Using Real Options Theory to Evaluate Strategic Investment Options for Mobile Content Delivery

With a rich fare of localized content, but limited regional media outlet channels, mobile content generates new business opportunities for Media News, a small media company with considerable growth potential. Two business models are considered: partnering with wireless service providers and strategic alliances with mobile content syndicators. First, the models are evaluated based on their resource requirements, market share acquisition, revenue generation, and nature, scope and control of content and bandwidth. Then, real options analysis is used to value Media News’ managerial flexibility in responding to uncertainty in investment choices specific to the media industry. The modeling approach, analytical methods, and decision support tools employed in this paper serve as exemplar for engineering managers involved in strategic investment decisions, especially in emerging areas such as mobile commerce.

Scalable P2P Video Streaming

P2P networks are a technology able to deliver real time and video-on-demand services over IP networks. Layered video coding techniques are being introduced due to their ability to deliver streams at different scales (temporal, spatial and SNR) that solve the heterogeneity problem. This eases transmission in the case of limited bandwidth, as the devices can pick and decode the minimum bit rate base layer. Existing work examines layered video in client-server scenarios. In contrast, this paper analyzes scalable coding H.264/SVC over P2P networks based on an SNR-temporal Codec. Due to the interdependency between the different SVC layers, issues of reliability and quality of experience arise unless proper measures are taken to protect the base layer. The authors explore the effectiveness of a combination of P2P strategies, for example, hybrid P2P architecture, P2P locality, and P2P redundancy, to assess the viability and benefits of scalable video coding over P2P. The resulting performance is compared with a state-of-the-art P2P TV platform.

Secure Route Discovery in DSR against Black Hole Attacks in Mobile Ad Hoc Networks

A Mobile Ad hoc Network (MANET) is a collection of wireless nodes communicating over multi-hop paths without any infrastructure. Nodes must cooperate to provide necessary network functionalities. The security in routing protocols like Dynamic Source Routing (DSR) can be compromised by a “Black Hole” attack. Here, a malicious node claims to have the shortest path to the destination and attracts all traffic and drops them, leading to performance degradation. The situation becomes worse when two or more nodes cooperate and perform the “Cooperative black hole” attack. This chapter proposes a solution based on probing to identify and prevent such attacks. The proposed solution discovers a secure route between the source and destination by identifying and isolating the attacking nodes. Simulation results show that the protocol provides better security and performance in terms of detection time, packet delivery ratio, and false negative probability in comparison with trust and probe based schemes.

Dependency of Transport Functions on IEEE802.11 and IEEE802.15.4 MAC/PHY Layer Protocols for WSN

In WSN transport, layer protocol plays a significant role in maintaining the node’s energy budget. To find out the dependency of Transport layer on MAC/PHY layer, the authors have extensively tested various transport protocols using IEEE 802.11, IEEE 802.15.4 MAC/PHY protocols for WSN. For IEEE802.11 and IEEE802.15.4 with RTS/CTS ON the TCP variants has shown >80% packet delivery ratio and 5-20% packet loss, while for UDP it is around >63% and 19.54-35.18% respectively. On average 1-3% additional energy is consumed for packet retransmissions in IEEE 802.11 with RTS/CTS OFF whereas significant energy efficiency is observed in IEEE802.15.4 case. For IEEE 802.11 with RTS/CTS ON high throughput, low packet drop rate and increased E-2-E delay is observed, while for IEEE 802.15.4 improved power efficiency and jitter behavior is observed. This has led the foundation for the future development of the cross-layered energy efficient transport protocol for WSN.

QoS-Aware Scheme for Mobility Management and Adaptive Resource Reservation in 4G Wireless Networks

Simulations show that the proposed scheme achieves better results than those of other resource reservation schemes for metrics like bandwidth utilization, handoff latency, and packet loss.

Valuation of Alternative Business Models in Information, Communication and Media Markets

Information, Communication and Media Markets (ICMM) are in a process of tremendous change. IP-based technologies and services such as broadband and triple/quadruple-play are realities that have the ability to enforce the convergence of so far parallel industries, that is, Telephony, Internet, and Broadcast. In this paper, the authors derive a scenario where a telecom operator aims to design, develop, and validate a global B3G (Beyond 3rd Generation) framework to support secure, personalized, and pervasive telecommunications services built on heterogeneous network and service infrastructures. The authors rethink the telecommunications architecture and business models to enable easy, seamless, and pervasive access to content and services, while supporting user preferences and context. This proposal involves significant changes in current industry business models. A value chain approach allows the identification of different scenarios, where the firm faces several options from which to choose. The authors investigate operators’ decision process and evaluates the project based on its flexibility, using a real option approach.

Handoff Cost Minimization and Planning of Heterogeneous Integrated Overlay Networks

The wireless technology market has witnessed a complete paradigm shift as multiple standards and protocols are emerging almost every day. Each and every standard has its limitations and merits, which can be either masked or complemented by some other standards. The demands from the service providers are now sky-high and for the complete commercialization, it is expected that even with scarce network resources all kind of services would be provided, especially in a cost effective manner. This burning issue compels a service provider to roll out some integrated wireless networks to exploit the virtues of each. This chapter formulates the planning problem of an overlay network integrating particularly, 3G, WiMAX, and WLAN. The issue of planning is to establish proper connectivity amongst the three network standards which is unique in its nature. In the proposed planning approach, the authors have endeavored to minimize total cost for vertical handoff generated in the overlay network as well as the cost for wire line connection amongst the various network gateways of the overlay hierarchy. In this work, the authors have focused on the initial planning phase. For validating the novel planning problem, the chapter has taken recourse to simulated annealing (SA) and a well cited meta-heuristic H-II. The authors have also presented comparison of the performances of SA and H-II with a variant of distance based planning (DBP) scheme in this domain.

Planning and Dimensioning of the 3G UMTS Core Networks

The current literature provides many practical tools or theoretical methods to design, plan, and dimension Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) radio networks, but overlooks the algorithms of the network planning and dimensioning for core networks of GSM, UMTS, and IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS). This chapter introduces an algorithm for traffic, bandwidth, and throughput dimensioning of the network entities in the UMTS core network. The analysis is based on the traffic and throughput generated or absorbed in the interfaces of the network entities in the UMTS core network. Finally a case study is provided to verify the algorithms created for UMTS core network. This chapter is aimed at helping UMTS network operators dimension an optimum network size and build an optimum network structure to deliver an optimum quality of service for users. The algorithms developed in the chapter have been successfully applied in dimensioning a nationwide UMTS network in North Africa and adopted in an optimization tool by a mobile operator in the United States in 2008-09.

Interoperable IPv6 Sensor Networking over PLC and RF Media

The evolution of technology has made the connection of all types of devices to IP networks possible. In this paper, the authors investigate the possible usage of IPv6 in sensor networks connected through the Power Line Communication (PLC) non-wireless medium and demonstrate possible interoperability. This work is based on the adaptation of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard protocol constrained by the low-power, lossy and low data-rate context of PLC transceiver that uses pulse modulation. The aim is to provide interoperability features with other media using a robust and reliable communication stack. The target application of such results ranges from smart metering and environment monitoring to home control and urban area energy efficiency applications. This paper proposes the first adaptation of the IEEE 802.15.4 standard commons for the PLC medium. Following this standard interface, the authors demonstrate data communication on PLC with low power energy requirement using the pulse PLC physical layer. This paper also presents an initial implementation of the Routing Protocol for Low power and lossy networks (RPL) setup proposed by the IETF working group. In this context, the authors demonstrate interoperability in a testbed between PLC and Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN).

Security Aspects in Radio Frequency Identification Systems

Radio frequency identification technology is becoming ubiquitous, and as an unfortunate side effect, more and more authentication solutions come with more security issues. In former contributions, the authors introduced a solely hash-based secure authentication algorithm that is capable of providing protection against most of the well-known attacks and performs exceptionally well even in very large systems. The authors gave a theoretical analysis of Simple Lightweight Authentication Protocol (SLAP) protocol from security and performance point of view. This chapter gives a detailed examination of small computational capacity systems from the point of view of security. The authors define the model of attacker and the well-known attacks which can be achieved in these kinds of environments. Furthermore, the chapter gives a summary of the significant RFID authentication protocols which are found in literature. The authors present several lightweight authentication protocols and some novel elliptic curve cryptography based methods. Besides, the chapter illustrates the SLAP protocol’s performance characteristics with measurements carried out in a simulation environment and compares with the theoretical results. The authors show the effects of numerous attacks and the system’s different parameters on the authentication time. Finally, the chapter examines the performance and security characteristics of two other protocols chosen from the literature in order to compare to SLAP algorithm and give proper explanation for the differences between them.