Any Network, Any Terminal, Anywhere

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Any Network, Any Terminal, Anywhere

• Andreas Fasbender and Frank Reichert
• Ericsson Reasearch
• Eckhard Geulen, Johan Hjelm

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Introduction

• In 3 to 5 years, 20 to 50 percent of all Internet
  nodes may be wireless
• Networks using IP technology with QoS negotiation
  capabilities for different services class will
  slowly replace traditional circuit-switched voice
  networks

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Introduction

• The wireless technologies will provide global
  coverage offering
• A few hundred kb/s on a wide-area level
• A few Mb/s within locally restricted island
• Future mobile-aware services will
• Create an added value for mobile users
• Open completely new possibilities for network
  operators,ISPs,and 3th-party service providers

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Mobile Applications and Terminals

• Accessing e-mail and messaging system is
  convenient
• Web access is less attractive because
• Bandwidth limitations
• Delay constraints of todays cellular network
• Prices for long Web sessions are prohibitive for
  end-user

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Mobile Applications and Terminals

• With the rise of packet-oriented cellular
  networks combined with low price indoor networks,
  users will be able to stay online as long as they
  wish
• The operator will be able to offer service
  profiles to adjust to user needs, to develop
  better services, and to raise revenue

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Mobile Terminals

• The mobile market has changed dramatically within
  the past 10 years
• A variety of smart-phones and personal digital
  assistants(PDAs) have appeared on the
  marketprovide both computing and communication
  capabilities

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Mobile Terminals

• Mobile devices have inherent restrictions with
  respect to their
• Man-machine interfaces
• On-board memory
• Battery
• Processing capabilities

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Typical device capabilities
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Mobile Applications

• All OS for handhelds now provide a TCP/IP
  protocol stack allowing application to access
  suitable access network
• Many popular applications have hundreds of
  featuresneed to extend research in mobile
  man-machine-interface

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Advanced Mobile Systems

• Give some impressions on how next-generation
  networks should take shape with respect to
  service provisioning facilities and APIs
• Design Requirements
• The ACTS OnTheMove Prototype

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Design Requirements

• Network Independence
• Transport Optimization
• Terminal Independence
• Applications Support Services
• Application Programming Interface

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Network Independence

• Services must be available to end users
  irrespective of the current access network
• Circuit-switched network
• GSM , D-AMPs , DECT
• Lower-bandwidth packet-switched bears
• SMS , CDPD , GPRS
• Higher-bandwidth carriers
• Wireless LANs , WCDMA

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Network Independence

• IP will provide the unifying glue for the
  increasingly heterogeneous, ubiquitous, and
  mobile environment
• Sophisticated network monitoring and control
  facilities will be needed
• A set of function calls used to acquire and to
  release network resources will be needed

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Transport Optimization

• New technologies in the fixed network ADSL and
  gigabit routing
• The bottleneck of end-to-end communication
  between mobile clients and fixed network will
  remain at the air interface

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Transport Optimization

• Future transport architectures and protocols will
  have to
• Take full advantage of available bandwidth
• Provide optimized data delivery
• Offer error detection, recovery, and
  retransmission mechanisms

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Terminal Independence

• One of the cornerstones of future advanced mobile
  systems will lie in the provision of capability
  negotiation and storage facilities in the network
  
• Terminal information will be accessible by
  service provider

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Applications Support Services

• The success of new network technologies is driven
  by applications
• Mobile data will better sell with mobile-specific
  applications
• Personalized services will have an even higher
  impact in mobile environments
• e.g. the success of short-message-service

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Applications Support Services

• Alerting mechanisms will be implemented
• Deliver notifications to mobile users about
  time-critical event in their information spaces
• A variety of services will pop up that use access
  to a users location information

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Application Programming Interface

• Introducing IP technology in mobile environment
  now makes it possible to adopt the successful
  client-server model
• The mobile API grants access to commonly used
  functions needed for building mobile-aware
  services

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Application Programming Interface

• A terminals location can be gathered using a
  variety of mechanisms
• The information is available for application
  developers through a standardized function call
  using an agreed upon data format

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The ACTS OnTheMove Prototype

• System overview
• Network Independence
• Content Adaptation
• Thin Clients

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System Overview

• The ACTS OnTheMove project has prototyped and
  field-trailed a service platform for mobile
  computing
• This Mobile Application Support Environment(MASE)
  is built around the concepts of awareness,
  adaptation, and abstraction

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System Overview

• All MASE services are accessible through a mobile
  API realized in Java
• The MASE ensures seamless and transparent service
  access, independent of the access network and the
  mobile device
• A data base residing in the network, containing
• User profile, device characteristics, network
  conditions, user preferences

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Mobile Gateway

• MGs(mobile gateways) can be installed as
  mediators or proxy agents anywhere between the
  wireless and fixed network infrastructures
• Hold main parts of the profile database or
  provide an interface to it
• Offers service access to authorized applications

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Network Independence

• MASE protocol architecture is located on the
  content service of the information service
  provider and on the MG
• MG acting as a mediator between the information
  server on the fixed network and the mobile
  client, containing a leightweight version of the
  MASE

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MASE protocol stack
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Physical architecture of MASE
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Network Independence

• Roaming between circuit-switched GSM, multi-slot
  DECT, wireless LAN, and Ethernet was realized
  using an enhanced mobile IP implementation
• A change of the active network device without
  noticeable disruption of transport and
  application services is generally possible

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Content Adaptation

• The MASE holds a hierarchically organized profile
  database
• The central component of the OnTheMove system
  architecture is the system adaptability
  manager(SAM)
• Responsible for profile management
• Performing the multimedia conversion

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Thin Clients

• Introducing an intelligent gateway in the mobile
  network has major advantages for small handheld
  devices
• Caching and prefetching facilities should be
  provided by the network rather than residing in
  the mobileto support disconnected operations and
  fast information updates

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Thin Clients

• The OnTheMove MASE and application prototpes on
  Windows CE PDAs demonstrated how thin clients can
  best be supported by middleware facilities
• The reuse of middleware facilities in different
  applications is the main benefit of the MASE
  approach

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Wireless Application Protocol

• The wireless application protocol(WAP) is a new
  and powerful industry standard
• Integrate mobile telephony and the Internet
• Developed and promoted by the WAP Forum
• Providing Web content and advanced services to
  cellular subscribers

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WAP overview

• Run globally across differing wireless
  transports
• SMS(short message service)
• USSD(unstructured supplementary service data)
• IS-136(American standard)
• CDPD(cellular digital packet data)
• PDC(Japanese personal digital cellular)

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WAP overview

• Content and applications are envisaged to scale
  over a range of device types such as mobile
  phones,pagers,and PDAs
• The Wireless Application Environment (WAE)
  follows the client-server model from the World
  Wide Web

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WAP protocol stack
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WAP overview

• WAP gateway is added as a central interface
  between the Internet and the wireless world
• Client requests to the Internet are simply
  forwarded to the origin server
• Converse from HTML into the Wireless Mark-up
  Language (WML)

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WML

• Offers a lightweight HTML representation
• WMLScript provides the lightweight procedural
  scripting language
• Wireless telephony application(WTA) and its
  interface(WTAI) provide the access and the
  programming interface to telephony services

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WAP Evaluation

• The WAP provides a scalable and extensible
  platform both with respect to the wireless
  networks and to the client devices supported
• Frames do not scale very well for presentation on
  small ASCII phone displays, and WML cards do not
  work well on color PDAs

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WAP Evaluation

• WAP works independently of the underlying
  wireless network
• But it does not provide any monitoring and
  roaming features and does not support automatic
  service adaptation
• For true mobile multimedia support some
  extensions and refinements to the current WAP
  specifications will be necessary

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WAP Conclusions

• WAP is the first concept that unites the mobile
  voice and data market around a common platform
• It is the short-term enabler for mobile data
  communication in cellular environments
• It will be crucial that WAP define a set of Java
  APIs

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The Next-Generation HTTP

• HTTP-NG has been been submitted to the IETF as an
  Internet draft
• HTTP-NG is an object-oriented messaging framework
  with a multiplexing transport

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HTTP-NG stack
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HTTP-NG overview

• The HTTP-NGs respects
• Reduce the traffic on the network
• Decreasing the number of TCP connections
• Minimizing round trip times
• The Classical Web Application(TCWA) has been
  developed to demonstrate the feasibility of
  surfing the web using HTTP-NG

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HTTP-NG overview

• TCWA uses the HTTP-NG framework to define a
  traditional HTTP 1.1 Web server and browser
• Proxies have been part of the Web architecture
• Proxy translate between different transports and
  data formats, to preserve a global information
  space

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HTTP-NG Evaluation

• Currently, the HTTP-NG only exists in laboratory
  implementations
• The W3C conducted a series of tests of HTTP-NG
  over a mobile service
• We believe that it should be possible to optimize
  HTTP-NG to a much higher degree than HTTP 1.1,
  due to its object-oriented nature

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HTTP-NG Conclusions

• The deployment of HTTP-NG will depend on both
  application developers and device manufacturers
• The W3C is working within the IETF, and with the
  WAP Forum, to achieve as broad a deployment in
  the wireless industry as possible

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Mobile Station Execution Environment

• The Mobile Station Execution Environment(MExE) is
  the name of ETSI SMGs project team targeting
  GSMs evolution toward a client/server
  architecture
• A dynamic and open architecture within the mobile
  station(MS) and subscriber identity module(SMI)
  is required

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MExE overview

• The basic idea is to specify a terminal-independen
  t execution environment on the client(MSSIM) for
  non-standardized applications and to implement a
  mechanisms
• Allows the negotiation of supported capabilities

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MExE overview

• MExE services will be available from
• Traditional GSM nodes
• IN nodes
• Operator-specific nodes
• Operator-franchised nodes
• Service provider nodes
• These nodes constitute the MExE service
  environment

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MExE Evaluation

• Introduction of the MExE classmark
• MExE classmark 1 devices
• Small devices
• MExE classmark 2 devices
• Contemporary sophisticated devices
• The MExE classmark introduces scalability into
  mobile Internet access

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MExE Classmark 1

• Classmark 1, based on WAP, requires only very
  limited input and output facilities on the client
  side
• Design to provide quick and cheap information
  access
• Over narrow and slow data connections

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MExE Classmark 2

• Classmark 2, based on Personal-Java, provides a
  run-time system
• Requires more processing, storage, display, and
  network resource
• Allows more powerful applications and more
  flexible MMIs

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MExE Conclusion

• The development of the ETSI SMG MExE standard is
  a major step toward the migration of the
  telecommunication and information industries and
  a prerequisite for the success of mobile data
  services

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Conclusions

• Future mobile devices will need a much higher
  degree of support from the higher layers of the
  protocol stack than is possible today
• Wireless devices will be an integrated component
  in the network architectures of the future

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Conclusion

• Future third-generation mobile networks like UMTS
  are not standardized with a complete set of
  services
• Services capabilities and the means for service
  negotiation based on user profiles are being
  standardized
• MExE,WAP,and W3C are the building blocks for the
  realization of this virtual environment