With a bandwidth reservation mechanism, we propose that LTE can assist existing WiFi networks to improve the Quality of Experience (QoE) of wireless communication in enterprise and meanwhile increase the available spectrum. To address the associated network selection problem between WiFi and LTE, in this paper based on the 3GPP standard Access Network Discovery and Selection Function (ANDSF) framework, a context-aware solution named Extended Dynamic Enterprise ANDSF (EDE-ANDSF) is presented. It can select interfaces according to real time network conditions and cater for specific enterprise requirements.

802.11-based wireless LANs (WLANs) have become an important communication infrastructure for today's pervasive computing applications. Nevertheless, WLAN users often experience various performance issues such as highly variable signal quality. To diagnose such transient service degradations and plan for future network upgrades, it is essential to closely monitor the performance of a WLAN and collect user statistics. This paper proposes a new WLAN performance monitoring approach motivated by the fact that many low-power wireless technologies such as ZigBee and Bluetooth co-exist with WLAN in the same open radio spectrum and are capable of sensing Received Signal Strength (RSS) of 802.11 transmissions. We have developed a ZigBee-based WLAN monitoring system called WizNet. Powered by batteries, ZigBee sensors of WizNet can be deployed in large quantities to monitor the spatial performance of a WLAN in long periods of time. By adopting digital signal processing techniques, WizNet automatically identifies 802.11 signals from ZigBee RSS measurements and associates them with wireless access points. To ensure the monitoring fidelity, WizNet accounts for the significant differences in ZigBee and WLAN radios, such as bandwidth and susceptibility to multipath and frequency-selective fading. A simple yet accurate linear estimator derived from a signal propagation model is used to infer the access points' signal to noise ratio (SNR). Moreover, WizNet can measure the congestion level of the channel and detect rogue APs. WizNet can also collect WLAN client statistics and classify device models based on RSS signatures of 802.11 access point scans. We have implemented WizNet in TinyOS 2.x and extensively evaluated its performance on a wireless testbed. Our results over a period of 140 hours show that WizNet can accurately capture the spatial and temporal performance variability of a large-scale production WLAN.

Recent years have witnessed the wide adoption of the RFID technology in many important application domains including logistics, inventory, retailing, public transportation, and security. Though RFID tags (transponders) can be passive, the high power consumption of RFID readers (interrogators) has become a critical issue as handheld and mobile readers are increasingly available in pervasive computing environments. Moreover, high transmission power aggravates interference, complicating the deployment and operation of RFID systems. In this paper, we present an energy-efficient RFID inventory algorithm called Automatic Power Stepping (APS). The design of APS is based on extensive empirical study on passive tags, and takes into consideration several important details such as tag response states and variable slot lengths. APS dynamically estimates the number of tags to be read, incrementally adjusts the transmission power level to use sufficient but not excessive power for communication, and consequently reduces both the energy consumption for reading a set of tags and the possibility of collisions. We design APS to be compatible with the current Class-1 Generation-2 RFID standards so that a reader running APS can interact with existing commercial tags without modification. We have implemented APS both on an NI RFID testing platform and in a high-fidelity simulator. The evaluation shows that APS can save more than 60% energy used by RFID readers while maintaining comparable performance on the read rate.

Recent years have witnessed the wide adoption of the RFID technology in many important application domains including logistics, inventory, retailing, public transportation, and security. Though RFID tags (transponders) can be passive, the high power consumption of RFID readers (interrogators) has become a critical issue as handheld and mobile readers are increasingly available in pervasive computing environments. Moreover, high transmission power aggravates interference, complicating the deployment and operation of RFID systems. In this paper, we present an energy-efficient RFID inventory algorithm called Automatic Power Stepping (APS). The design of APS is based on extensive empirical study on passive tags, and takes into consideration several important details such as tag response states and variable slot lengths. APS dynamically estimates the number of tags to be read, incrementally adjusts power level to use sufficient but not excessive power for communication, and consequently reduces both the energy consumption for reading a set of tags and the possibility of collisions. We design APS to be compatible with the current Class-1 Generation-2 RFID standards and hence a reader running APS can interact with existing commercial tags without modification. We have implemented APS both on the NI RFID testing platform and in a high-fidelity simulator. The evaluation shows that APS can save more than 60% energy used by RFID readers.