Hybrid Access Networks and Cloud-Based Service Architectures for Smart Mobile Devices

Telecommunication and service architectures play important role in connecting people, enabling promotion of global health, education, entertainment, etc. Saigopals PhD study focuses on hybrid access networks and application services for smart devices. The first part emphasizes on Wireless Optical Broadband Access Network (WOBAN). Failure-tolerant connectivity, high quality of service, and effective utilization of resources are important objectives for access-network providers. Different methods have been evaluated in this dissertation to achieve these objectives.;With the proliferation of smart devices, and users generating and sharing more multimedia content than ever before, there is a need for innovative device-centric social-network platforms for securely sharing content among users using smart devices. Hence in this dissertation, a cloud-based, device-agnostic architecture for multi-device communication and collaboration is developed for seamless communication between devices. Various optimization mechanisms were investigated on top of the proposed platform to leverage context information and mobility patterns from smart devices, such as context-aware source selection for distributed querying and location-based WiFi sensing mechanism, called intelliSENSE.;During this research, it has been realized that the concept of dynamic social networking, where users can securely share content of a particular event or context with relevant groups of peers, and its applications are very important. Therefore it was decided that this research be translated to technology for use by real users. A dynamic social network application called eCloud (https://ecloud-ucd.herokuapp.com) has been developed. Anyone can now create an event in eCloud and invite friends/family/colleagues to share content. eCloud currently has over 700 active users in 12 events. eCloud has also been used successfully in classrooms for teaching few courses (ECS 152A and ECS 188) at UC Davis with 30-100 students for instructors and students to share content relevant to the class.