Mid-term examination(assignment) spring semester 2019-20 Name of Program

MID-TERM EXAMINATION(ASSIGNMENT)

SPRING SEMESTER

2019-20


Name of Program- M.Sc. (IT)

Course Title – Mobile Computing and Technologies

Course Code – CSIT804

Max. Marks:10

Q1. Explain with a case study on IRIDIUM the communication satellite trends. Also tell about following issues they faced in terms of:

• Technology

• Time-to-market

• Raising money from investors

• Demonstrating that there was a market for their use. (6 Marks)

Q2. Critically comment on how LTE-A helps in integrating the existing networks, new networks, services and terminals to suit the escalating user demands. (4 Marks)

Question 1. Explain with a case study on IRIDIUM the communication satellite trends. Also tell about following issues they faced in terms of:

• Technology

• Time-to-market

• Raising money from investors

• Demonstrating that there was a market for their use.

Answer 1
Two main projects were launched, which were both started in the early 1990s and were completed in the late 1990s when the systems were operational. The first project was Globalstar and was launched in the United States. It was commercialized in 2000. It offers a constellation of 44 satellites. The distribution of the satellites is illustrated here with a figure of by Lloyd Wood, an expert in constellation. It was supposed to have 77 satellites before settling for 66 in the end. It is a constellation of 66 satellites created by Motorola, which invested five billion dollars in this system. Unfortunately, it was planned to open it to the general public in 1999. But that year, for Globalstar as well, was the start of the GSM. The GSM became globally used. The GSM was highly competitive and much less costly than satellite systems. Satellite systems, which aimed at being cheaper and at competing with terrestrial systems, have collapsed in the face of the GSM and its very low cost. They cost ten to fifteen times more than the GSM. An Iridium terminal costs 1 000 to 1 500 dollars. One minute of communication costs 6, 7 or 9 dollars, which is very expensive compared to the GSM. The competition killed Iridium but it remains a technical prowess There is no need for a terrestrial station under a specific spot to be able to communicate. This is essential as it gives the system global coverage. Iridium and Globalstar's mistake were to try and open the service to the public. However, it soon became a niche service since you can communicate from anywhere on the planet and both poles are covered, which is great for expeditions or the military. 50% of Iridium's turnover comes from the military. And for example, after 9/11, we realized that terrestrial infrastructures could stop working or become saturated, and it provides an alternative. Sales increased after that. The US government bought Iridium, then sold its operating rights to a company called Iridium for one billion dollars. So, four billion dollars just vanished into thin air, which is a shame. It is profitable again, and slightly more so than Globalstar. Iridium is in the process of changing its satellite systems. Thales Alena Space is leading this change. I included an illustration of Iridium NEXT, by TAS, at the top of the slide. Those were independent systems. Let us move on to the interconnection with terrestrial systems. Iridium transmits data between phones, satellites, and traditional communication networks. Calls are routed from one beam to the next or one satellite to another when the satellite moves out of the range of the user. The service link between phone and satellites operates in Land frequency at1-2 GHz. Iridium relies on circuit and packet switching to manage voice and data transmissions between phones and satellites. Circuit switching sets up a dedicated connection for the duration of each voice transmission i.e., a phone call. By using circuit switching for phone calls, Iridium ensures that users will not experience transmission interruptions due to dropped or degraded signals. Packet switching breaks down data into smaller units called packets and sends them over a shared connection. By using packet switching, the Iridium system efficiently uses bandwidth to allow more concurrent users to transmit data. Iridium uses gateways to manage communication between its satellite network and more conventional telecommunications systems. Gateways are pointing that a signal may enter or leave a network. Iridium currently maintains 12 gateways, 2 in North America, 7 in Asia, and 1 each in Europe, Africa, and South America. Communication among satellites and gateways uses Kaband frequency at a rate of 19.4 – 29.3 GHz.

Despite multi-billion-dollar investments and high-profile support, Iridium and its rivals’ failures illustrate how offering technologically advanced services does not lead to success in the marketplace. We can draw several lessons about how management and markets influenced Iridium’s failure. First, many consumers may not value quality as much as cost when purchasing communication services. In order to win market share, Iridium focused advertising on differentiating satellite and conventional mobile phone services. Advertisements suggested that satellite phone services quality and reach distinguished Iridium’s service from less sophisticated mobile phone services. Even though Iridium effectively differentiated its services, consumers were not willing to incur the high start-up and ongoing costs of satellite phone service.

retail prices were $3295 for a satellite phone, $695 for a pager, and airtime fees of up to $7 per minute. Given the high price for Iridium’s service, consumers could not justify the additional expense over using other phone services. To address the service versus price dichotomy, Iridium could have considered using a price discrimination strategy that varied prices with level of service and type of customer. However, due to its billions of dollars in debt, Iridium could not offer consumers lower rates for voice and data communication services. Second, network effects of existing technologies placed Iridium at a disadvantage when compared to existing mobile phone services. Network effects refers to a service or technology becoming more valuable as more people use it, which may allow firms to lower costs and eventually acquire more customers. By the mid-1990s, mobile phone companies had acquired a substantial customer base in many countries. In countries such as Hong Kong or the United States, mobile phones had become part of daily life for many citizens. Because adding additional customers required relatively little additional investment, mobile phone companies had resources to invest in developing more reliable technologies and expanding their infrastructure. During the 1990s, mobile phone service expanded the size of their calling areas through strategic alliances. By the time Iridium initiated services, mobile cell phone companies had achieved a critical mass of customers necessary to dominate the marketplace. Third, Iridium underestimated “the threat of substitute services” By the time Iridium initiated services, cell phone companies had addressed many of consumers’ complaints linked to signal quality and roaming fees as well as lowered the costs of services. Consumers felt that mobile phone services’ low airtime fees and start-up costs compensated for satellite phone services worldwide coverage and higher reliability. In essence, consumers substituted technically inferior services for Iridium’s satellite phone service. Fourth, Iridium’s management failed to target many potential market niches. Iridium’s advertising strategy focused on large, corporate customers such as oil or aviation companies, however, it did not focus attention on other niche markets such as small businesses or residents of remote regions. A more effective marketing strategy might have targeted small businesses such as importers that require ubiquitous or high-quality access to maintain relationships with their global network of suppliers and clients. Iridium also failed to market services to residents of lightly populated, inaccessible areas that lack terrestrial phone service. If Iridium had engaged in a size or geographically based marketing strategy, it might have won customers as well as generated good “word of mouth” advertising. Fifth, Iridium failed to acquire the critical mass needed to surpass entry barriers presented by existing services. The expected break-even point for Iridium was estimated to be 600,000 customers around the world. By the time it filed for bankruptcy, Iridium had acquired 55,000 customers. Due to its pricing, changes in the mobile phone market, and focused marketing strategy, Iridium never gathered the critical mass to support basic operating costs or to lower prices as a means to attract customers.

Question 2. Critically comment on how LTE-A helps in integrating the existing networks, new networks, services and terminals to suit the escalating user demands.

Answer 2.

Many wireless technology discussions focus on radio capabilities, but other equally

important aspects include use cases, the services built on top of the technology, how different networks integrate with one another, and the topology of the networks. As summarized, these aspects are expanding, making mobile/wireless technology the foundation for other enterprises, including business-process optimization, consumer electronics, M2M, connected devices, and a multitude of vertical industries. LTE-Advanced should be a real broadband wireless network that provides peak data rates equal to or greater than those for wired networks, i.e., Fiber to The Home

(FTTH), while providing better QoS. The major high-level requirements of LTE are reduced network cost (cost per bit), better service provisioning, and compatibility with 3GPP systems LTE-Advanced being an evolution from LTE is backward compatible. In addition to the advanced features used by LTE, LTE-Advanced enhanced these features that can be found in the following:

The peak data rate: LTE-Advanced should support significantly increased instantaneous peak data rates. At a minimum, LTE-Advanced should support enhanced peak data rates to support advanced services and applications

Enhanced multi-antenna transmission techniques: In LTE-A, the MIMO scheme has to be further improved in the area of spectrum efficiency, average cell through put, and cell edge performances. With multipoint transmission/reception, the antennas of multiple cell sites are utilized in such a way that the transmitting/receiving antennas of the serving cell and the neighboring cells can improve quality of the received signal at the user equipment and reduce the co-channel interferences from neighboring cells. Peak spectrum efficiency is directly proportional to the number of antennas used. Layered Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA): OFDMA is used for radio access technique for LTE-Advanced. A technique known as carrier aggregation is used by the layered OFDMA to combine multiple LTE component carriers (from LTE) on the physical layer to provide the necessary bandwidth. Thus, the layered OFDMA radio access can achieve significantly higher requirements with respect to the system performance and capability parameters as compared to the radio access approach used in LTE Release 8. The continuous spectrum allocation concept (used by layered OFDMA for LTE-Advanced) was adopted by the 3GPP Radio Access Working Group1, as the approach is backward compatible with the LTE Release 8 user equipment’s and can be deployed with IP functionality capabilities, low latency, and low cost with the existing Radio Access Network (RAN). Through the whole chapter, a brief description is introduced about the technology’s precedent to LTE technology, as the LTE standard grew out of the GSM and UMTS, commonly called 3G. Voice communication was the primary application, with data added recently. Mobility and seamless handoff were requirements from the start, as was a requirement for central management of all nodes. According to the comparison of LTE with the different existing technologies, LTE will provide wireless subscribers with significant advantages in traditional and non-traditional wireless communication over those currently provided via existing 3G technologies. LTE will also enable wireless business opportunities in new areas due to its advanced mobile broadband capabilities. LTE offers scalable bandwidths, from 1.4 up to 20 MHz, together with support for both FDD paired and TDD unpaired spectrum. LTE–SAE will also interoperate with GSM, WCDMA/HSPA, TD-SCDMA, and CDMA. LTE will be available not only in the next-generation mobile phones, but also in notebooks, ultra-portables, cameras, camcorders, MBRs, and other devices that benefit from mobile broadband. LTE-Advanced helps in integrating the existing networks, new networks, services, and terminals to suit the escalating user demands. The technical features of LTE-Advanced may be summarized with the word integration. LTE-Advanced will be standardized in the 3GPP specification Release 10 (Release 10 LTE-Advanced) and will be designed to meet the 4G requirements as defined by ITU. LTE-Advanced as a system needs to take many features into consideration due to optimizations at each level which involve lots of complexity and challenging implementation. Numerous changes in the physical layer can be expected to support larger bandwidths with more flexible allocations and to make use of further enhanced antenna technologies. Coordinated base stations, scheduling, MIMO, interference management, and suppression will also require changes in the network architecture. Futurists can predict some 5G applications, but many others will arise as industries evolve or come into existence to take advantage of new network capabilities. Some potential applications of 5G include: Ultra-high-definition, such as 4K and 8K, and 3D video. Augmented and immersive virtual reality. Ultra-high-fidelity virtual reality can consume 50 times the bandwidth of a high-definition video stream. Realization of the tactile internet—real-time, immediate sensing and control, enabling a vast array of new applications. Automotive, including autonomous vehicles, driver-assistance systems, vehicular internet, infotainment, inter-vehicle information exchange, and vehicle pre-crash sensing and mitigation. Monitoring of critical infrastructure, such as transmission lines, using long battery life and low-latency sensors. Smart transportation using data from vehicles, road sensors, and cameras to optimize traffic flow. Mobile health and telemedicine systems that rely on ready availability of high-resolution and detailed medical records, imaging, and diagnostic video. Public safety, including broadband data and mission-critical voice. Sports and fitness enhancement through biometric sensing, real-time monitoring, and data analysis. Fixed broadband replacement. Mobile Broadband Transformation, Rysavy Research/5G Americas, August 2017. Some of these applications are already being addressed by 4G, but 5G’s lower costs, higher throughputs, and lower latency will hasten realization of their potential. Specific industries expected to take advantage of 5G include manufacturing, healthcare, media and entertainment, financial services, public safety, automotive, public transport, and energy utilities.

Student Name- Razzokov Nurislom

Enrollment number-A85257719005