Location-Based Service Provisioning for Next Generation Wireless Networks

We study how the wireless network infrastructure can support location-based services (LBSs). We assume that each mobile is equipped with self-geolocation capability. The wireless network can provide geolocation information of mobiles to an application services provider (ASP) so that the ASP can customize services based on the geolocation of the users. The main challenge in wireless networking is to keep track of the geolocation of mobile users such that the application service can maintain a certain quality of service (QoS). In general, the quality of service depends on how often mobiles update their geolocation. Because geolocation updates require battery power, radio resources, and signaling in the wired network, optimization of the geolocation update frequency is critical. In this paper, we present geolocation update schemes in which we can minimize the update frequency while satisfying the QoS of application service. For case study, we consider location-based traffic report service (LBS-TR) and location-based navigation service (LBS-NS). In LBS-TR, each mobile user about to enter a heavily jammed highway is informed in a timely manner so that the user can avoid traffic congestion. In LBS-NS, a mobile user is given navigation instructions custom-tailored to the geolocation of the user. The granularity of navigation instructions changes as the user moves from highway to local street and from local street to building complex.     

Understanding the user experience of location-based services: five principles of perceptual organisation applied

Within recent years, the development of location-based services have received increasing attention from the software industry as well as from researchers within a wide range of computing disciplines as a particular interesting class of context-aware mobile systems. However, while a lot of research has been done into sensing, adapting to, and philosophising over the complex concept of ‘context’, little theoretically based knowledge exists about why, from a user experience perspective, some system designs work well and why others do not. Contributing to this discussion, this article suggests the perspective of ‘Gestalt theory’ as a theoretical framework for understanding the use of this class of computer systems. Based on findings from an empirical study, we argue that the user experience of location-based services can be understood through Gestalt theory's five principles of perceptual organisation: proximity, closure, symmetry, continuity and similarity. Specifically, we argue, that these principles assist us in explaining the interplay between context and technology in the user experience of location-based services, and how people make sense of small and fragmented pieces of information on mobile devices in context.     

A layered protocol architecture for multimedia wireless‐PCS networks

Coupled with the growing interest in the Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS) as a standard for future mobile communications, the need for a set of functions to effectively support multimedia teleservices in such an environment is also increasing. Starting from the idea that multimedia means the integrated manipulation of different information and hence the independent handling of separate information is not satisfactory, an enhanced protocol architecture for the support of multimedia teleservices in Wireless Personal Communication Systems based on UMTS is proposed. It involves Physical, MAC, Data Link, and Network layers. A Synchronisation Sub-Layer is introduced on the MAC level with the main aim of assuring a rough multimedia inter-stream synchronisation over the air interface, which is a first step prior to a fine end-to-end synchronisation performed by higher layers. Proposed functions, their basic algorithms, their location in the protocol stack, as well as the signalling exchange among modules implementing them, on network and user sides, are described in detail in the paper. The resulting architecture well fits the demanding nature of multimedia services and can be easily interfaced with the wired backbone of the system. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Enriching user experiences with location-sensitive music services

Abstract

The wide adoption of mobile devices and streaming music services has paved the way for location-based music services. However, there has not yet been any commercial breakthrough. We designed OUTMedia, a location-sensitive music discovery application with unique features, to explore rewarding user interactions. This article reports the design efforts and a field study of the functional prototype. We utilised user interviews, log data and the ResQue instrument to study use and user experience of the prototype. All measures found the overall concept feasible and the use of the application resulted in serendipitous experiences of music and places. Our findings call for service designers to support the interplay between media and places in personal meaning-making processes, to enrich urban cultural experiences with user-created information layers that accumulate over time. The design implications can be used to support serendipitous music experiences through the interplay between places and media in future content discovery services.     

Quality-of-service architecture: Monitoring and control ofmultimedia communications

For distributed multimedia applications the provision of system-wide quality of service (QoS) is essential. The quality-of-service architecture (QoS-A) developed at Lancaster University offers a framework to specify and implement the required performance properties of multimedia applications over integrated-service networks in a heterogeneous environment. The work addresses the problem of lower-level QoS as well as QoS support for multipeer multimedia applications operating in an open communication system. QoS filters have been developed to deal with the problems of heterogeneity in group communication environments. New challenges are also encountered in emerging mobile networks and user mobility; and recent developments in the Internet community highlight the need for appropriate QoS support mechanisms for multimedia applications. The paper describes how the QoS-A research at Lancaster University provides a flexible framework for the monitoring and control of multimedia communications across the broad range of computing systems and networks     

A general architecture in support of interactive, multimedia, location-based mobile applications

The widespread use of cellular telephones and the availability of user-location information are facilitating the development of new personalized, location-based applications. However, as of today, most of these applications are unidirectional and text-based where the user subscribes and the system sends a text message when appropriate. This article describes a modular and general architecture that supports the development of interactive, multimedia, location-based applications, providing an extra level of service to the users. The flexibility of the architecture is demonstrated by presenting the wireless safety security system (Wi-Via) and other potential applications     

A mobile spatial messaging service for a grassroots environmental network

Information and communication technology are potentially significant tools in strengthening local initiatives towards sustainability. The Science and Technology (S&T) Framework for Sustainable Development provides a context for such development. This article describes a study aimed at examining how the existing mobile technologies of standard messaging service and wireless application protocol can be used to support the activities of an environmental grassroots organisation–London 21 Sustainability Network (henceforth London 21). Following the S&T Framework, it is clear that to realise the potential of these technologies a new mobile service should be effectively embedded into the structure and activity of the network. Using a participatory research approach, an extensive user requirements study with 273 participants was carried out to ensure that the development of the mobile service for London 21 fulfils the purposes, goals and expectations of the organisation.

This article describes a Mobile Spatial Messaging Service, called EcoTEXT, which was developed and deployed for London 21. This service allows individuals to receive geographically targeted, action-orientated, time-relevant information via text messages on their mobile phones. The content of the service is information about upcoming local environmental events and activities, which match the interest of the user, when these events occur in close spatial proximity to where that user resides. This type of service represents a powerful new dimension for the provision of data-driven services in comparison to current text-based services. Location is giving the service additional meaning and value. The introduction of such a service into the organisation's communication toolkit offers the potential to create, supplement and strengthen social ties and interactions within the community.     

基于移动设备UAProf的通用多媒体访问技术

通用多媒体访问UMA指的是任何用户在任何时间和地点，使用任何设备通过任何网络访问任何多媒体内容的能力．它提供了一种当用户试图访问他们的选择而不考虑所持终端特性和通信网络结构的一种调整传输内容的方法：用户代理UAProf是描述和交换有关移动终端能力信息用户偏爱的标准。本文在描述UAProf规范的基础上，介绍了三种获取客户端UAProf信息的方法，提出了一种服务器端根据UAProf信息调整多媒体内容以满足客户端性能的框架与机制。     

Campus View: An Innovative Location and Context-Aware Video Sharing Application on Smart Phone

Mobile devices have steadily gained acceptance as a multimedia platform, not only that, one of the most valuable pieces of contextual information for an intelligent mobile application is the user??s location. The university campus is an interesting application environment for location-based and context-aware mobile services: wherever the students are, they are eager to announce to others and want to know what happens in the university campus, even alumni always care about the latest in his or her campus. The Campus View, what is described in this article, is a smart-phone based context and location-aware video sharing mobile application implemented on Android 2.1. It first gives a full panorama to one Chinese university campus, which will provide a campus overview and variations to alumni and potential students. Different from Street-view of Google which was only created once and demands not to drive anywhere more than once, our campus panorama is timely updated by our DIYed Street-view camera. What??s more, the application users inside the campus can use it to recode the latest happenstance and then upload the video short with Geo-information to the server. The recoded video short will be further shared as a H. 264 stream attached to a specific panorama. This paper presents the development framework of Campus View application and an evaluation of key framework components to assess their consumption of mobile device??s resources.     

A generic platform for scalable access to multimedia-on-demandsystems

Access to multimedia servers is commonly done according to a client/server model where the end user at the client host retrieves multimedia objects from a multimedia server. In a distributed environment, a number of end users may need to access a number of multimedia servers through one or several communication networks. Such a scenario reveals the requirement for a distributed access platform. In addition, the demand for multimedia information is increasing beyond the capabilities of high performance storage devices. Therefore, load distribution and scalability issues must be addressed while designing and implementing the distributed access platform. This paper introduces a scalable access platform (SAP) for managing user access to multimedia-on-demand systems while optimizing resource utilization. The platform is generic and capable of integrating heterogeneous multimedia servers. SAP operation combines static replication and dynamic load distribution policies. It provides run time redirecting of client requests to multimedia servers according to the workload information dynamically collected in the system. To support multimedia-on-demand systems with differing quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, the platform also takes into account, as part of the access process, user QoS requirements and cost constraints. This paper also presents an application of the generic platform implementing a scalable movie-on-demand system, called SMoD. Performance evaluation based on simulation shows that in many cases SMoD can reduce the blocking probability of user requests, and thus can support more users than classical video-on-demand (VoD) systems. It also shows that the load is better distributed across the video servers of the system     

A Multi-Agent System to Support Location-Based Group Decision Making in Mobile Teams

This paper describes an agent-based approach for developing a location-based asynchronous group decision-support system for mobile teams. The approach maximises the use of reusable service components (GSCmas — generic service component for multi-agent systems) as the main interaction mechanism between agents to allow flexible support of a new group-decision process. The paper describes the architecture of a GSCmas and provides details of how the GSCmas is integrated within a decision support system. Finally a system (mPower) based on the proposed approach is introduced and applied to a location-based group decision problem.     

Location-Independent Access in Mobile Systems

In this paper, we report on the design of a protocol for transparent, location-independent access in mobile systems. The protocol, termed by us Mobile Client/Server Protocol (MCSP) is an implementation of a communication layer on a mobile host and a stationary machine within the wireline network, and provides middleware functionality. The MCSP supports communication services through the client/server paradigm to transaction-oriented applications distributed between the mobile and a set of service and information brokers. To support the mobile and the wireless environment, a surrogate process is created within the fixed network to perform operations on behalf of the mobile within the fixed network. The MCSP then loosely couples the communicating entities, thus reducing the overhead associated with handoffs and disconnects, so characteristic of the mobile environment. Of particular interest is the application of the MCSP to location-based services, for example, the Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems [1].     

Privacy Protected Spatial Query Processing for Advanced Location Based Services

Due to the popularity of mobile devices (e.g., cell phones, PDAs, etc.), location-based services have become more and more prevalent in recent years. However, users have to reveal their location information to access location-based services with existing service infrastructures. It is possible that adversaries could collect the location information, which in turn invades user’s privacy. There are existing solutions for query processing on spatial networks and mobile user privacy protection in Euclidean space. However there is no solution for solving queries on spatial networks with privacy protection. Therefore, we aim to provide network distance spatial query solutions which can preserve user privacy by utilizing K-anonymity mechanisms. In this paper, we propose an effective location cloaking mechanism based on spatial networks and two novel query algorithms, PSNN and PSRQ, for answering nearest neighbor queries and range queries on spatial networks without revealing private information of the query initiator. We demonstrate the appeal of our technique using extensive simulation results.     

A QoE handover architecture for converged heterogeneous wireless networks

The convergence of real-time multimedia applications, the increasing coverage of heterogeneous wireless networks and the ever-growing popularity of mobile devices are leading to an era of mobile human-centric multimedia services. In this scenario, heterogeneous communications will co-exist and ensure that the end-user is always best connected. The rigorous networking demands of wireless multimedia systems, beyond quality-oriented control strategies, are necessary to guarantee the best user experience over time. Therefore, the Quality of Experience (QoE) support, especially for 2D or 3D videos in multi-operator environments, remains a significant challenge and is crucial for the success of multimedia systems. This paper proposes a QoE Handover Architecture for Converged Heterogeneous Wireless Networks, called QoEHand. QoEHand extends the Media Independent Handover (MIH)/IEEE 802.21 with QoE-awareness, seamless mobility and video adaptation by integrating a set of QoE-based decision-making modules into MIH, namely a video quality estimator, a dynamic class of service mapping and content adaptation schemes. The QoEHand video estimator, mapping and adaptation components operate by coordinating information about video characteristics, available wireless resources in IEEE 802.11e and IEEE 802.16e service classes, and QoE-aware human experience. The video quality estimator works without the need for any decoding, which saves time and minimises processing overheads. Simulations were carried out to show the benefits of QoEHand and its impact on user perception by using objective and subjective QoE metrics.     

Design of spread spectrum multicode CDMA transport architecture formultimedia services

We investigate a new application of the well-known spread spectrum code division multiple access (SS-CDMA) techniques to multimedia services related to the development of the next-generation wireless mobile networks interconnecting with a wireline ATM-based broadband network. Such services allow users to share novel multimedia applications without any geographical restrictions. However, since the mobile radio channel has a fixed limited bandwidth, the traditional SS-CDMA system may not be sufficient to accommodate the variable bit rate (VBR) multimedia services requested by multiple mobile users simultaneously. Moreover, the traffic load at the base station can change dynamically due to the time-varying throughput requirement of these requested multimedia services. To tackle this difficulty, a multicode CDMA (MC-CDMA) technique is proposed to provide multirate multimedia services by varying the number of spreading codes assigned to each user in order to meet its throughput requirement. In MC-CDMA, a spreading code can be used to transmit information at a basic bit rate. Users (video or data) who need higher transmission rates can use multiple codes in parallel. Meanwhile, the maximum available number of codes in the MC-CDMA system is still limited. Hence, a cost-effective dynamic code allocation scheme has then been proposed to dynamically assign an appropriate number of codes to each user for achieving the maximum resource utilization for multiuser multimedia services via the mobile radio channel. Finally, a number of real multimedia titles generated from the well-known MacroMind Director are conducted to evaluate performance     

移动互联网助推移动视讯发展

随着移动互联网的飞速发展,移动网络速度不断提升,智能终端成本持续下降,移动互联网为多媒体视讯发展带来新的增长契机——移动视讯。结合移动应用、位置定位、传感器件等智能终端技术,移动视讯在监控、会话、会议、消息等方面得到广泛应用。同时,移动互联网催生了包括微视频、富媒体广告在内的多种新颖移动视讯形式。移动互联网在提升移动视讯服务质量的同时,在应用的深度和广度上也极大程度地推动移动视讯的发展。但是受限于移动智能终端的特点和无线数据信道的稳定性差,移动视讯也存在诸多问题。本文首先阐述移动视讯技术需求和移动互联网特点优势,进而介绍移动互联网在移动视讯中典型应用,最后分析移动视讯存在的问题。     

Textual-geographical-social aware point-of-interest recommendation

The rapid development of location-based social networks (LBSNs) has provided an unprecedented opportunity for better location-based services through point-of-interest (POI) recommendation. POI recommendation is personalized, location-aware, and context depended. However, extreme sparsity of user-POI matrix creates a severe challenge. In this paper we propose a textual-geographical-social aware probabilistic matrix factorization method for POI recommendation. Our model is textual-geographical-social aware probabilistic matrix factorization called TGS-PMF, it exploits textual information, geographical information, social information, and incorporates these factors effectively. First, we exploit an aggregated latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) model to learn the interest topics of users and infer the interest POIs by mining textual information associated with POIs and generate interest relevance score. Second, we propose a kernel estimation method with an adaptive bandwidth to model the geographical correlations and generate geographical relevance score. Third, we build social relevance through the power-law distribution of user social relations to generate social relevance score. Then, our exploit probabilistic matrix factorization model (PMF) to integrate the interest, geographical, social relevance scores for POI recommendation. Finally, we implement experiments on a real LBSN check-in dataset. Experimental results show that TGS-PMF achieves significantly superior recommendation quality compared to other state-of-the-art POI recommendation techniques.     

User-oriented views in health care information systems

In this paper, we present the methodology we adopted in designing and developing an object-oriented database system for the management of medical records. The designed system provides technical solutions to important requirements of most clinical information systems, such as 1) the support of tools to create and manage views on data and view schemas, offering to different users specific perspectives on data tailored to their needs; 2) the capability to handle in a suitable way the temporal aspects related to clinical information; and 3) the effective integration of multimedia data. Remote data access for authorized users is also considered. As clinical application, we describe here the prototype of a user-oriented clinical information system for the archiving and the management of multimedia and temporally oriented clinical data related to percutaneous transluminal coronary angioplasty (PTCA) patients. Suitable view schemas for various user roles (cath-lab physician, ward nurse, general practitioner) have been modeled and implemented on the basis of a detailed analysis of the considered clinical environment, carried out by an object-oriented approach.     

Dynamic resource allocation tor multimedia services in mobilecommunication environments

As demand for networked multimedia applications is increasing rapidly, it is important to provide these services in mobile communication environments. In this paper, we identify system requirements for base stations in order to support multimedia services. These requirements include supporting concurrent connections for multiple users, allocation of resources dynamically to satisfy diverse resource requirements for multimedia applications, and reallocation of resources during handoff incurred by user movement or newly generated calls. These requirements can be used to design an interface between land-based and mobile environments to handle one of the most challenging issues in multimedia communication: enforcing interstream and intrastream synchronizations. We propose two quality of presentation (QOP) parameters for evaluating the quality of mobile multimedia connections, and analyze the validity of these requirements     

DHSR: A Novel Semantic Retrieval Approach for Ubiquitous Multimedia

Semantic features are critical intelligence information for mobile ubiquitous multimedia, how to manage and retrieve the semantic information has been an important issue. In this paper, a novel semantic retrieval approach named Data Hiding based Semantic Retrieval (DHSR) for ubiquitous multimedia is proposed. This approach consists of the following features: (1) Every multimedia document has to be semantically annotated by several users before saved into multimedia database. (2) Semantic information described by object ontology will be hidden in the multimedia document data. (3) Semantic information will not be lost even if the multimedia document is copied, cut or leave the database. Our work provides a search engine with convenient user interfaces. The experimental results show that DHSR can search the multimedia documents reflecting users’ query intent more effectively compared with some traditional approaches.