Examples of effectiveness of mobile computing
- Rent a car check in at the curb
- Real time Bus schedules for students
- Push button access to nurse practitioners
- in future any micro-processor will have a wireless access
Wireless
- WiFi 802.11a, b, g, n (reliability, performance, security, ubiquity (starting to appear on airlines)
- 802.11n throughput increase 8 times per radio, WiFi connect rates increase nearly 6 times
- Reliability vs wired
- RF obstacles like walls, heavy channel utilization, poor RF network design, bad client drivers, difficulty of management
- WiFi relies on shared access RF medium in unlicensed spactra prone to interference.
- Requires multiprong approach resilient architecture with no single point of failure, mesh support, power adjustments and automatic channel changing to cover gaps if AP goes offline, automatic backup cellphone link
- Mesh networks of clients discover each other, connect securely (WiFi Direct standard) in ad hoc networks. As long as carriers allow it, they will also be able to serve as hubs for small local networks, linking several devices via Wi-Fi and letting them share the phone's 3G or 4G Internet connection.
- 802.16m will be significantly faster than its predecessor. WiMAX Forum Vice President Mohammad Shakouri has said the goal is for the new WiMAX standard to deliver average downlink speeds of more than 100Mbps to users. In contrast, Sprint's initial Xohm WiMAX offering, which debuted commercially in 2008, delivered downlink speeds ranging between 3.7M to 5Mbps. But while 802.16m will give WiMAX a major speed boost, don't expect it to propagate any further than the current WiMAX technology that covers around 31 square miles per access point.
Integration with phones
The number of phones shipped with Wi-Fi jumped to 139.3 million in 2009, up from 92.5 million in 2008, ABI's research indicates that annual shipping number will surpass 500 million units by 2014, when 90 percent of all smartphones will have the technology. At least one phone with 11n – Samsung's Wave – has been announced. An 11n network is also more efficient, so the phone will expend less energy communicating http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/032310-wi-fi-spreading-fast-among.html
Other Mobiles
- Iridium: catastrophes (Haiti), hard to reach places: expeditions, Arctic …
- ATT Terrestar hybrid cell & satellite switches to satellite when out of range, covers US, looks like Blackberry, not cheap $799 + $5/month on top of regular voice & data. Calls are $0.65/min. See http://www.pcworld.com/article/172944/terrestar_satellite_phone_coming_to_atandt.html
- Laptops, netbooks, iPADs,
Cell phones
- History (see http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/cell-phone4.htm)
- 2G, 3G (GSM, CDMA), WiMAX, LTE,
- How cell phones work (see presentation)
- Towers: cost $120-500K, 9mos to 3 years (incl permits & construction), 80’-400’, 20 people
- Sectors, frequencies (why low is good: potentially 2-3 times more cell towers for same coverage), channels, initial connection, hand-offs, tower radius <=10m in flat areas, often want less (e.g. by reducing power) in cities.
- Importance, growth
- Mobile telecommunications connections worldwide reached five billion in the first week of July on growth in India and China, and could triple by 2016, PRTM Management Consultants said. Revenue will “probably grow 20 percent to 30 percent in the same time,” Ameet Shah, a consultant for PRTM, said from London in a telephone interview. The current revenue figure is about US$900 billion, according to researcher The Mobile World.
Operators must change their operating models and may need to merge to survive, Shah said. Instead of concentrating on “high value, high price and low volume” they must focus on “immense scale, low value and low prices,” he said. Some markets have grown to 150%-200% penetration relative to their populations. More penetration than Internet.
- Mobile telecommunications connections worldwide reached five billion in the first week of July on growth in India and China, and could triple by 2016, PRTM Management Consultants said. Revenue will “probably grow 20 percent to 30 percent in the same time,” Ameet Shah, a consultant for PRTM, said from London in a telephone interview. The current revenue figure is about US$900 billion, according to researcher The Mobile World.
- Big demand for increased bandwidth for newer services (see below) however 4G upgrade is very expensive only by companies like Verizon and AT&T can afford and could drain money for wireless build-out from standard services (e.g. wired). In US this could lead to a duopoly since T-Mobile and Sprint may not be able to compete.
Smartphones
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone)
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- US providers
- OS’: Symbian (open source, Feb 2010) , Windows, Android (Google built on Linux, open source and Open handset alliance – Intel, HTC, ARM, Motorola, eBay etc., version 2.2 supports Flash, Microsoft Exchange friendly), Palm WebOS (Linux), iPhone OS (BSD/NextStep)
- Mobile phone, SMS, WiFi, Apps stores, touch screens, color displays, sync with computer
- Internet apps (web, weather, YouTube, email, calendar, maps), camera, video, clock, calculator, phone, GPS, MP3 player, gyroscope in new iPhone (great for Wii type games), Mobile payment:
- Apps stores: Apple (by April 2010 hosted > 185K apps, 3Billion downloads early Jan 2010), RIM, Nokia (Ovi launched May 2009), Palm (June 2009), Microsoft (October 2009 launch), Google
- Delay Tolerant networking & Smartphones (ByteWalla),
- Space Communicatons Protocol Specifications set of extensions to existing protocols (e.g. TCP, security (IPsec), FT == TCP)) developed by the Consultative Committee for Data Space Systems (CCSCS) to improve performance of Internet protocols in space environment
Digital Divide Deployment
(http://www.wikinvest.com/concept/Mobile_Phone_Adoption_in_Developing_Countries, http://www.ertra.com/2006/ghirmaikefela_mar6.htm, http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0933605.html
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