Wathiq Mansoor

Mobile station location based on hybrid of signal strength and time of arrival

Positioning of users or mobile station (MS) in cellular systems becomes an interesting topic since the related number of applications for the location information is growing rapidly. The decision to make the locating of mobile phones under the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) mandatory is one of the driving forces to research and provide solutions to it. Deploying such applications would require a proper method for positioning the MS that are simple and accurate especially in urban area. There are many research papers addressing this issue based on timing method that calculate the timing delay for signal sent from MS to base station (BS) or vise versa, and other method based on signal strength. In this paper, we present a new calculation method to locate the mobile phone in urban district. This technique is based on hybrid method that uses signal strength to estimate the timing delay and comparing it with the measured time of arrival of the signal. The minimum timing value of the two results would be accepted and averaged for n samples. This will improve the accuracy and reduce the effect of multi-path signaling that both timing signaling and signal strength methods suffer from. In addition, a new calculation method has been presented to find the location of MS based on the BSs coordinates.

Software agents to support mobile services

The paper discusses mobile services (m-services) in the wireless world. This world has its own features that make it different from the wired world. For instance, new communication channels need to be used, new user-friendly services need to be suggested, and new types of computing resources need to be involved. The paper also discusses the use of software agents in addressing those features.

A survey on context-aware vehicular network applications

Transportation is considered as one of the main human needs in any country for macro-level planning. Due to increased production of vehicles, problems and issues associated with transportation systems have been taken on wider dimensions. Thanks to rapid technological developments, Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs) have been used to provide effective opportunities for enhancing the safety of roads and for improving transportation networks. Various context-aware applications have been designed on vehicular ad hoc networks, offering a wide range of services to drivers, including traffic management, collision avoidance, and convenient supports, just to name a few. This paper reviews and classifies existing context-aware applications as used in vehicular networks. A classification framework with three dimensions including the environment, system-and-application, and context-awareness is proposed. This framework is then used to review the existing context-aware transportation systems for each dimension, which in turn consists of some parameters. Based on this framework, existing context-aware research projects are reviewed and classified. Finally, a clear vision of research directions in this area is described.

E-commerce through wireless devices

This paper presents the E-CWE (E-Commerce through Wireless dEvices) project. This project aims at investigating techniques and offering solutions that could support stationary and mobile users in secure wireless electronic commerce environments. In addition, the verification and demonstration of the suitability of software agents in these environments is discussed in this paper.

Design and Development of a Software Agent-Based and Mobile Service-Oriented Environment

The paper discusses the design and development of mobile services (m-services) in the wireless world. M-services are a logical extension to Web services. The wireless world has its own features that make it different from the wired world. For instance, new communication methods need to be used, new user-friendly services need to be suggested, and new types of computing resources need to be involved. The paper also discusses the use of software agents in addressing the following issues. How are m-services discovered in an open wireless environment? How are m-services combined, and how are m-services made executable on mobile devices?

Voice over IP Mobile Telephony Using WIFI P2P

Voice telephony over mobile is currently supported at a cost using service provider such as GSM, or using IP service provider at cheaper cost. The purpose of this research is to design and implement a telephony program that uses WIFI in p2p (Peer-to-Peer) or WLAN (Wireless Local Area Network) as a means of communication between mobile phones at no cost. The system will allow users to search for other individuals within WIFI range and to establish free p2p voice connections, or to establish virtual connection through Access Points (AP), as well as giving the option to user to use GSM in the case of no WIFI connectivity is available. The system will use a novel algorithm to convert mobile number into IP address and use it as a mean for contacting other mobile over p2p or AP using WIFI technology. The software will use a correlation between current address books available in mobile phones to convert phone numbers into IP addresses. The system will allow user to make voice conversation, sending SMS (Short Message Service) as well as MMS. Inbox and outbox services, message delivery reports, and message drafts will be used for SMS and MMS management. The current system will only allow for one call per connection, and no call waiting, or conference calls. The first step of this research and development is to resolve the technical issue regarding mapping of the mobile user’s phone number to a unique IP address in order to avoid IP collision, centralized control, and user configuration. In addition, voice call will be supported using WIFI to allow mobile phones to communicate free of cost to each other through p2p or through AP

Design and Development of an M-Commerce Environment: The E-CWE Project

We discuss the use of software agents in the design and development of an m-commerce environment. Software agents are considered because of their features, such as autonomy, sociability, and mobility. Users are currently struggling to complete their e-commerce transactions. For instance, they have to adapt their behaviors when they browse e-commerce sites. Conducting similar transactions from wireless devices (e.g., mobile phones) requires new approaches. Multiple issues, which vary from low bandwidth and high latency to screen sizes, are raised. The E-Commerce Through Wireless Devices project aims at investigating techniques and offering solutions to support users in undertaking m-commerce transactions.

Software agents and wireless E-commerce

Software agent technology will become a necessity to e-commerce (traditional or wireless) rather than luxury. We propose an agent-based environment, which we call E-Commerce through Wireless Devices (E-CWE), that allows users, stationary or mobile, to submit their requests for services offered by providers. The E-CWE environment consists of a reception platform including a repository of service descriptions. A supervisor-agent is in charge of this repository. Acting on behalf of their users, user-agents are dynamically created in this platform. In the E-CWE environment, security is achieved in two steps: securing service access and securing payment. A prototype of a Travel Planning Agent (TPA) system is proposed to evaluate the performance of the environment.

Testing the Performance of Wireless LAN

WLANs based on 802.11 standards are rapidly becoming popular in computer networks. Despite the advantages that have been obtained from this technology, its performance in terms of throughput, response time and security affected by many environmental factors such as distance, blockage, authentication mechanism and type of encryption used during the authentication and the data transmission. There are other security issues such as vulnerability to attack by the man-in-the-middle (MiM) attack which becomes a great concern for users and owners. However, the focus of this paper is for testing the WLAN performance under different conditions. The test results and recommendation can be used by designer and networks users to understand the limitation and how to improve the use of WLAN to optimize its capability. It is clear from the results obtained during the test, that WLAN response time is more affected by network load and very little effect by the size of encryption of WEP used in WLAN. The signal strength is very well affected by distance and blockage, which also affects the throughput. However, the throughput would be affected more with network load

Messengers for the dynamic management of distributed UDDI registries

This work presents an approach for the dynamic management of the content of several Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI) registries. By content, it is meant the announcements of Web services that providers post on various distributed UDDI registries. Unlike other initiatives in the field of Web services, our concerns are the following: availability of several UDDI registries, no predefined communication infrastructure between the UDDI registries, and no centralized component to coordinate the UDDI registries. The solution presented in this paper integrates users and software agents into what we call messengers. When a user is in the vicinity of an UDDI registry, his software agent, which resides in his mobile device, interacts with that registry. The objective is to submit the details on Web services that are stored in the mobile device.