Upkar Varshney

Pervasive healthcare and wireless health monitoring

With an increasingly mobile society and the worldwide deployment of mobile and wireless networks, the wireless infrastructure can support many current and emerging healthcare applications. This could fulfill the vision of “Pervasive Healthcare” or healthcare to anyone, anytime, and anywhere by removing locational, time and other restraints while increasing both the coverage and the quality. In this paper, we present applications and requirements of pervasive healthcare, wireless networking solutions and several important research problems. The pervasive healthcare applications include pervasive health monitoring, intelligent emergency management system, pervasive healthcare data access, and ubiquitous mobile telemedicine. One major application in pervasive healthcare, termed comprehensive health monitoring is presented in significant details using wireless networking solutions of wireless LANs, ad hoc wireless networks, and, cellular/GSM/3G infrastructure-oriented networks. Many interesting challenges of comprehensive wireless health monitoring, including context-awareness, reliability, and, autonomous and adaptable operation are also presented along with several high-level solutions. Several interesting research problems have been identified and presented for future research.

Mobile commerce: framework, applications and networking support

Advances in e-commerce have resulted in significant progress towards strategies, requirements, and development of e-commerce applications. However, nearly all e-commerce applications envisioned and developed so far assume fixed or stationary users with wired infrastructure. We envision many new e-commerce applications that will be possible and significantly benefit from emerging wireless and mobile networks. To allow designers, developers, and researchers to strategize and create mobile commerce applications, we propose a four-level integrated framework for mobile commerce. Since there are potentially an unlimited number of mobile commerce applications, we attempt to identify several important classes of applications such as mobile financial applications, mobile inventory management, proactive service management, product location and search, and wireless re-engineering. We discuss how to successfully define, architect, and implement the necessary hardware/software infrastructure in support of mobile commerce. Also, to make mobile commerce applications a reality, we address networking requirements, discuss support from wireless carriers, and present some open research problems.

Emerging mobile and wireless networks

W ith the increasing use of small portable computers, wireless networks, and satellites, a trend to support computing on the move has emerged—this trend is known as mobile computing or nomadic computing [3]. Also referred to as anytime/anywhere computing, mobile computing has several interesting and important applications for business (such as instant claim processing and e-commerce), telecommunications and personal communications, national defense (tracking troop movements), emergency and disaster management, real-time control systems, remote operation of appliances, and in accessing the Internet. Since a user may not maintain a fixed position in such environments, the mobile and wireless networking support allowing mobile users to communicate with other users (fixed or mobile) becomes crucial. A possible scenario may involve several different networks that can support or can be modified to support mobile users. When dealing with different wireless networks, a universal mobile device should be able to select the network (LAN, the Internet, PCS, or satellite) that best meets user requirements. Wireless and mobile networks have provided the flexibility required for an increasingly mobile workforce. As shown in Figure 1(a), the worldwide number of cellular, GSM, and PCS subscribers increased from 140 million in 1996 to over 300 million in 1999 and is expected to grow to 650 million by 2001 (see www.gsmdata.com). In the U.S., capital investment increased from

Challenges and business models for mobile location-based services and advertising

6.3 billion in 1990 to

Voice over IP

66.8 billion in 1999 and service revenues were up from

Pervasive healthcare

4.5 billion to

Multicast over wireless networks

38.7 billion in 1999 (see www.wow-com.com) as shown in Figure 1(b). During the same period, the average local monthly bill diminished from

Mobile commerce: a new frontier

80 to

Location management for mobile commerce applications in wireless Internet environment

39 as shown in Figure 1(c), indicating the technological maturity and the tremendous competition among service providers. Many general remarks can be made about wireless systems. First, the channel capacity typically available in wireless systems is much lower than what is Upkar Varshney and Ron Vetter

Issues in emerging 4G wireless networks

Mobile advertising will become more pervasive and profitable, but not before addressing key technical and business challenges.