Access Network Technology

The User-Network Interface (UNI) is the interface to the IP-CAN, which is the access network between the user equipment and the IMS. Since IMS is agnostic of the access network technology, the interface points correspond to the gateway nodes in these networks. These elements are:

• Gateway GPRS Serving Node (GGSN) for UMTS networks

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• Packet Data Serving Node (PDSN) for CDMA networks

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• Packet Data Gateway (PDG) for Public Wireless LANs (802.11-based networks)

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• DSL Access Modems (DSLAM) for VoIP and wireline broadband networks

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• Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS) for the cable networks

The Network-Network Interface (NNI) corresponds to other networks, IP or non-IP, with which an IMS UE can communicate. This interface becomes complex because the user terminals in the other network may not have an equivalent of a session or may rely on a non-IP technology. There are three types of networks to consider.

• A peer IMS network. This is a simple interface that relies on standard IMS signaling and media streams to a peer network. This is primarily to enable roaming between two IMS networks.

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• An IP network that is based on the current IPv4 standard. The IMS standards define the use of IPv6, the next-generation IP standard for the transport network. Early IMS networks or SIP-based VoIP networks may use IPv4. Thus conversion is required at the IP level to translate IPv4 to IPv4 signaling.

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• The interface to the circuit-switched telecom network. The Public Services Telephone Network (PSTN) involves complexity. This requires protocol translation and inter-working on both the signaling and media planes. This requires a signaling gateway to translate between SIP and traditional telecom signaling such as IDSN User Part (ISUP), and a media gateway to adapt Time Division Multiplexing (TDM) voice to RTP streams.

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The Application-Network Interface (ANI) has acquired a more complex view due to a partial definition by the standards, which is interpreted by implementers to adapt to their needs accordingly. The IMS standards specify a clear interface to SIP-based application servers and legacy services through gateway or inter-working functions. The capability of IMS to provide a greater value for combinational services has also made the case for the Service Capability Interaction Manager (SCIM) to play a stronger role as the interface to orchestrate between multiple applications and services. To summarize this interface involves the following models:

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• Self-contained IMS applications that reside on SIP-based application servers.

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• Applications are hosted on SIP-based application servers, which interact with external servers, such as Internet servers for the exchange of information using Extensible Markup Language (XML), Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP), or other standards.

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• Interface to legacy services such as charging servers with the OSA parlay gateways.

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• Interface to legacy services using the Customized Applications for Mobile networks Enhanced Logic (CAMEL) or Intelligent Network (IN) protocols with the IMS Service Switching Function (IM-SSF) switching capability.

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• Interface to the SCIM to provide an interaction between multiple services and applications.

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Dr.Kalyani Bogineni, in EPC and 4G Packet Networks (Second Edition), 2013

Magnus Olsson, ... Catherine Mulligan, in SAE and the Evolved Packet Core, 2010

1.2.2 3GPP2 radio access technologies

In North America, another set of radio access technology standards was developed. This was developed within the standards body called 3GPP2, under the umbrella of ANSI/TIA/EIA-41 which includes North American and Asian interests towards developing global standards for those RAN technologies supported by ANSI/TIA/EIA-41.

3GPP2 developed the radio access technologies cdma2000®, providing 1xRTT and HRPD (High Rate Packet Data) services. cdma2000 1xRTT is an evolution of the older IS-95 CDMA technology, increasing the capacity and supporting higher data speeds. HRPD defines a packet-only architecture with capabilities similar to the 3GPP WCDMA technology. The set of standards for the packet core network developed within 3GPP2 followed a different track to 3GPP, namely the reuse of protocols directly from the IETF, such as the Mobile IP family of protocols as well as a simpler version of IP connectivity known as Simple IP, over a PPP link. The main packet core entities in this system are known as PDSN (Packet Data Serving Node) and HA (Home Agent), where terminal-based mobility concepts from IETF are used, in conjunction with 3GPP2 developed own mechanisms. It also uses Radius-based AAA infrastructure for its user data management, authentication and authorization, and accounting.

Vlasios Tsiatsis, ... Catherine Mulligan, in the Internet of Things (Second Edition), 2019

A.1.1 ETSI M2M high-level architecture

An M2M Application is the main application logic that uses the Service Capabilities to achieve the M2M system requirements. The application logic can be deployed on a Device (Device Application, DA), Gateway (Gateway Application, GA), or Network (Network Application, NA). The SCL is a collection of functions that are exposed through the open interfaces or reference points mIa, Dia, and mId [214]. Because the main topological entities that SCL can be deployed on are the Device, Gateway, and Network Domains, there are three types of SCL: DSCL (Device Service Capabilities Layer), GSCL (Gateway Service Capabilities Layer), and NSCL (Network Service Capabilities Layer). SCL functions utilize underlying networking capabilities through technology-specific interfaces. For example, an NSCL using a 3GPP type of access network uses 3GPP communication service interfaces. The ETSI M2M Service Capabilities are recommendations of Functional Groups for building SCLs, but their implementation is not mandatory, while the implementation of the interfaces mIa, Dia, and mId is mandatory for a compliant system. It is worth repeating that from the point of view of the ETSI M2M architecture, an M2M device can be either capable of supporting the mId interface (towards the NSCL) or the Dia interface (towards the GSCL). The specification actually distinguishes these two types of devices, i.e., device D and device D' (D prime), respectively.

Hanqing Yang, ... Weirong Chen, in Smart Power Distribution Systems, 2019

9.1.1.1 Wired-line communication technology

Ankur Dumka, Anushree Sah, in Healthcare Data Analytics and Management, 2019

3.2 Conclusions

Evolving IT has made tremendous changes in all aspects of life and has had major influences on health services. In view of this, our proposed design introduces a smart ambulance that is IT enabled and provides a number of facilities using services such as Hadoop, cloud computing, IoT, and WBAN technology.

The proposed system consists of an ambulance equipped with WBAN sensors used to detect real-time patient data. These sensors then send data to the center node or sink node through IoT technology by means of the Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) protocol; IoT data aggregation is used to provide aggregate real-time data to doctors at remote hospitals. The raw data is collected and stored in the cloud, where various virtual machines are allocated for different software and infrastructures to store and process these data. The data gathered from different sink nodes are collected in the cloud, where they are processed as big data using Hadoop to arrive at the processed data in the forms required by doctors, administrations, and patients.

Hadoop provides a graphical view of the data, which can be used to see the number of patients grouped by area, disease type, and disease severity segmentation.

Similarly, we can find suitable segmentation graphs for the data retrieved from sensors on the smart ambulance for analytics of specified data of a patient, which can be used for taking preventive and curative measures.

Rossitza I. Goleva, ... Vladimir Trajkovik, in Ambient Assisted Living and Enhanced Living Environments, 2017

8.3 AAL/ELE Services

AAL/ELE services are a matter of many different definitions last decade. Wherever the AAL services are more related to the health of the people aiming more preventive and ill people support including different stakeholders in hospitals and at home, the ELE services are more related to the living environment of the people taking into account not only ill or elder but also other generations and people who like to have an active and healthy way of living (Pires et al., 2016; Garcia et al., 2014). Identification of AAL and ELE services is too broad (Garcia and Rodrigues, 2015). Some sources consider services at the sensor level with specific use-case scenarios (Ferro et al., 2015; Goleva et al., 2015c; universal, 2014). Other sources consider cloud or web-based services (Active aging, 2016). There are sources considering services end-to-end (Tazari et al., 2012; KIT, 2016; Goleva et al., 2015a, 2015b, 2015c).

Generic definitions of AALaaS and ELEaaS could be seen in Stainov et al. (2016) and Mirtchev et al. (2016). The authors tried to define the services at the cloud or fog level. Service virtualization at fog or cloud level allows service mobility and makes the service independent from access network technologies.

We try to highlight here the most important AAL/ELE services taking into account the end-user place where raw data is obtained. We also consider network at access, edge, and core parts where data is collected and might be partially processed. The data centers for data collection and processing are either at the core part of the network where the data is stored and analyzed or at the dew and fog level. The services are virtualized at different levels in terms of time and place.

In this section, we try to explain necessary generic services that allowed the definition of an open platform. The AAL/ELE service classification is based on many different criteria like end-user perspective, service provider views, technological constraints.

Most of the raw data is obtained from Home Care System that is based on sensors, home server, home controller, and optional gateway to the Internet (Goleva et al., 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; Drobics and Hager, 2014). The data could be partially pre-processed, i.e. data acquisition could be performed locally at home server like is proposed in Pires et al. (2016). Other authors like Skourletopoulos et al. (2016), Bessis and Dobre (2014), and Batalla et al. (2016) consider data processing at the cloud level. We believe that in AAL/ELE platform there is a need for both approaches because the network of cared and caring people is heterogeneous and open by definition. There are many papers related to the personal and electronic health records storage, management, and security of the transferred data (Porumb et al., 2015; Porambage et al., 2015). Many authors like Lamine et al. (2014) work at ontology and middleware levels and stress data processing issues.

Part of the basic services is activity identification and recognition. It is applicable for elder and young generations, healthy or ill. Some people concern privacy. In many cases when there is a need to m*** 24/7 hours this service is valuable (Garcia and Rodrigues, 2015). Activity recognition is related to the digital signal processing (Gehrig et al., 2015; Kahveci et al., 2015; Díaz Rodríguez et al., 2013a, 2013b, 2014a, 2014b, 2014c; Díaz Rodríguez, 2015). Part of the work is defined using ontology. Some of the works consider real-time recognition via home experiments with multiple residents. The experiments could be done explicitly using people identification with RFID tags, bracelets, cameras. Experiments without explicit identification, using only ambient sensors in real-time are more interesting because of the applications like fall detection, activity-tracking, movement monitoring (Alemdar et al., 2015; Tunca et al., 2014; Durmaz Incel et al., 2013; Alemdar et al., 2014; Ustev et al., 2013; Ertan et al., 2012).

Identification could be cooperative when the system has access to the facilities like houses, offices, buildings, etc. It could be non-cooperative and used to recognize who is in the house (Garcia and Rodrigues, 2015). Services could be classified as context-related like ambient services (Monekosso et al., 2015a, 2015b, 2015c) and individual services (Pires et al., 2016).

Technology mapping to services could be done through interoperability via standard interfaces, protocols, standard formats for data exchange, and virtualization at different levels (Monekosso et al., 2015a, 2015b, 2015c; Goleva et al., 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016).

Another interesting part of services is the connection to outdoor assistance. Most of the outdoor services are mobile for the vehicles, end-users, and environmental services in the parks, shops, clubs, schools, hospitals, etc. In many cases, there is a lack of continuous connectivity (Lambrinos, 2015; Jara et al., 2015; Chaudet and Haddad, 2013). The use of outdoor and indoor femtocells at the edge of the network could support the service. Sensor networks are capable to forward messages (Kreiner et al., 2013a; Goleva et al., 2015a, 2015b, 2015c). The access network is ubiquitous by nature. The use of gateways using standard interfaces allows abstraction and virtualization of the existing technologies and exhibits them to the application as a transparent single infrastructure layer. It could be done via Software Defined Network, middleware (Lamine et al., 2014), virtual machines, peer-to-peer connectivity (Papanikolaou and Mavromoustakis, 2013; Stainov et al., 2016, 2014).

While having services in Body Area Network (BAN) it should be also taken into account that part of them are personal. In order to make services healthy related, there are also special regulations in different countries to be considered. Well-known IEEE 802.15.4 standard combined with ZigBee is widely used for Personal Area Networks (PAN) and home/environment automation. It is well combined by all IEEE 802.11 standards. In this sense home/personal controllers use IEEE 802.15.4 to 802.11 gateways for network interconnection. BAN standard 802.15.6 is created a long time ago and is widely used (Kurunathan, 2015). There are technological limitations, delays, interoperability issues, security considerations, lack of sustainable technologies, lack of coordinated legislation and standards (Riazul Islam et al., 2015; Al-Fuqaha et al., 2015). Many topics in this technology are still open like monitoring, security of the well-being devices, end-user customization, dynamics of the BAN network based on the wearable sensors, sensor power supply, psychological aspects related to the wearable sensors, the trust in the technology.

There are also many different cloud-based solutions on the market for BAN services. The tradeoff between data storing algorithms and placement of data in the cloud or locally is discussed in many projects and papers. The virtualization process requires further analyses of where to store and process, what type of data to consider private or public, lack or presence of feedback channels or customized feedback data, data sharing, big data analyses. We introduce in the chapter a dew/fog/cloud computing approach using peer port and client/server computing defining further ELEaaS and AALaaS (Stainov et al., 2016; Mirtchev et al., 2016).