Some info about my posts

June 11, 2019 by Vinh Nguyen at canvinh@gmail.com

I have been writing a lot of technical and business analysis in the past few years listed in this blog. 

[Disclaimers: For those who are wondering about the accuracy of my posts as compared with systems out there. My posts should be regarded as design analysis, system proposals, etc. My proposals don't have to be the same as real systems out there. I can't take a company's system and describe those anyway. Further technical analysis is required if you want to apply my proposals to your systems. You must also check patent offices to ensure about its intellectual property protection. Seriously if I worked for any companies related to any of my posts, I would study their current system architecture before making an implementation proposal anyway. It is a normal way to work in any organization as you cannot throw everything in a trash bin.]

A lot of posts in this blog have touched areas that I didn't have working experiences. For example, parallel processors and telecom model for military. I have discussed issues faced by many technical teams, and worked out solutions with some technical experts. However, I didn't have any technical specifications in those fields to complete technical details on those projects. Those experts are more familiar with technical details, thus they complete projects by themselves. If I had to complete those, I would need to read technical specifications or standards, i.e. probably slow down development progress.

I had worked in 2G telecommunications between 09/1991-1996, but I didn't work in building or planning a telecom network and satellites. I read IS-41 Rev B standard on my own, and I found that it was the best technical specification in organizing and presentation.

The telecom model for military started as I have experienced with communications using ear lobe by military and other technical staff. It is very confusing as originated voices similar to each other, i.e. we could not differentiate who was who. I started the system by using 5G RBS (APY) and a RBS Box (EMS server) as a simple MSC, so military could use this compact system in a military deployment. RBS and mobile station would be equipped with a proprietary military frequency to avoid signal conflicts and congestion at a deployment site. Technical staff liked the ideas and started to build “peer-to-peer” system by connecting many RBS Boxes together. This was not a good strategy as it’s harder to debug, if issues occurred, thus I suggested a central server (co-located HLR/MSC and SCP/IN) to coordinate and manage those RBS Boxes. I tried to keep system simple, so it’s not expensive by suggesting militaries picking necessary telephony features only. Military wanted to expand system for other military bases and navy fleets, i.e. satellites and WLAN were kicked in. Police also wanted the system, thus I thought about using Internet lines as communications between RBS Boxes and its central server for lower cost and medium security. Military and police are concerned with security, thus each mobile phone’s registration and call must be authorized by its home base, i.e. a little bit difference than the current mobile telephony standards. Therefore, I tried to keep major features or concerns and map current telecom features or functionality to this telecom model, because telecom functionality is working well in the market for decades. Finally at one point, telecom experts got back the HLR functionality, then they took over the entire system design, so all parties are satisfied including telecom operators.

5G system has a RAN component. However this system was original developed for a military deployment unit with a 5G RBS and RBS Box, i.e. simple to save space and not cumbersome. The RBS Box operator could talk to mobile phone users directly from an RBS Box's console.

Later on, there was a request to develop a telephony system for a military base. The original design was a unit in a larger system. To keep the original design untouched would help to save money, and military could detach the original unit for deployment at anytime.

Military and police required all mobile calls or registration to be authorized by its home server even though the serving node had records. This is a major difference between current telecom standard and this model.

The RBS Box (EMS server) is coupled with each RBS to function as a simple MSC, thus it supports TCP/IP. It would be easier to communicate with other RBS Boxes and its central server using IP packets instead of converting packets back to SS7 or ISUP protocols. The IP telephony was originated because of original design and equipment selected, i.e. it wasn’t planned at the beginning. 

APY was the latest RBS platform developed by Ericsson, and it’s powerful, thus it was suggested for RBS. Military system must be compact, thus EMS server was selected as an RBS Box coupled with a RAN card for data communication and RBS card for voice communications coming from an RBS. Basically the RBS software was not modified, thus it must be stable.

In the military model, system supports TCP/IP, WLAN, 5G, and satellite communications. If we think about this carefully, they’re all similar to each other, i.e. using packet format in different protocols to send and receive data. For example, that’s why telecom packets using TCP/IP protocol, could be removed its header and footer, added with a TCP/IP indicator, added satellite header/footer (envelope), and then sent packets over satellite network following satellite protocol. The receiver would then remove satellite header/footer, and add back TCP/IP header and footer based on the TCP/IP indicator before relaying it to its destination.

Why picking 5G technology? 

 

Going back to those days, we knew military's telephony system had security issues, but nobody could fix it. Those system developers had fled and run far away. There was no technical specifications for the systems to understand and debug.

 

Developing a brand new system would take time and money, and nobody could be sure that new system would be bug free. 

 

At that time Ericsson and other telecom system providers were announcing 5G system ready to deploy for telecom operators such as Verizon, Bell Canada, Rogers, etc.

I had worked in mobile telephony, thus I knew the telecom standards were well documented and reliable. Previous version of telecom systems (3G or 4G) were working well in the field. I am talking about security of those systems, btw. 

 

That's why I proposed using 5G RBS and developed an RBS Box for a deployment Unit. The RBS Box is a computer server, i.e. it supports IP technology. 

 

Since RBS Box was capable of IP communications, the other components were kicked in as other computer servers, i.e. proprietary IP protocol.

About MBOS or smart ERP, I haven't seen an EDI or ERP. However I came up with MBOS design based on a google "ERP = Enterprise resource planning", so the system was designed for resource planning plus business intelligence report and statistics to operate a business.

Model for Data Management layer described in MBOS was accidentally designed. I was thinking about developing web pages for MBOS, but the smart ERP would be empty, so how they could sell that smart ERP? Therefore I thought to create a Data Management layer to handle SLQ queries to many data sources in that layer, so it could be sold. Therefore, I came up with a best design model by accident or by something strange.

Upgrade array database, I thought about having database tables predefined but empty to reserve for future deployment, so we don't need to interrupt live traffic when upgraded. The new system could be loaded on live node in assembly languages at any time. I misunderstood about database engine, so I came up with diagram as an array database.

Upgrade live node in parallel, I thought live data going to both executive and mirror sides in parallel. It was actually upgraded or transferred data from the executive side to mirror side. Therefore, I explained and drew a system diagram with new stuff for parallel upgrade. Some experts said that system downtime was zero now.

Supply Chain Management, I had worked with bar code, passive RFID, and active RFID in the past. However, I came up with a strategy to track all items from manufacturing plant to retailers by myself.

Encoding TCP/IP packet, I have seen a packet diagram shown sender IP and subnet IP included in a packet. I found that was a wasted of space, thus I introduced "encoding" of subnet IP to save space. Actually it could be used to hide identity of sender.

About dynamic encryption, many organization including military had trouble with hacking activity and master key in encryption. I did some work with CAVE or authentication at Ericsson, and had trouble with changing SSD. Therefore, having SSD as encryption key would eliminate master key (probably required for encryption) and creating headache to eave droppers.

Parallel processors started as a story to entertain insane following me with water pipe functioned as the processing queue. Some experts found my explanation or story different than the current architecture of parallel processor in the market. Therefore I started to think and design a parallel processor system with some knowledge of PLEX-C, which is a programming language used in Ericsson APZ. Experts said that my design is simple, powerful, and easy to software developers. Ericsson's APY is the closest in similarity to my design.

I had worked for a short period of time at an auto part manufacturer; I had issues with robot dropping parts at steady rate on a conveyor belt. Some products had more defects to fix than others, i.e. extra time required. Therefore I thought about having sensors in addition to robot system to monitor parts on a conveyor belt.

Self-driving cars, I hate to drive on roads and be surrounded by self-driving cars with drivers enjoying other activities than driving. There was many articles about accidents involved those auto pilots. Therefore I came up with design to couple both laser beams as radar and photo sensors to improve safety. Parking car with hazard lights on would be a good solution to force those distracted drivers back on the roads.

Image and voice pattern recognition, I read an article about Google's AI system to train its system recognizing hot dogs. I thought that it would train system to remember shape and sizes of hot dogs, so it could tell the observed object was a hot dog or not. Therefore, I thought that it compared the shapes and sizes based on lines and curves of an object. I didn't know that they compared pixels or encoded files. My strategy in comparing lines and curves did improve image and voice processing significantly.

QE method came up, because governments spent like crazy and sank in huge debts. I thought central banks would be able to do a better job in QE than bureaucrats, but central banks are not allowed to do business or lending neither. Therefore, I suggested local banks to take care of lending money to business during trouble time with small fees as screening and maintaining portfolio for central banks.

About asset allocation for banking industry, I knew some stuff about personal investment to allocate or diversify our investment to lower risks. At that time, US banks were bombarded with all bad news and criticisms after 2008 crisis and couldn't perform anything as usual. Therefore I suggested regulators to come up with asset allocation (similar to mutual funds) for banks to diversify their assets. With this way, banks could not make explosive earnings in a sector, but their balance sheet or financial health would be balanced out and less risky during any economic cycles.

Mobile router's idea was dated back to 90's, when 2G was available in market, perhaps designers were working in 2.5G or GPRS. I saw Ethernet cables running across rooms in my house. I thought about having a mobile phone as an adaptor, so desktop computer could be moved around and connected to Internet easily as a mobile phone. At that time, 36 Kbps dial-up service was common. 2.5G was too slow for Internet communications. WiFi was not available.

I came up with simple Packet Analyzer as a firewall to protect my PC from threats by hackers to enter my PC at any time in early 2000's. The system was simple and useful, but I didn't have a crucial component in Windows to perform analyzing task. I couldn't sell my pattern pending with a few claims accepted. Therefore I dropped that patent application. Recently I've assisted government technical staff to develop packet analyzer.

Insane have been following me closely, because I have had many business ideas. That's why I did come up with some "good" business ideas, so they could burn money in those. For example, IBM Watson could cost a few hundred thousand dollars each. Who would equip their car with an IBM Watson to entertain passengers? However I don't plan to go into each of my posts to edit those. Readers must use your wisdom to figure those out.

I got into this habit to write notes and analysis publicly in my google plus and blog accounts since I joined military to get rid of neural networks more than 6 years ago. Military are used to train and learn stuff such as missile, bomb, aircraft, navy ships, etc. Therefore I have written down many analysis and common knowledge to pass those to military staff, so they could start to learn by doing research during spare time. Later on there were many younger professionals joined our teams, thus notes were written to help in their careers.  Otherwise I would not post many subjects that I didn't have working experience in public.

About fleet management using mobile router and GPS device, I thought about offering inexpensive WiFi to bus passengers and managing bus movement to inform customers of real-time arrival of bus at a bus stop. It’s very cold in Canada, and waiting at a bus station is inconvenient.  Having a bus equipped with a GPS device coupled with a mobile phone to offer WiFi and relaying its GPS coordinates to the bus center using mobile telephony network would be an inexpensive solution as described in one of my posts. The bus center would be able to estimate and relay ETA of a bus to any bus station in real-time. The bus center could also offer real-time ETA of a bus using a web site for users.

About hard coding routing table for satellite messages, I guessed that there were a few tens of US satellites in orbits, and Russia had about similar number of satellites. I heard that technical staff was struggling with routing algorithms for satellite networks. Therefore, I suggested to hard code the routing paths in a database table, because there were not many satellites in consideration. Some Russian and US satellites must be closer to each other at some positions, thus those satellites would be the transfer points for messages routing between US and Russia’s satellite networks. I didn’t know that routing algorithms used for computer network didn’t work; and they started to hard code those for computer networks too.

Register Interface Manager or Internet Message Delivery Manager is an interface for application developers to register a signal or procedure call to activate a dormant process whenever a relevant Internet message arrived. The idea came from PLEX-C programming language with signal delivery to a programming block triggering a process. This is to resolve issues of traditional programming language or Windows OS, where developers creating a forever loop at an Internet port to receive its Internet data. By activating a process or program as needed, this would help to improve processing power of a computer system.

During my career as a software engineer, I have been working with many programming languages including Java, C++, Java Servlet, JSP, Java scripts, HTML, C#, VB, Perl, PHP, assembly languages, and PLEX-C. PLEX-C is different than other programming languages.  PLEX-C supports protocol programming, concrete transactions, or procedure calls to pass data among programming modules called blocks. PLEX-C doesn’t support function calls, which create a forever string of data or logic. An expert said that PLEX-C plus TEST SYSTEM (a tool to display data passing between blocks) supports data flow, and other programming languages support logic flow.  Which programming is better? Personally I preferred PLEX-C with TEST SYTEM, which assisted me to understand a complex system such as mobile telephony quickly. Of course, I would need signal descriptions, which were like APIs to describe each signal with data. The only draw back from PLEX-C was “file database”, i.e. data were stored as linked list. I preferred DBMS as I have worked on MS SQL, Oracle database, and MySQL. PLEX-V is the next generation of PLEX-C. PLEX-V is based on PLEX-C plus DBMS statements for data stored in relational database. Personally, PLEX-V should be a winning formula for software developers, because they could learn and debug a complex system quickly. Reading and understanding data is easier than following or figuring out logic.

I have written my posts using MS Word, and then pasted those on BlogSpot. I didn't feel like diving in html codes to fix the format or layout of my posts, which have been changed by BlogSpot.