IADIS Wireless Applications and Computing 2007: Tutorial

Conventional software applications are usually operated on a platform similar to the one on which they were developed and tested. Wireless application development, on the other hand, is more challenging because applications are developed on one platform (like UNIX or Windows) and deployed on a totally different platform like a mobile phone or a BlackBerry device. While wireless applications can be much smaller than conventional desktop applications, developers should think in the small in
terms of the devices on which the applications will run and the environment in which they will operate instead of the amount of code to be written.

This tutorial will help participants understand the different technologies that can be used to develop wireless applications for handheld wireless devices. Participants will acquire knowledge about wireless programming techniques in general and Java programming for mobile devices using the Java Platform, Micro Edition (Java ME) in particular, and how/when to use them. Sample applications and services will be demoed during the tutorial.
The list of topics to be discussed include:

- Application platforms (WAP, Java ME, BREW)
- Designing wireless applications
- Wireless application programming models
- Testing and deploying wireless applications
- Applying the Service-Oriented Architecture
- Web services for mobile devices
- Securing wireless applications and service

Qusay H. Mahmoud is an Associate Professor in the Department of computing and Information Science at the University of Guelph, and Associate Chair of the Distributed Computing and Wireless & Telecommunications Technology program at the University of Guelph-Humber in Toronto, Canada. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from Middlesex University (UK), and an M.Sc. in Computer Science and a B.Sc. in Data Analysis, both from the University of New Brunswick (Canada). Qusay is the author of two books: Distributed Programming with Java (Manning Publications, 1999) and Learning Wireless
Java (O'Reilly, 2002), and editor of the book Middleware for Communications (Wiley, 2004). He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, and an Associate Editor of the ACM Transactions on Internet Technology.

Cooperative frameworks have been considerably studied and successfully applied in several scientific fields, such as sociology and economy. In the area of wireless communications, it has emerged that employing cooperation may allow forthcoming systems to achieve several benefits, such as higher quality of service and spectrum usage, and lower energy consumption. In particular, within the realm of wireless location, these frameworks seem to have a remarkably bright future. Indeed, recent research has shown that the utilization of additional measurements from proximate users can considerably enhance the location estimation accuracy of mobile positioning systems (both outdoors and indoors). This alchemic formula has its fundament in the exploitation of the inherent spatial diversity of the users in a cooperative scenario, which permits to alleviate some effects of the wireless channel (e.g., shadowing) that cannot be otherwise simply approached when considering each user independently.

This tutorial presents the cutting-edge of wireless location, cooperative mobile positioning (COMET), which results from the investigation of the impact of cooperation on terrestrial-based localization systems. Specifically, we will start by giving an overview of hybrid positioning techniques and estimation methods. The core of the tutorial will be then focused on illustrating how a COMET system is designed (from the system architecture to the clustering protocol). In particular, data association algorithms will be introduced as mechanisms to integrate the several domains of information available (e.g., time difference of arrival and signal strength) in a single platform. The evaluation will be presented in the form of computer simulations, where hybrid WiMAX/Wi-Fi networks are considered as an example of application in outdoor scenarios. If the conference venue is equipped with WLAN access points, we will also show a demonstration where an indoor COMET application is running on a group of heterogeneous wireless devices (e.g., smart phones, Portable Play Stations (PSPs) and laptops). The tutorial will finish with a session of questions, discussions and ideas for future research directions.

Simone Frattasi received his M.Sc. degree cum laude and his B.Sc. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the University of Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy, in 2002 and 2001, respectively. From 2002 to 2005, he has been employed as a Research Assistant at Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, where he has been working on several European Projects (STRIKE, VeRT and WINNER) and one industrial project (JADE) in collaboration with the Telecommunication R&D Center, Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd., Korea. From 2005 he has been appointed as an Assistant Research Professor, where he is currently project leader of the Cooperative Mobile Positioning (COMET) project, which involves eleven researchers among employees and collaborators. He is author/co-author of about forty amongst: papers published on journals, magazines and proceedings of international conferences; book chapters; technical reports; and patent applications. He has served as reviewer for international conferences (IEEE Globecom'06, IEEE ICC'06, etc.) and magazines (IEEE Network Magazine and IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine), and as Guest-Editor for Springer, Wireless Personal Communications journal, Special Issue on "Towards Global & Seamless Personal Navigation", and IEEE, Technology & Society magazine, Special Issue on "Potentials and Limits of Cooperation in Wireless Communications: Toward Fourth Generation (4G) Wireless". He is the main instructor for a tutorial on wireless location at IEEE PIMRC'07. He is member of the IEEE Aerospace & Electronic Systems Society, where he appears as a member of the Space Systems Panel. His research interests mainly include: wireless location; link adaptation technique; quality of service mechanisms; services and architectures; user perspectives and sociological dimensions related to the evolution of technology and society.

João Figueiras received his M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, with specialization in telecommunications, from the Technical University of Lisbon (IST-UTL), Portugal, in 2004. During the M.Sc. degree, he was a guest student in the scope of the ERASMUS programme at Aalborg University, Denmark. From November 2004 onwards, he has been employed by the Dept. of Electronic Systems, Networking and Security Group, Aalborg University as a PhD student under a project named Wireless Access Network Devices & Applications (WANDA). Currently he is a short-term research visitor in the Electrical Engineering Department of UCLA, CA, USA. In his PhD project, he is responsible for the topic of “Efficiency improvement of hybrid short-range wireless access networks based on the utilization of location information”. Within the topic of localization, he performs teaching and collaborative activities between Aalborg University and industrial and academic partners. He is author/co-author of several papers and reviewer for several international conferences. For some years, he has been an active member of IEEE and currently he is the chairman of the Aalborg University IEEE Student Branch. He was the executive chairman of the technical conference AISPC’07. He is currently involved in the definition of an EU project to be submitted.

Francescantonio Della Rosa received his M.Sc. degree in Electrical Engineering, with specialization in Mobile Communications, from Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark, in June 2007, and his B.Sc. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from Cassino University, Cassino, Italy, in 2005. In 2006 he was a guest student in the scope of the ERASMUS programme at Aalborg University. From October 2006 he has been employed as Assistant under the IST MAGNET project and from January 2007 he has been involved in the COMET project. He is author/co-author of several papers published on proceedings of international conferences. From 2006 he has been an active member of IEEE and, currently, he is involved in the Publicity Committee of the Annual IEEE Student Paper Conference (AISPC’08).