A message oriented phone system for low cost connectivity R.J. Honicky, Omar Bakr, Micheal Demmer, Eric Brewer. By Aalaya Gopala Kolli

Outline of the Presentation Introduction Feasibility System Model Potential Benefits Challenges Conclusions Questions

Introduction Mobile phones usage. Source: wikipedia

Reasons for the new voice message system Mobile phones usage increasing in developing countries but with limitations. - Limited purchasing and low user density inhibiting expansion into rural areas. - Service purchasing cost for an average earning person in countries in Africa. This led the authors to develop system based mainly on the beeping phenomenon, the asynchronous voice messaging.

How does the system expand well into rural areas? Extend effective coverage range by queuing messages. No need for extension of new technology or infrastructure into rural areas. Use of current existing infrastructure without loss of performance.

Feasibility of the new system Feasibility includes how easy the system could be deployed so is adopted by as many users as possible Two factors that effect feasibility of the system –User locality –Unused Capacity

Feasibility(contd.) User Locality –There is a certain pattern depending on the location of the users within a group. –Data collected from 89 students phone activity between Jan ‘04 to Jun ‘05. –Cumulative Distribution of the connections handled by the cells.

User Locality (contd.)

Feasibility (Contd.) Unused capacity –All mobile phone service systems are made to handle peak levels of maximum traffic to ensure equal to 100% reliability. –Data collected from the MIT Trace was used to plot peak-to-average calling ratio (PAR) grouped by hour per day. –Plots turn out to be bursty.

Unused Capacity (Contd.)

System Model System Model for asynchronous Voice messages –SIM cards with few MB or cards with more storage and unique ID for recharging. –Gap between consecutive polling's for service by the phone could be increased which helps save battery life.

System Model (contd.) Services –Normal voice calls –Asynchronous voice messaging. –Faster delivery of high priority based messages, information subscriptions. Deployment Scenarios –Existing base stations –New low cost base stations

Potential Benefits Better resource utilization –Current resources are made to handle the peak levels but on average they don’t handle that much. Increased Effective coverage –Asynchronous messaging extends the effective coverage range

Potential Benefits (Contd.)

Potential Benefits (contd.) Better Perception of Service –Asynchronous voice messaging hides congestion intervals or outages faced by service from the user as the messages are queued on the phone. –Outages cannot be masked for live calls but could be for asynchronous voice messaging. Cost Reduction –Asynchronous voice messaging can be charged at a very less price.

Challenges User Acceptance Carrier Acceptance Scheduling and routing messages Low cost Base station Base station connectivity

Conclusions & some critiques A new way for providing communication to extreme rural areas. Peak demands for capacity could increase and reach thresholds because everyone as per the authors localization concept would gather at one place and download messages. Localization for students would obviously be the same as they mostly go around in the same campus. Voice messages are kind of going on in developed countries also like Iphone visual voice mail

Sources of images: –Wikipedia, the same paper »Questions…..?