectivity” capabilities. This is of fundamental importance even in 4G mobile systems, down to 3G and also Wi-Fi and WiMAX. In order to guarantee access to users with handheld devices equipped with multiple radio interfaces, an automated and reconfigurable tool for selecting the best network to be connected with is needed. This should be achieved by avoiding service outages. Current vertical handovers, i.e., switching from a network to another, are essentially based on power received levels and often do not avoid temporary service outages. We propose in this paper a procedure to access mobile networks by sensing multiple performance parameters related to networks available in the considered area. We target at maximizing the probability of accessing the wireless medium despite the technology used. We develop an algorithm, based on dynamic programming, able to select the most suitable network. We present the performance of the proposed algorithm both on the basis of computer simulations and on tests performed in an Arduino-based hardware platform.

Mobile web traffic analytics helps mobile network operators to understand subscriber behaviors and network characteristics. With the increasing prevalence of mobile devices, people are prone to access Internet by mobile devices. Meanwhile, a large amount of applications and services are being moved to the mobile web. These changes have resulted in the elevated complexity of mobile web traffic. Consequently, original web traffic models require an adjustment, and network understanding methods also need to update. In this paper, we proposed a stream algorithm to identify user click requests, and reconstructed user-browser interactions by leveraging Spark Streaming framework. The proposed algorithm was tested by massive real HTTP traffic records, which were captured from a cellular core network by high-performance monitoring devices. A statistical analysis was made on the reconstructed data set, and the overall characteristics of mobile web traffic were presented as well. Finally, major improvements in mobile web traffic models were obtained, and the key factors affecting web performance were found. We believe that our models and findings can be useful for mobile network operators to exhaustively understand the mobile web traffic and effectively analyze subscriber behaviors.

Due to the rapid development of mobile social networks, mobile big data play an important role in providing mobile social users with various mobile services. However, as mobile big data have inherent properties, current MSNs face a challenge to provide mobile social user with a satisfactory quality of experience. Therefore, in this article, we propose a novel framework to deliver mobile big data over content- centric mobile social networks. At first, the characteristics and challenges of mobile big data are studied. Then the content-centric network architecture to deliver mobile big data in MSNs is presented, where each datum consists of interest packets and data packets, respectively. Next, how to select the agent node to forward interest packets and the relay node to transmit data packets are given by defining priorities of interest packets and data packets. Finally, simulation results show the performance of our framework with varied parameters.

In recent years, several kinds of wireless networks have been widely deployed to enhance mobile communication. In this study, we focus on Taiwan's electronic bus (e-bus) system and how public transit data are communicated. In Taiwan's current system, this type of transit data is provided through specific mobile network operators. Such operations require a huge expenditure every month to pay for the subscription fees for data transmission. Therefore, we design a new network system using digital mobile radio (DMR) and enhanced Wi-Fi to replace the current mobile network operator. Furthermore, we propose a dynamic update strategy to increase the system capacity. In the case of emergencies or disasters, 2G/3G/LTE networks may not be very reliable, and our proposed system could be used during rescue operations. It also has lower costs than using mobile networks. The implementation of the system architecture, the application of DMR, and enhanced Wi-Fi in the proposed system, as well as the dynamic update strategy are described in this paper.

With the development of 5G-based Vehicle to Everything (V2X) communications, many emerging applications have been prospered. However, either of them requires V2X communications to provide secure, reliable, and efficient handover authentication with low computation overheads. It becomes extremely challenging when vehicles move with frequent handovers. In this paper, a lightweight handover authentication scheme is proposed for 5G-based V2X communications. Specifically, each vehicle can initially acquire a temporary encrypted identity from a network function virtualization (NFV)-manager in its home public land mobile network (PLMN). This encrypted identity is used to authenticate the vehicle to the new PLMN when a handover occurs. By comparing with two previous schemes, simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves over 50% less computation overhead than those achieved in both of them, while does not affected the overall network handover latency much. Additionally, the proposed scheme can thwart both inside and outside network attacks well.

The Cellular Network makes up the heart to how mobile devices communicate with one another, share and stream data, and actually perform specific core functions. Two main types of communications are at work within the cellular network: Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) and Global Systems for Mobile Communications (GSM). Mobile devices must constantly perform network authentications and communicate back where they are located. A few short years ago only GSM devices were found to have subscriber identity module (SIM) cards. Today, many smartphone CDMA devices require SIM. This chapter provides insight into how all the components work together, terms that are used to describe the components, and how a call is routed to either a landline or another mobile device.

advancement in technology related to mobile devices has become a very important platform to share mobile information among millions of users across the globe. Also the mobile devices are easily available and accessible among the people. Recently, the mobile devices have been powered by faster and multicore processors, more available memory and sophisticated user display. People prefer smart phones rather than carrying laptops or desktops because of their small size, light weight and anywhere anytime information provider. Many users need to access the services on these mobile phones connecting through the web. Just like centralized service providers there is a great need of providing service through mobile phones. In most scenarios, personal smart phones also provide web services. These services are referred as mobile web services since the devices are in mobility. In this paper, a review on the availability and discovery of web services in resource constrained mobile specific environments and the future trends have been discussed.

Network architecture innovation has been driven by virtualization and centralization of network control based on software-defined networking SDN and by network functions moved to the cloud with network function virtualization NFV. These two principles are considered as promising enablers to reduce costs and spur innovation. In the first part of the paper, we argue that the evolved packet system EPS can be seen as a service function chain and an area in which service providers can capitalize on SDN and NFV capabilities. A multi-layer modular architecture for carrier networks based on SDN and NFV principles is provided. In the second part of the paper, we focus solely on SDN, and we argue that service providers can benefit from SDN to reach cost savings in their mobile network. Our work focuses on the cost savings that can be reached via the centralization of control and the operational paradigm of developing and operating the network management software in-house instead of buying a vendor solution only. We quantify the potential cost savings that can be reached in an Internet protocol/multi-protocol label switching-based transport service with SDN capabilities that interconnects the key functional elements in a mobile network. In the analysis, we evaluate the impact on capital expenditures and provide details on the impact on operational expenditures. The evaluation can serve as a blueprint for techno-economic analysis of the mobile network operator's processes in the transport network of a mobile network. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

To satisfy the explosive growth of mobile data traffic and communication connections in the year 2020 and beyond, the 5th generation (5G) mobile network will have to support more access schemes, frequency bands and diversified scenarios compared with the existing networks. Throughout the development of communication systems, the diversified combination of different technologies always makes the network more and more "heavy", e.g., heavy deployment, heavy investment, heavy operation and maintenance (O&M), which has brought great challenges to the network applications. Therefore, 5G system should be designed as an easy network, characterized by easy deployment, low investment, easy O&M and delightful experience. According to this discussion, this paper identifies several technical components which can make up an Easy Network for 5G air interface, and the details of the Easy Network features are analyzed. Our study aims to make efforts to promote a healthy and sustainable environment for 5G at the beginning of the system design.

Nowadays, the explosively growing demands for mobile service bring both challenges and opportunities to wireless networks, giving birth to fifth generation (5G) mobile networks. The features and requirements of different services are diverse in 5G. The management and coordination among heterogeneous networks, applications, and user demands need the 5G network to be open and flexible to ensure that network resources are allocated with high efficiency. To fulfill these requirements, wireless network virtualization is used to integrate heterogeneous wireless networks and coordinate network resources. In this article we propose a model of wireless network virtualization consisting of three planes: the data plane, the cognitive plane, and the control plane. A novel control signaling scheme has also been designed to support the proposed model. From the implementation perspective of network virtualization, a hierarchical control scheme based on cell-clustering has been used with dynamically optimized efficiency of resource utilization. Two use cases have been analyzed to demonstrate how the schemes work under the proposed model to improve resource efficiency and the user experience.

The supporting infrastructure and communications technologies for vehicular networking contexts are heterogeneous by nature. Large coverage access networks, such as 3G/4G, coexist with wireless local area networks and dedicated short-range communications. In such a scenario, we investigate the seamless provision of mobile Internet access and general IP services over the heterogeneous network, in particular for loosely coupling architectures. We propose a hybrid global mobility scheme that allows for the ongoing IP sessions to be transferred across dissimilar radio access networks that may belong to different administrative domains. In order to achieve the global mobility, our scheme combines host- and network-based mobility. The solution focuses on urban vehicular scenarios and enables seamless communications for in-vehicle networks, passengers with mobile devices, and users of public transportation commuting along the system. By means of analytical evaluations and simulations of realistic urban vehicular scenarios, we show that our hybrid scheme can achieve seamless IP communications for mobile Internet access over the heterogeneous vehicular network.

Continuous growth in the energy consumption of mobile networks has become a major concern for mobile carriers. Since current mobile networks are dominated by mobile data traffic generated by over-the-top mobile applications, it is crucial for mobile carriers to understand how much network energy is used to deliver these applications. Here, we use real network and application measurements to comprehensively analyze the energy consumption of 12 common mobile applications by breaking down their total energy consumption into data and signaling energy components. The results provide insights into the different proportions of data and signaling energy (due to LTE signaling) for different mobile applications. They show that the energy consumption of a mobile application can vary at different base station cell sites due to different ratios of throughput to physical resource block utilization. We estimate the total monthly energy consumption of all 4G users of a major mobile carrier using conventional mobile services, such as voice and the short messaging service, and two over-the-top applications, i.e. a popular instant messaging application in China and an online video application. The results show that signaling energy consumption may become a major concern for mobile carriers, and that this issue will be exacerbated as the usage of over-the-top applications continues to grow. Energy assessment of mobile applications provides valuable information to enable mobile carriers to improve the energy efficiency of their networks. An energy assessment tool that enables real-time network and service energy monitoring will also assist in developing energy-efficient network policies for diverse applications with different energy consumption profiles. Furthermore, given our signaling energy consumption findings for over-the-top applications, there may be benefits for mobile operators to introduce a surcharge for signaling traffic to mitigate the high signaling energy consumption of some over-the-top mobile applications.

With ever growing mobile Internet and the explosion of its applications, users are experiencing abundant services from different content providers via different network service providers in the heterogeneous network. The information-centric network (ICN) advocates getting rid of the current host-centric network protocol because information dissemination rather than end-to-end communication contributes to the majority of today's network traffic. Furthermore, it is better for network entities to converge as a whole in order to take advantage of open, scalable, and smart traffic transmission. The cloud radio access network is one of the emerging architecture evolutions on the wireless side for easier infrastructure deployment and network management. Therefore, when the information-centric network meets the C-RAN in the Het-Net, it is worthwhile and consequential to integrate ICN protocol with C-RAN architecture to achieve more efficient communication and information management. Moreover, SDN has been recognized as another promising architecture evolution to achieve the flexibility and reconfigurability of dense HetNets; its inherent advantage lies in global uniform control of the wired network. Thus, any of ICN, C-RAN and SDN is the complementary to the others. In this article, we contribute to a fresh proposal for and elaboration of the integration of the ICN, CRAN, and SDN for the HetNet to achieve a win-win situation. The vision of the proposed system is demonstrated, followed by the advantages and challenges. We further present a hybrid system in a large-scale wireless heterogeneous campus network.

In early 2012, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) under the United Nations initiated a program to develop an International Mobile Telecommunication (IMT) system for 2020 and beyond (IMT-2020), thereby officially kicking off the global race toward a yet to be defined fifth generation (5G) mobile network. Fast forward three years, the vision of this next-generation system is beginning to take shape. A recent ITU-Radiocommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-R) Draft Recommendation [1] on IMT-2020 identifies three key usage scenarios in 5G as enhanced mobile broadband, massive machine-type communications, and ultra-reliable and low-latency communications. The same report also issues guidance on the requirements for these scenarios in terms of performance index such as spectrum efficiency, latency, connection density, and area traffic capacity, as shown in Fig. 1. In order to meet these requirements and bring this visionary system to reality, we believe that the future 5G network will be one that is built on a small cell backbone. As spectrum suitable for mobile communication becomes more and more scarce, densification is the only way to meet the area traffic capacity demand. Even for millimeter-wave band, where spectrum is abundant, the channel’s propagation characteristics will likely limit its range for mobile access to that of a small cell, at least in the early phase of 5G before device technology matures. The small cell also brings the radio access point closer to the end device, thereby shortening the last and most challenging segment of an end-to-end communication link, consequently reducing latency and increasing reliability. Many of the massive number of machine-type communications can also benefit from the extended battery life resulting from shorter uplink distance. To facilitate the deployment of a future mobile network that has the small cell as its primary traffic bearing workhorse,the current radio access architecture needs to undergo some major revamping, and new technologies need to be introduced.

The unprecedented growth of mobile data traffic challenges the performance and economic viability of today's cellular networks and calls for novel network architectures and communication solutions. Mobile data offloading through third-party Wi-Fi or femtocell access points (APs) can significantly alleviate the cellular congestion and enhance user quality of service (QoS), without requiring costly and time-consuming infrastructure investments. This solution has substantial benefits both for the mobile network operators (MNOs) and the mobile users, but comes with unique technical and economic challenges that must be jointly addressed. In this paper, we consider a market where MNOs lease APs that are already deployed by residential users for the offloading purpose. We assume that each MNO can employ multiple APs, and each AP can concurrently serve traffic from multiple MNOs. We design an iterative double-auction mechanism that ensures the efficient operation of the market by maximizing the differences between the MNOs' offloading benefits and APs' offloading costs. The proposed scheme takes into account the particular characteristics of the wireless network, such as the coupling of MNOs' offloading decisions and APs' capacity constraints. Additionally, it does not require full information about the MNOs and APs and creates non-negative revenue for the market broker.

With the ongoing worldwide deployment of 4G networks and consequent drop of the utilization ratio of legacy networks, network operators need a cost-effective way to flexibly operate and manage networks. The obligatory continuation of legacy services in their respective legacy networks consistently incurs OPEX. In this situation, we argue that network operators can benefit from the recent advances in SDN and NFV. This article introduces a blueprint for designing a novel network architecture that integrates legacy network services into 4G networks through SDN/NFV’s software-based characteristics. In addition, our architecture reduces time to market for employing newly emerging services without mandating any changes in 4G infrastructures.

In this paper we present an advanced QoS provisioning module with vertical multi-homing framework for future fifth generation (5G) mobile terminals with radio network aggregation capability and traffic load sharing in heterogeneous mobile and wireless environments. The proposed 5G mobile terminal framework is leading to high performance utility networks with high QoS provisioning for any given multimedia service, higher bandwidth utilization and multi-RAT capabilities. It is using vertical multi-homing and virtual QoS routing algorithms within the mobile terminal, that is able to handle simultaneously multiple radio network connections via multiple wireless and mobile network interfaces. Our 5G proposal is user-centric, targeted to always-on connectivity, maximal network utilization, maximal throughput, seamless handovers and performances improvement by using vertical multi-homing, as well as session continuity. The performance of our proposed mobile terminal framework for 5G is evaluated using simulations and analysis with multimedia traffic in heterogeneous mobile and wireless scenarios with coexistence of multiple radio access technologies, such as 3G, 4G as well as future 5G radio access networks.

This paper explores the upstream network connectivity structure of Bhutan's monopolistic supplier of broadband mobile access. It is claimed that the presence of a hierarchical and well interconnected network, matched with a price-matching promise, may provide a crucial early mover's advantage against the second country's mobile provider, and entrant into the broadband mobile access segment. An upstream mobile connectivity dataset based on a large number of traceroutes was generated using Portolan, an Android's smartphones application. These data were used to perform an Internet Periphery Analysis highlighting the role played by existing connection agreements between Bhutan's incumbent network and other key international Internet providers. These international operators emerge as critical and central nodes for the Bhutanese interconnection network, a role providing them with a favourable bargaining position along the Internet end to end connectivity chain. The analysis identifies the need for regulatory authorities to address features of the hierarchical structure of network connectivity, in order to ensure cost-based network access, a precondition for entry and fair competition in the broadband mobile market. This paper analyses the upstream connectivity for mobile Internet access in Bhutan.An Internet Periphery view allows studying connectivity bottlenecks in rural areas.The 3G incumbent connectivity is analysed just before the entrance of a competitor.The Bhutanese Internet traffic relies on the centrality of international providers.The emerged hierarchy features may prevent access to network under fair Conditions.

Scalable and diagnosable are the two most crucial needs for voice call quality assessment in mobile networks. However, while these two requirements are widely accepted by mobile carriers, they do not receive enough attention during the development. Current related research mainly focuses on audio feature analysis, which is costly, sensitive to language and tones, and infeasible to be applied to large-scale mobile networks. In this paper, we revisit this problem, and for the first time explore wireless network , the causal factor that directly impacts the mobile voice quality but yet lacks attention for decades. We design CrowdMi, a wireless analytical tool that model the mobile voice quality by crowdsourcing and mining the network indicators of cellphones. CrowdMi mines hundreds of network indicators to build a causal relationship between voice quality and network conditions, and carefully calibrates the model according to the widely accepted perceptual objective listening quality assessment (POLQA) voice assessment standard. We implement a light-load CrowdMi Client App in Android smartphones, which automatically collects data through user crowdsourcing and outputs to the CrowdMi Server in our data center that runs the mining algorithm. We conduct a pilot trial in VoLTE network in different geographical areas and network coverages. The trial shows that the CrowdMi does not require any additional hardware or human effort, and has very high model accuracy and strong diagnosability.

In this study, based on the concept of a mobile network computer, the author points out that a modern mobile communication network should be referred to as a mobile computer network and a modern mobile communication terminal should be referred to as a "mobile network computer", rather than a "mobile phone" or a "mobile computer" etc. Also, an introduction to the integration approach of mobile communication and computer networks is provided, including technology integration, business integration, network integration, and IMS technology in terms of several aspects, for the purpose of providing people with opportunity to learn more about mobile computer networks, and thereby better understand the concept of a mobile network computer, in order to popularize the concept of mobile network computers throughout the world. In the computer and internet age, network and mobile network computers may be the main terminals of fixed and mobile networks. Therefore, the author of this study not only illuminates the development of mobile network computers, but also draws the outline of a complete picture of the information society in terms of network and mobile network computers. Doing so enables people to have a clearer understanding of information society. It should be noted that in this study both the "mobile network computer" and "mobile computer network" are discussed. These are two distinct types of concepts, so please pay careful attention to avoid confusion.

3GPP has been developing LTE-A standard to significantly enhance the performance of cellular networks by utilizing various radio access techniques to provide ubiquitous and seamless broadband access to a rich diversity of mobile connected devices, which usually demand high QoE in spite of of access location or time. Consequently, it imposes unprecedented stringent requirements on centralized network management at the operator side, which has to overcome formidable complexity in designing, managing, and configuring network architectures, protocols, and algorithms before being able to fully support all LTE-A techniques. It is noticed that the software defined wireless network concept appears to be a promising direction to address such complexity, by decoupling control logic from all network elements and then providing fine-grained control and measurement in LTE-A networks. Toward this end, we propose in this article a device-to-device communication-based algorithm to enhance the QoE of users in software defined multi-tier LTE-A networks. Besides discussing research issues that deserve further study, we also present numerical results to illustrate the performance gains that can be achieved by applying the proposed algorithm to a typical 3GPP network scenario.

With the rapid development of mobile communication technologies, various kinds of content can be delivered among mobile users for content sharing. Due to the complexity of networks and particular features of mobile behaviors, to manage networks efficiently, SDMSNs are advocated where the control plane and data plane can work separately but cooperatively. In this article we outline how to deliver mobile content over SDMSNs. We first design the flow table based on the social features including social tie, mobility, and community. Then a novel social switch is introduced to deliver content among mobile users by using the proposed social degree and social stay time. In addition, the process of content delivery is presented according to different scenarios, and extensive experiments are given to prove the efficiency of this approach.

The enormous usage of mobile gadget in this era gives opportunity to use this facility to improve the communication between researchers or students for sharing scientific paper citation data. Users can access easily electronic scientific journal data using their mobile gadget via internet connection. This research proposes to build mobile client-server application based on Android Operating System. Mobile application also equipped with social network feature, where users can share paper citation through Facebook. The integration with social network improves paper dissemination and facilitates collaborative research works between communities or groups on social network.

A software defined network (SDN) enabled mobile access network is a future network with great potential to support scalable and flexible network applications. To support various network applications, the SDN-enabled mobile access network usually uses forwarding rules in SDN devices. With a limited rule space in existing SDN devices, a rule caching mechanism is an efficient way to improve the network performance. In this paper, we propose SRCMN, which is a new caching structure to improve the network performance with a limited rule space in the SDN-enabled mobile access network. We design a twolayer rule space in each SDN device, which is managed by the SDN controller. We also design a cache prefetching mechanism with the consideration of user mobility. By conducting extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our proposed structure and mechanism significantly outperform original rule space management under various network settings.

This article first analyzes the requirements and challenges in the future 5G mobile wireless network. Then the authors describe a new method for radio access technologies called virtual RATs. The proposed scheme can provide a flexible and tailored access network that can meet the requirements and overcome the challenges in mobile broadband networks. The authors also present a high level design of the overall architecture and protocol stack for virtual RATs. Two concepts, virtual RAT Types and interface sets, are introduced. Two essential features, flexible control/user (C/U) plane separation and coordination between virtual RATs, are also discussed. Examples are provided to show how to achieve a flexible and tailored access network for services by using virtual RATs. Finally, the capability of hardware to support implementation of virtual RATs is analyzed.

Due to the rapid growth of network traffic and new demands from mobile users, the current mobile social networks face challenges in dealing with a huge amount of content requests, high operating costs, and mobility control. How to design mobile social networks efficiently for the upcoming 5G era has become an important issue. In this article we propose and outline a framework of content centric mobile social networks for 5G. First, we present a content centric based network architecture consisting of mobile users, communities, content centric nodes, small cells, and macro cells. Next, we discuss the detailed process to deliver mobile content based on the interests of content and mobile users. In addition, a novel caching scheme is presented to store replicas of mobile content, and the related experiment results are also given.

In order to deal with the challenges and opportunities presented by the mobile Internet, this paper proposes a new Internet-oriented mobile network architecture, dubbed i-Net, for fifth generation (5G) mobile communication systems. Based on direct communications established between the base stations (BSs), i-Net can implement local data routing for mobile data traffic, which adapts to increased service localization for the mobile Internet. We first present the network architecture and main technical features, i.e., inter-connection, integration, and intelligence. Then the key techniques are discussed to show their potential in improving the network efficiency of i-Net. Field trials for inter-BS direct communications to implement cooperative multipoint oPeration (CoMP) in i-Net are carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of i-Net. It is expected that i-Net can provide a good quality of experience for end users through the efficient integration of the multi-BS, multi-band, and multi-radio-access-technology (RAT) radio resources in 5G.

Video constitutes a large fraction of Internet traffic today. The growth of mobile video has been significant in recent years, due to a tremendous increase in mobile device adoption and the ease with which videos are generated and consumed by such devices. Although the demand for mobile videos is significantly on the rise, the network infrastructure resources needed to deliver mobile videos haven't increased proportionally. This article discusses challenges in delivering streaming videos over cellular networks and possible ways to tackle those problems. Also considered is the potential impact of virtualizing network functions and services on mobile video delivery.

With the data rates of mobile broadband soaring, cutting-edge scientists are starting to build the tactile Internet. 5G networks will not be juiced-up version of today's 4G mobile phone networks. To make next-generation mobile networks possible, operators will have to deploy completely new network technology, and use broader swathes of the radio spectrum. Nobody has quite figured out how exactly to make it work, which is mainly because there are neither standards agreed nor spectrum set aside. What's clear, though, is the ambition: superfast networks with data speeds of around 10Gbit/s, and a latency (or delay for establishing the connection and transmitting the signal) of some very few milliseconds (4G has a typical latency of about 50ms).

The rapidly diversified market demands have presented a huge challenge to the conventional mobile broadband network architecture. On one hand, the limited machine room space and insufficient power supply make it impossible to accommodate exponentially growing amount of network equipment of operators. On the other hand, net heterogeneity caused by different specifications of wireless access equipment causes costly trouble related to management and optimization. This article, correspondingly, proposes a holistic solution involving different technologies, i.e. network function virtualization (NFV), software defined radio (SDR), and software defined network (SDN). In particular, we investigate both existing standards and possible extensions for 4G/5G mobile networks, followed by a few open issues for future research.

In this paper, we study one of the most important management tasks in any Public Land Mobile Network: the mobile location management. In this management task, the network cells are grouped into logical areas (called the Registration Areas) in order to avoid the overload of the signaling network. The proper dimensioning of these Registration Areas is an important engineering issue that is modeled as a bi-objective optimization problem. In previous works by other authors, the Registration Areas planning problem was optimized by using the linear aggregation of the objective functions. This technique allows simplifying the optimization problem but has several drawbacks. That is why, we use our versions of two multiobjective optimization algorithms. Furthermore, a multiobjective approach provides a wide range of solutions among which the network operator could select the one that best meets its real requirements. With the aim of studying the mobile location management in realistic mobile environments, we have generated four novel mobile activity traces by importing four real networks topologies into a mobile networks simulation tool. Experimental results show that our proposals are very interesting because they achieve better solutions than the single-objective optimization algorithms proposed by other authors in a very less execution time.

To meet the ever increasing mobile data traffic demand, the mobile operators are deploying a heterogeneous network with multiple access technologies and more and more base stations to increase the network coverage and capacity. However, the base stations are isolated from each other, so different types of radio resources and hardware resources cannot be shared and allocated within the overall network in a cooperative way. The mobile operators are thus facing increasing network operational expenses and a high system power consumption. In this paper, a centralized radio access network architecture, referred to as the super base station (super BS), is proposed, as a possible solution for an energy-efficient fifth-generation (5G) mobile system. The super base station decouples the logical functions and physical entities of traditional base stations, so different types of system resources can be horizontally shared and statistically multiplexed among all the virtual base stations throughout the entire system. The system framework and main functionalities of the super BS are described. Some key technologies for system implementation, i.e., the resource pooling, real-time virtualization, adaptive hardware resource allocation are also highlighted.

In mobile social network, it is a critical challenge to select an optimal set of devices to supply high quality service constantly under dynamic network topology and the limit of device capacity in mobile ad-hoc network (MANET). In this paper, a multi-devices composition and maintenance problem is proposed with ubiquitous service model and network model. In addition, a multi-devices composition and maintenance approach with dynamic planning is proposed to deal with this problem, consisting of service discovery, service composition, service monitor and service recover. At last, the simulation is implemented with OPNET and MATLAB and the result shows this mechanism is better applied to support complex ubiquitous service.

This article presents the design and implementation of a dynamic mobile sensor network platform consisting of stationary sensors, mobile sensors, mobile sensor gateways, and sink servers. The sensor network platform supports heterogeneous protocols in the network layer and performs ID-based communications to deliver sensor data from the sensors to the sinks, as well as to send control and monitoring commands from the sensor owner or administrator to the mobile sensors and mobile sensor gateways. To provide sensor data reliably irrespective of the sensor locations, the mobile sensors and mobile sensor gateways natively support mobility and multihoming and possess network access authentication and data transport security functions. The sensor owners can freely install new applications over already-deployed mobile sensors and mobile sensor gateways. They can configure the mobile sensors to operate in lightweight or full-function modes depending on the sensor application requirements or available networking environments. The technical feasibility of the proposed mobile sensor network platform has been demonstrated by implementing a prototype system.

Mobile cloud computing and other new emerging communication paradigms such as mobile social networking and Internet-of-Things, have brought challenges in flexibility, efficiency, and scalability to the current LTE network. Inspired by thinking of the fundamental mechanisms in LTE as reasons causing those problems, SoftNet, a software defined decentralized mobile network architecture toward 5G, is proposed in this article following principles proposed for designing an efficient and scalable network. The analysis of the working mechanisms of SoftNet, including its dynamically defined architecture, decentralized mobility management, distributed data forwarding, and multi-RATs coordination, show that SoftNet has improved system capacity and performance. Further, simulations are conducted to demonstrate that signaling cost in SoftNet, as an important performance metric, can be decreased significantly compared with LTE networks.

With the ever-increasing mobile demands and proliferation of mobile services, mobile Internet has penetrated into every aspect of human life. Although the 4Gmobile communication system is now being deployed worldwide, simply evolving or incrementally improving the current mobile networks can no longer keep the pace with the proliferation of mobile services. Against this background, aiming to achieve service-oriented 5G mobile networks, this article proposes an end-to-end software defining architecture, which introduces a logically centralized control plane and dramatically simplifies the data-plane. The control plane decomposes the diversified mobile service requirements and, correspondingly, controls the functions and behaviors of data-plane devices. Consequently, the network directly orients towards services, and the devices are dynamically operated according to the service requirements. Therefore, the proposed architecture efficiently guarantees the end-to-end QoS and quality of experience. The challenges and key technologies of our architecture are also discussed in this article. Real traces-based simulations validate the performance advantages of proposed architecture, including energy efficiency and the whole performance.

[EN] This article analyzes the challenges and opportunities that the upcoming definition of future 5G mobile networks brings to the mobile broadband and broadcast industries to form a single converged network. It reviews the state-of-the-art in mobile and broadcast technologies and the current trends for convergence between both industries. This article describes the requirements and functionalities that the future 5G must address in order to make an efficient and flexible cellular-broadcasting convergence. Both industries would benefit from this convergence by exploiting synergies and enabling an optimum use of spectrum based on coordinated spectrum sharing., The authors would like to thank the funding received from the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation within the Project number TEC2011-27723-C02-02.