The gathering problem of anonymous and oblivious mobile robots is one of the fundamental problems in the theoretical mobile robotics. We consider the gathering problem in unoriented and anonymous rings, which requires that all robots eventually keep their positions at a common non-predefined node. Since the gathering problem cannot be solved without any additional capability to robots, all the previous results assume some capability of robots, such as the agreement of local view. In this paper, we focus on the multiplicity detection capability. This paper presents a deterministic gathering algorithm with local-weak multiplicity detection, which provides a robot with information about whether its current node has more than one robot or not. This assumption is strictly weaker than that in previous works. Our algorithm achieves the gathering from an aperiodic and asymmetric configuration with 2 < k < n/2 robots, where n is the number of nodes. We also show that our algorithm is asymptotically time-optimal one, i.e., the time complexity of our algorithm is O(n). Interestingly, despite the weaker assumption, it achieves significant improvement compared to the previous algorithm, which takes O(kn) time for k robots.

The Open Mobile Alliance (OMA) Order of Rights Object Evaluation algorithm causes the loss of rights on contents under certain circumstances. By identifying the cases that cause this loss we suggest an algebraic characterization, as well as an ordering of OMA licenses. These allow us to redesign the algorithm so as to minimize the losses, in a way suitable for the low computational powers of mobile devices. In addition we provide a formal proof that the proposed algorithm fulfills its intent. The proof is conducted using the OTS/CafeOBJ method for verifying invariant properties.

In this paper, we introduce the concept of a multi-operator mobile relay node (RN) for cellular networks on buses or trains. The installation of RNs improves spectral efficiency because an antenna with a higher gain than that of user equipment (UE) can be installed in an RN. However, installing different RNs for different operators is not efficient because of the large amount of space needed to install multiple RNs in a bus. Thus, sharing one RN among multiple operators is a more practical approach. When we use a multi-operator mobile RN, the required amount of resource for each operator varies independently as the RN moves. Consequently, we propose a system of shared-spectrum allocation among operators for RN-UEs communication. Shared bandwidth can be allocated to operators according to link quality in order to achieve effective utilization of radio resources. However, to introduce shared-spectrum allocation, fairness among the operators and the total efficiency of the system should be taken into consideration. Using computer simulations, we evaluate shared-spectrum allocation based on the Nash bargaining solution (NBS). The results, in terms of both fairness and efficiency, indicate that total throughput can be improved by approximately 20% compared with the situation where multiple operators install different RNs individually.

In this paper, we propose an improved data embedding and extraction method for information retrieval considering the use of mobile devices. Although the conventional method has demonstrated good results for images captured by cellular phones, some problems remain with this method. One problem is the lack of consideration of the construction of the code grouping in the code grouping method. In this paper, a new construction method for code grouping is proposed, and it is shown that a suitable grouping of the codes can be found. Another problem is the correction method of lens distortion, which is time-consuming. Therefore, to improve the processing speed, the golden section search method is adopted to estimate the distortion coefficients. In addition, a new tuning algorithm for the gain coefficient in the embedding process is also proposed. Experimental results show an increase in the detection rate for embedding data and a reduction of the processing time.

Existing MANET routing protocols may not be efficient for mobile sensor networks (MSNs) since they generate too much control traffic by relying on flooding or route maintenance messages. Furthermore, peer-to-peer communication patterns assumed in MANET would exacerbate the traffic around sink nodes in MSNs. In this paper we propose traffic adaptive routing (TAR) for MSNs; it can reduce the control packets by analyzing and predicting the source, volume, and the patterns of both traffic and mobility. Through its analysis and the prediction of mobility, TAR also copes with dynamic topology changes by carrying out a fast route recovery process. Our theoretical analysis shows that TAR can effectively reduce unnecessary control packet flooding by 53% on average when compared to AODV. We implement TAR on NS-2. Our experimental evaluation confirms that TAR can not only improve the network and energy performance for MSNs but also can be a practical routing solution for MANET and WSNs compared to the existing ad hoc routing protocols.

The performance of a mobile database management system (DBMS) in which most queries are made up of random data accesses if the NAND flash memory is used as storage media of the DBMS is degraded. The reason for this is that the performance of NAND flash memory is good for writing sequentially but poor when writing randomly. Thus, a new storage structure and querying policies are needed in mobile DBMS when flash memory is used as the storage media. In this letter, we propose a new policy of database page management to enhance the frequent random update performance, and then evaluate the performance experimentally.

Automatic modulation classification (AMC) involves extracting a set of unique features from the received signal. Accuracy and uniqueness of the features along with the appropriate classification algorithm determine the overall performance of AMC systems. Accuracy of any modulation feature is usually limited by the blindness of the signal information such as carrier frequency, symbol rate etc. Most papers do not sufficiently consider these impairments and so do not directly target practical applications. The AMC system proposed herein is trained with probable input signals, and the appropriate decision tree should be chosen to achieve robust classification. Six unique features are used to classify eight analog and digital modulation schemes which are widely used by low frequency mobile emergency radios around the globe. The Proposed algorithm improves the classification performance of AMC especially for the low SNR regime.

This letter proposes a new mechanism that supports adaptive sending control using Real-Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) for IPTV service over heterogeneous networks. The proposed mechanism is implemented on a mobile IPTV device and its performance is verified for providing seamless television watching in heterogeneous networks, even when in motion.

With the fast development of mobile communication technologies, mobile multimedia services like mobile Video on Demand (VOD) are becoming prevalent. However, VOD streaming requires dedicated bandwidth to satisfy Quality of Service (QoS), and the limited wireless bandwidth will become insufficient to support the increasing number of mobile VOD users. In order to solve the problem, this paper proposes a Call Admission Control (CAC) approach which can accept new users even when the system bandwidth is insufficient. Our approach also guarantees continuous playback for subscribers by taking into account the service end time and the delay bound of the users. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can increase the number of concurrent users and reduce the connection blocking probability significantly without playback interruption.

This paper describes mobile backhaul optical access network designs for future cellular systems, in particular, for those systems that exploit coordinated multipoints (CoMP) transmission/reception techniques. Wavelength-division-multiplexing passive optical networks (WDM-PON) are primarily considered and two proposals to enhance mobile backhaul capability of WDM-PONs for CoMP are presented. One is physical X2 links that support dedicated low latency and high capacity data exchange between base stations (BSs). The other is multicasting in WDM-PONs. It effectively reduces data/control transmission time from central node to multiple BSs joining CoMP. Evaluation results verify that the proposed X2 links and the multicasting enable more BSs to join CoMP by enhancing the mobile backhaul capability, which results in improved service quality for users.

This letter proposes a new mechanism for network configuration on a mobile device that provides Point of Attachment (PoA) specific information using IEEE 802.21 and DHCP before moving to a new PoA. This allows the mobile device to prepare for intelligent handover decision either stateless address configuration or stateful address configuration when entering an IPv6 network. It allows the mobile device to reduce time delay for IP address configuration in the new PoA. Implementation and evaluation results show that the proposed mechanism can be an acceptable network configuration mechanism for providing seamless television watching in IPv6 mobile networks, even when in motion.

The recent increase in mobile data traffic has resulted in service quality problems. Although an economic approach to control congestion can be achieved by pricing, the current pricing schedule of mobile data services instead causes smartphone users to create more traffic. We establish a pricing model based on the distribution of demand types among heterogeneous users to improve the current tariff structure; our method mixes usage-based and fixed-fee pricing schemes. The results derived from the application of this model to survey data on willingness-to-pay for mobile data service demonstrate that the provider can decrease the amount of data traffic and increase the expected revenue by lowering the price for a unit of data and raising the fixed-fee level for unlimited service. The model also explains the changing weight of usage-based and fixed-fee pricing schemes by considering shifts in the type distribution through service evolution and proposes pricing strategies for future communications services.

The paper presents capability of signal detection for realizing coexistence between broadband wireless access (BWA) systems and ultra wideband (UWB) devices. The capability is experimentally evaluated for baseband signals of downlink (DL) in both mobile WiMAX and 3GPP LTE. An UWB receiver based on fast Fourier transform (FFT) compliant with MB-OFDM standard is implemented as a detector of the BWA signals. The capability is evaluated in terms of elapsed time required to achieve signal detection with probability of 99% by the implemented FFT-based UWB receiver at different conditions of the receiver. Decisions on the signal detection are made by the simplest method which is by setting a threshold which is determined by noise floor of the receiver as reference. The experiments have been conducted though baseband signals for both AWGN and multipath fading channels without any synchronization between the DL signals and UWB receiver. In AWGN environment, results show that the elapsed time depends on the duty ratio of the DL signal to be detected, however, the correlation between the required time and duty ratio is not linear since their envelopes of the DL signals are not constant. In multipath fading environments based on channel models commonly employed as mobile radio environments, the required time for the signal detection becomes as 17 times longer than that in AWGN due to its signal attenuation. For robust signal detection in multipath fading environments, it has been revealed that the number of quantization bits at ADC is crucial through the experiments.

In this letter, for offloading traffic to Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) with transport layer mobility where WLAN service is intermittently available, we propose a novel scheme to freeze and melt the timeout handling procedure of SCTP. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the performance in terms of file transfer completion time.

This paper presents an algorithmic approach to acquiring the influencing relationships among users by discovering implicit influencing group structure from smartphone usage. The method assumes that a time series of users' application downloads and activations can be represented by individual inter-personal influence factors. To achieve better predictive performance and also to avoid over-fitting, a latent feature model is employed. The method tries to extract the latent structures by monitoring cross validating predictive performances on approximated influence matrices with reduced ranks, which are generated based on an initial influence matrix obtained from a training set. The method adopts Nonnegative Matrix Factorization (NMF) to reduce the influence matrix dimension and thus to extract the latent features. To validate and demonstrate its ability, about 160 university students voluntarily participated in a mobile application usage monitoring experiment. An empirical study on real collected data reveals that the influencing structure consisted of six influencing groups with two types of mutual influence, i.e. intra-group influence and inter-group influence. The results also highlight the importance of sparseness control on NMF for discovering latent influencing groups. The obtained influencing structure provides better predictive performance than state-of-the-art collaborative filtering methods as well as conventional methods such as user-based collaborative filtering techniques and simple popularity.

It is well known that satellite communications systems are effective and essential communication infrastructure for disaster relief. NICT sent researchers to Tsunami stricken area in March right after the Great East Japan Earthquake and provided broadband satellite communications link to support rescue activities. Through this experience, we learned many kinds of requirements of communications for such purposes. In this paper, we list up the requirements and report what kind of satellite communications technologies are needed, and research and development issues.

In this letter, we propose a new 4-dimensional constellation-rotation (CR) modulation method that achieves diversity gain of 4 in Rayleigh fading channels. The proposed scheme consists of two consecutive CR operations for QAM symbols unlike the conventional 2-dimensional CR method based on only one CR operation. Computer simulation results show that the new method exhibits much better performance than the conventional one in terms of code rate and channel erasure ratio.

The present paper has reported a case study of the “Electronic Doctor's Bag” which is a telemedical tool for home-visit medical services using the mobile communications environment in an isolated island and a disaster area hit by the tsunami. Clinical trials performed for 20 patients around a clinic in Miyako Island indicated that the communication functions of the proposed system were highly evaluated by patients as well as medical staffs. However, the system still has room for further improvement in operability, portability and mobile communication environment. The experience at the shelter in Kesennuma City suggested that mobile healthcare tools such as the proposed system will be strongly required when there are no or only paramedical staffs after leaving of emergency medical staffs.

Ground antennas are suitable for use in mobile electronic devices due to their compactness. These ground antennas incorporate two capacitors for controlling the resonance frequency and a shorting loop for impedance matching. In this work, we compare the performance of a ground antenna with that of a meandered inverted-F antenna (IFA). It is numerically and experimentally shown that a ground antenna can yield simultaneous improvements in both the antenna size and radiation efficiency when compared to the meandered IFA. The bandwidth of the ground antenna for a voltage standing wave ratio (VSWR) of 3:1 is 240 MHz from 2350 MHz to 2590 MHz, while the minimum total antenna efficiency is 62% within the 2.4 GHz ISM band.

The energy consumption is always a serious problem for mobile devices powered by battery. As the capacity and density of off-chip memory continuous to scale, its energy consumption accounts for a considerable amount of the whole system energy. There are therefore strong demands for energy efficient techniques towards memory system. Different from previous works, we explore the different power management modes of the off-chip memory by process scheduling for the multi-core mobile devices. In particular, we schedule the processes based on their memory access characteristics to maximize the number of the memory banks being in low power mode. We propose a fast approximation algorithm to solve the scheduling process problem for the dual-core mobile device. And for those equipped with more than two cores, we prove that the scheduling process problem is NP-Hard, and propose two heuristic algorithms. The proposed algorithms are evaluated through a series of experiments, for which we have encouraging results.