24. Fleet Management & 5G technology

Wireless technology applications for smart cities?
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5G or LTE telecommunication standard offers a few Giga-bit data transmissions as I read somewhere. They have compared it to fiber optical networks. They have mentioned that 5G would make smarter cities.
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To be clear, landline communications are more reliable than wireless communication, and so far fiber optical is far better.

Actually wireless communications with mobile phones had made our life easier. Btw, I like a landline or VoIP phone at home for convenience. magicJack is an inexpensive VoIP provider to me with free calls to USA and Canada at low yearly free.

[1] Of course, 5G is faster, thus we should be able to get a smart phone behaved as a mobile router? Many devices including laptop and tablet would share the same data channels of a smart phone via WiFi. This would make entertainment anytime and anywhere, especially kids would be able to play games on a tablet in any car. Users don't need to register a wireless connection to their cars.
- The car's info entertainment center only needs to connect to the WiFi of a mobile router in order to offer services as real time GPS's traffic updates, Internet music, or video.
- Car manufacturers could come up with video players in the back of the front seats connecting with WiFi capability, thus those video players could connect with a mobile routers for passengers watching movies such as Netflix, YouTube, CraveTV, etc.

[2] Public transportation is not convenient in term of waiting for a bus, subway or street car in winter days. City should equip the bus sign with a little panel to estimate arrival time of a bus. It could be a little electronic display powered by a solar panel and a communication device to a wireless network.




Figure 1. Connections of networks offering GPS, wireless Internet, and current location to passengers.

- Each bus should be equipped with a smart phone for emergency cases. This mobile phone could offer all passengers free WiFi via its unlimited data plan. The smart phone acts as a mobile router.

- Each bus should have a GPS device, which could relay its GPS coordinate to a control center via WiFi of the smart phone on the bus including the bus ID using wireless networks.

- The control center collects information, and it could estimate arrival time to each stop. It could relay the time to each transit stop, so passenger would know in advance.

- Actually the control center could publish the estimated arrival time at each stop on its web site or using a smart phone app. Passengers could access the information using a PC or a smart phone. Passengers only need to enter the "corner of", address of, and perhaps a bus number for a transit stop - thus don't over complicate the web page. As a transit stop could be used for several buses, the output or answer would be a bus number and arrival time for that transit stop. It would be good if they could provide several estimated bus arrival time, thus users would know the next bus arrival in case missing earliest one.

- There is an issue with capacity of a bus or a street car, i.e. a bus could pass a transit stop due to full capacity. Implementers could implement something like laser beam in each garage door to estimate passengers stepping in or out of a bus for capacity of a bus. The bus capacity could be sent to the control center along with its GPS coordinates.

- Many mobile phone companies have their phone equipped with GPS capability, thus they have both GPS and mobile phone ready, i.e. no need to integrate a GPS navigation device to a mobile phone using WiFi protocol.

- Bus doesn't need a fancy or expensive mobile phone as it only uses in emergency cases. Bus’ company should trade all expensive features for a good WiFi router as nobody seems to have one.

- A mobile phone could be equipped with an icon in the interface. If user touched this icon, the mobile phone would dial a specific phone number and turned speaker phone on automatically. This good feature is not a complicated feature for a phone provider, btw.

- The control center may want to know the location of a bus and capacity. Thus, it could send a packet to the bus with bus ID via wireless network. The required bus would answer with its GPS coordinates and current capacity.

- The backend at control center could be equipped with a map to show locations of all buses. Solution provider could also provide some features for statistics.

- Solution should be less than CAD $1000 per bus. An expensive iPhone is around $700 each and expensive 3/4 horse power garage door opener is $200 each. Solution providers don't need the most expensive iPhone or the whole garage door opener.

- In this application, satellite was communicated in the GPS component to get GPS coordinates. The mobile phone sending its GPS coordinates to control center using data channel of a mobile phone, e.g. GPRS, 3G, LTE, 5G, or any wireless versions providing data channels.

- Since 2.5G, each mobile phone has been assigned with an IP address for Internet activity. Btw, its phone number is unique as an ID.

* Btw, a solution provider should come up with a protocol solution to lower demands in wireless networks and Internet networks. Some notes at
https://plus.google.com/+TVinhNguyen/posts/hNpYuXEJpdy

- A sample of protocol for this case [of course we must add the octet to identify the length of this packet and packet ID at the beginning of this packet. The packet length indicator would help receiver to determine content of the packet. You could also expand the protocol later by adding new octets and change the length indicator.]


- Octet #1: =0, octet #2, #3, #4, #5 are unreliable, =1 octets 1-5 have GPS coordinates
- Octet #2 #3: longitude coordinates
- Octet #4 #5: latitude coordinates
- Octet #6: =0 meant octet #7 is unreliable; =1 meant Octet #7 has bus capacity
- Octet #7: current # of passengers on the bus
- Octet #8: =0 unreliable of octet #9; =1 Celsius; =2 Fahrenheit
- Octet #9: bus temperature
- of course, you could expand for wind chill factor, etc. We haven't used too many bites in this sample protocol.

--> The bus ID should also be included in the protocol. North America's phone number includes 11 digits including country code and area code. Thus if include an indicator, 12 bytes are needed. Other countries may have longer phone numbers, i.e. more bytes.

* Each 4 bits could present a number between 0-F, thus we could compact by using an octet for 2 digits, if wanted.

* Having connected to Internet and other services using a mobile router connected to cellular telephony's networks is an easier task. Having connected to satellite network is harder as military owned those. Upgrading satellites' hardware and software are harder.

[3] Having free WiFi to subway car is harder as the wireless signals couldn't penetrate the tunnel concrete. Unless they have the radio base stations, RBS, across tunnel, passengers would have free WiFi. So far, many subway stations could estimate time of arrival of each subway to any station. This is not hard as people thought.

[4] Electricity smart meters have been communicating with its centers via electrical wires or power lines, I think. I hate this stuff too much as we have to wait until 7pm to do laundry. Having kids at home is making this huge trouble. Sick. Especially governments have spent money like crazy or idiots to renewable energy. Double shits. Actually they're using cellular telephony for a smart meter, i.e. subscription fee's issue as the meter id not a mobile phone? How much do I have to pay for this, i.e. they passed on cost to me?

[5] Having self-driving cars with features connecting to 5G networks? You must know that telecom providers are allowed to upgrade their networks around 20 minutes within a year, i.e. down time shortly at each upgrade. Telecom network is reliable as of today, but don't bet 100% on it.

- If I recalled correctly, Ericsson's AXE has an executive central processor and a standby central processor. The executive side handles real time data and updates the standby side with data, so if the executive side is faulty the standby side would switch over automatically to handle telephone traffic. During an upgrade, the executive side transfers real time data to the standby side, which holds new software. After transferring done, switching the standby side to executive side, this process may take a minute, i.e. no communication with wireless network unless the new version of Radio Base Station, RBS, could handle data on its own without the switch, APZ. Btw, an RBS could be down for an upgrade, too.

- Btw, the central processors with 2 sides running in parallel are expensive. Should a self-driving car cost a few millions of dollars with similar computers?

* Notes October 31, 2017:

The application providing WiFi to bus passengers could also be used by any company, which wanted to keep track of their mobile fleet, e.g.

- Loading trucks travelling between cities.
- Taxi company could also track their taxi cabs instantly.

January 11, 2019: So far, GPS device used Bluetooth to communicate with a mobile station connecting to Internet for live traffic. Therefore, a GPS device with large screen could connect to MS via Bluetooth in order to get its coordinates relayed to the central server.

2 comments:

  1. The application providing WiFi to bus passengers could also be used by any company, which wanted to keep track of their mobile fleet, e.g.

    - Loading trucks travelling between cities.
    - Taxi company could also track their taxi cabs instantly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. So far, GPS device used Bluetooth to communicate with a mobile station connecting to Internet for live traffic. Therefore, a GPS device with large screen could connect to MS via Bluetooth in order to get its coordinates relayed to the central server.

    ReplyDelete