Scientific and technological reports

Bridging the Gap?
Access to telecommunciations for all people

CHAPTER 5.

CLASSIFICATION OF COMMUNICATION TERMS AND SERVICES
Klaus Fellbaum, Dirk Hoepfner, Maik Hampicke

5.1 Introduction

We are living at a time of breathtaking developments in communication technology and services. Two decades ago, communication mainly consisted of (mostly analog) telephony, fax and data transmission. Today the digital revolution is everywhere. Speech and fax is extended to multimedia communication including wideband audio and video. High-speed communication which was previously restricted to wired lines has begun to conquer the radio range. The second generation of mobile communication with its GSM standard has led to an explosion of subscribers and today we have more users of mobile than fixed telephony.

The next generation, represented by the Universal Mobile Telecommunication Services (UMTS), is expected to transmit wideband multimedia information, maybe with some restrictions in the bit rate, resulting in reduced quality. Finally, a fourth generation in communication with real wideband capabilities is on the horizon and some experts predict only a short lifetime to UMTS.

This chapter aims to give a short overview of what exists today and what can be expected in the near future. We will mainly focus on technical developments and services which could have special benefits for the disabled and older people. Two possible scenarios of applications can be found at the end of the chapter.
Before we go into details of developments and services, it seems to be useful to summarise some basic definitions and classifications in the communication area.


5.2 Classification of Communication Terms and Services

5.2.1 Communication and Telecommunication

The word communication contains common and that means common information about facts, sensations, actions etc. Usually there is an interchange of information. For that purpose the communication partners change their roles and there is therefore a form of dialogue between them.

Our definition includes the special case of one-sided communication (monologue). One example for a one-sided information is television broadcasting, but in this case there is no interchange and thus it sometimes might be useful to restrict the term communication on dialogues or the communication between more than two persons.

If people communicate directly, it is referred to as face-to-face communication. This is, without any doubt, the richest and most complex form of communication because it is based not only on speech and hearing but includes gestures, touches, smell etc. But face-to-face communication is much more than these components. It generates multiple synergies and gives a feeling of presence that also exists when the persons have sensory defects (e.g. hard of hearing, blindness).

If the human speech and sensory organs (eyes, ears) cannot bridge the distance between communication partners, we need the aid of a technical system and we then call it telecommunication. The most important form of (tele)communication is of course speech. As a matter of fact, telecommunication cannot substitute face-to-face communication. Even when a wideband channel with high-quality audio and video is used, there is not the same feeling of presence. There might be, in the future and after substantial improvements of virtual reality techniques, a kind of telepresence which comes close to reality but up to now the technology is still not available and, maybe more importantly, psychological knowledge about the factors which determine presence is still lacking.

Next, the term service has to be defined. A service provider (public or private) makes a service, in our case a telecommunication service, available to the user. Obviously, a service is far more than the transmission of information. It also contains interfaces, networks, technical and quality features and, in some cases, maintenance. Usually, a provider offers a basic service which has only the required features to run the service and extended versions with additional features. In the case of telephony, an extended service might be a voice mailbox.

Concerning communication (including telecommunication), various classifications are possible. A very important one is related to the communication form. Figure 5-1 gives an overview.

Figure 5-1. Classification of communication forms

Apart from voice and non-voice, a communication can be stationary or fluent. Text, graphics, still pictures and data are stationary. For example, a text is displayed on the screen and it is up to the reader to perceive the text quickly, slowly or several times while speech, sounds and video are characterised by an information flow, which the user is normally forced to follow in real time (exception: the user requires a slow motion video or a reduced speaking rate). Many experts agree that a multimedia communication consists of both, stationary and fluent components.

Another possible classification is cable-based and wireless communication which can be further sub-classified as shown in figure 5- 2.

Figure 5-2. Classification of transmission media

5.2.2 Cable-based Communication

We prefer the term cable-based instead of wired (which might be, at a first sight, more adequate as counterpart to wireless) because cable-based is more general and includes also glass fibres that are gaining in importance. Cable-based networks are media for both, narrowband and wideband communication and they have enough capacity to transmit all kinds of multimedia information including video.

The cable-based medium can be characterised by the range (Figure 5-3). For in-house communication or within a factory area there is the Local Area Network (LAN). In general, this network belongs to the owner of the building or factory and there is no need to follow any standard or other restrictions as long as the communication takes place within the in-house area. However, in most cases, the communication has to be extended to the outer world and then the common standards and regulations have to be fulfiled. Two alternatives exist: either the LAN follows the regular (public) standards or the messages for external participants are modified (transcoded, adapted etc.) before they are transmitted. Although the second solution is more complicated (and more expensive), it has crucial advantages. For example, the LAN can be a wideband network with high bit rates, a typical representative is the Fast Ethernet with up to 100 Mbit/s, and for the external communication the Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) with its two 64 kbit/s channels might be sufficient. In this case, a special interface, called bridge, is used which converts the different standards and transmission rates.

The next type of network is the Metropolitan Area Network (MAN). It covers an area of a large city and more (about 50 km). MANs act sometimes as playgrounds for network developers since MANs mostly have a prototype status and they serve as test beds. Several modern concepts for high-speed networking were developed with the use of MANs, for example the Fibre Distributed Dual Interface (FDDI) network. It is based on a fibre optic medium and a double token ring structure and it runs with about 150 Mbit/s. Another representative is the Distributed Queue Dual Bus (DQDB) network which is based on well-known principles of the data queue theory and has also a bit rate of about 150 Mbit/s.

Finally, there is the Wide Area Network (WAN). It serves as the backbone for public telecommunication with national or international extensions and it normally belongs to public telecommunication authorities. Typical representatives of the WAN are the old analog telephone network, the ISDN and the Asynchronous Transfer Network (ATM).

Figure 5-3. Classes of networks

5.2.3 Wireless Communication

Wireless communication can be terrestrial or satellite-based. The satellite-based version is mainly used for global communication, the transmission and distribution of television and radio programmes or for communication in areas that do not have a terrestrial or cable-based technical infrastructure (deserts, sea etc.). The terms fixed and mobile in figure 5-2 characterise the terrestrial transmitter and receiver stations. In this sense, a broadcast station is (usually) fixed and a satellite-based handy is mobile.

Since terrestrial systems are more important, these will now be discussed in detail. In the seventies, the first generation of mobile telephones, based on analog modulation, appeared. In 1982 a working group (GSM=Groupe Speciale Mobile) was founded which defined an international standard for digital telephony. GSM stands now for "Global System for Mobile Communication". This GSM standard, which became the second generation of mobile communication, was a real success story.

For 2000, the total number of telephone subscribers worldwide is in the order of 700 millions. Probably more surprising is the number of mobile telephone subscribers. It is in 2000 in the same range, namely about 600 millions. In 2001 the number of mobile telephones will overtake those of landline telephony and in 2003 probably the 1 billion mark will be exceeded (figure 5-4) [ASKELÖF, J. et al.].

Figure 5-4. The world of fixed and mobile communication (fixed corresponds to cable-based and mobile to wireless) [ERICSSON]

Thus, mobile telephony is one of the key factors. A look at the development of this service shows four main trends [DOWDEN, D.C. et al], [MAASS, H]:

Surprisingly, the main focus in the technical development is in the "non-voice" services. As an example, the WAP (wireless application protocol) service can be mentioned, which is mainly designed for the Internet access [RALPH, D]. GPRS (General Packet Data Radio Service) does not explicitly foresee a speech transmission (possibly the providers expect that each subscriber has a GSM handset anyway). GPRS is one of the so-called 2.5th -generation services, the number 2.5 expresses the transition to the 3rd generation which will be represented by UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems). Obviously the pressure of the user on further developments was too strong and nobody was willing to wait until the introduction of UMTS.

Table 5-1. Mobile radio generations [SCHO00]

legend:
EDGE Enhanced Data Rates over GSM Evolution
GPRS General Packet Data Radio Service
HSCSD High Speed Circuit Switched Data
PCN/PCS Personal Communications Network/Personal Communications System
UMTS/IMT Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems/
International Mobile Communications System

5.2.4 Mobile Communication and Bluetooth

Bluetooth was primarily developed to replace cable connections between electronic components (for example the PC mainframe and the printer or the mouse) by a radio connection. For this purpose and with the aim of low cost components (the aim is 5 per component) , Bluetooth bridges distances of about 10 m, and the maximum bit rate in both directions is about 1 Mbit/s.

Figure 5-5. Transmitter and receiver (source: Ericsson)

Figure 5-6. Wireless connection of the handy and the headphone (source: Ericsson)

In an extended version, Bluetooth has a transmission range of about 100 m. The radio power is very small, (1 mW) thus only a small power supply for transmitter and receiver (fig. 5) is needed. As a matter of fact, Bluetooth is no competitor for the radio systems mentioned before, but it can be used for very important applications, above all in the office environment or in smart homes. With Bluetooth it is possible to establish in a short time ad-hoc networks between devices of different manufacturers. For three reasons, the security of Bluetooth is very high. Firstly, the radio data are transmitted with a special frequency hopping procedure (1600 hops per second), secondly the transmission distance is very small and finally, any device may be authentified with a 128 bit private user key [FRODICH], [AUGUST, K.G. et al.]. Since the specification of Bluetooth is very flexible, it can be used for the transmission of data and speech and for mobile and stationary links. One Bluetooth application (among many) is a wireless headphone for mobile telephony as shown in figure 5-6.

5.3 New Mobile Generation: UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems)

UMTS was intended to solve the problems of former generations, above all the relatively low bit rate and the many incompatible standards. The outcome of UMTS should be the development of small and light handheld devices with the same frequencies and numbering worldwide, international roaming, integration into the fixed network and into satellite communication. The aim of any service, anywhere at any time should be reached, albeit with some delay on initial predictions. In view of the fast growth in mobile communications and the substantial investments made, many countries had a vested interest in keeping their own systems. In November 2000 the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) proposed a compromise, the so-called IMT 2000 specification.

Figure 5-7. Types of cells

Based on this specification, UMTS now has five different radio interfaces worldwide and a maximum bit rate of 2 Mbit/s is available (only to stationary subscribers). If the user is in motion, the rate goes down (see figure 5-8).

Figure 5-7 shows the cell structure of UMTS. Since the radio bandwidth is restricted, the cell size (in which one radio bandwidth exists) strongly depends on the number of subscribers who are within the cell, the more persons, the smaller the cell size. If we leave the in-building or city area and move to the less densely populated countryside, the cell size increases. Finally, in a global extension, a satellite can cover continental and intercontinental areas.

Figure 5-8. User density in 2010 [WALKE, B]

Figure 5-8 gives an impression of cell size relations depending on the number of persons living in the same area (density of users per area).

It is very important to mention that the transmission bit rate strongly depends on the mobility of the subscriber. According to the UMTS specification, with a speed of 500 km/h the transmission rate goes down to 384 kbit/s. Figure 5-9 gives an overview of different radio networks and their bit rates depending on mobility.

Figure 5-9. Mobility and bit rates

Speech communication in UMTS is defined with a bit rate of 64 kbit/s and a bandwidth up to 7 kHz, which is clearly better than those of wired ISDN (bandwidth 3.1 kHz).
The following graphic presents services which are foreseen in UMTS [WALKE, B].

Figure 5-10. A selection of UMTS services

Some interesting features and services are now described.

Personal mobility:

The subscriber can use all terminals with one smart card.

Bandwidth on demand:

It permits an efficient use of bandwidth (examples: video requiring a high bandwidth and SMS with a very low bandwidth). Additionally it is possible to determine the bandwidth which the user demands. He can select a high bandwidth for maximum quality or a smaller and cheaper one for lower quality.

Virtual Home Environment (VHE):

Virtual home environment is a new standard feature in UMTS which was not yet offered in the GSM network. The VHE consistently presents to the user the same personalised features, user interface capabilities and services irrespective of the network and terminal which is being used and is independent of the location of the user. It is a concept for personalised service portability across network boundaries and between terminals.

The user is always connected to the same service provider. The provider takes care of the VHE according to the subscription. If the provider cannot fulfil a requirement, for example a special value added service, he cooperates with other providers. For the user, this procedure is invisible. There might be several profiles depending on different situations or needs, for example being at work, in the car or at home.

The terminal indicates the service profile in the VHE mode. Its screen presents the same look and feel depending on the limitation of the serving network and the capabilities of the terminal in use. Any limitation of the terminal will be indicated to the user when terminals change. If a user changes terminals, for instance from a mobile telephone to a PDA terminal, the display remains consistent in the use of icons, given the limitation of the terminal screen size. Services that are available/unavailable will be displayed in a way that is familiar to the user, no matter what class of terminal is used.

Figure 5-11. Virtual Home Environment in different networks

5.4 Beyond UMTS: The Fourth Generation and the Convergence of Media and Services

Up to now, no details about specifications and services of the fourth generation are known and the communication industry is very cautious with publications. This is no wonder because before the fourth generation emerges, there is an urgent need to re-invest the enormous costs of the third generation, for example, the huge UMTS license costs.

Nevertheless, experts share a certain scepticism about the power (above all the bit rates), costs and benefits which the third generation will bring. Unfortunately, the communication manufacturing industry did not learn the lessons about standardisation and what already happened in the third generation (namely the occurrence of several standards which are widely incompatible) will probably reappear in an extended form in the fourth generation. The user will be obliged to use multiband handsets if he or she is travelling across the world.

But there is some hope to overcome this dilemma. Instead of implementing more and more hardware components (in order to fulfil the demands of the many frequency bands), the concept of software radio solves the problem in an efficient and elegant way.

5.4.1 Software Radio

Software radio means:

Figure 5-12. Software defined radio application in the future

The idea of software radio is not new but needs to be adapted to the challenging requirements of :

5.4.2 Intelligent Antenna

As mentioned earlier, UMTS cannot satisfy the bit rate requirements, above all for video transmission. The restriction comes from the limited radio bandwidth which must be shared between all participants who

Figure 5-13. Intelligent antenna

are within the same cell. An elegant method to overcome the limited bandwidth capacity is the so-called intelligent antennas (figure 5-13). They do not radiate a circular wave but the radiation is strongly focused as a club and follows the mobile receiver. Every subscriber receives a separate club and special changes of the polarity separate the different clubs. Thus up to 24 subscribers in a raster of 15 degrees can theoretically use the full bandwidth of a cell in the same radio channel.

5.4.3 High Altitude Platforms (HAPs)

For wide distances, the common transmission system is a satellite. But this is a very expensive solution and since the signal has to run a long way, the delay time is considerable (and disturbing). These considerations lead to the so-called High Altitude Platforms (HAPs). These are balloons which are hanging in the stratosphere 21 km over the earth and serve as relay stations or as very high transmission tower in a city or suburban territory.

There are many advantages in the new technology of HAPs:

The HAPs are environmentally friendly, because they use solar power only.

Figure 5-14. HAP over a city [SKY]

5.4.4 Mixture of Wireless and Wired Communication

Another, very promising solution will be the introduction of pico cells which are in the order of 10 m in diameter. These pico cells are normally located in areas with a high population, for example in the office, railway stations, airports or fairs. The advantage of pico cells are manifold. First, the number of subscribers per cell is small, which means that the network knows exactly where a person is and it can indicate to him or her where the next shop, police station, cash dispenser etc. is. On a fair, the visitor receives information about the neighbouring exhibits or hints where the stand is which he/she wants to contact and so on.

The relatively small size of the pico cells means the transfer point to the fixed network is rather near, with the effect that its (normally much higher) capacity can be used for the information transfer. The wireless transmission in the pico cell can be managed by very different technologies and protocols and they are in fact special kinds of wireless LANs.

It is important to state that pico cells and their wireless LANs are normally not part of the wide area wireless network (like UMTS) but more an island-like overlay network. But there might be extended handover procedures which automatically switch from one network to the internal one if the person enters the cell. This is already realised today with the handover from the GSM network to the cordless telephone network DECT.

As one of the favourites for wireless LANs the HIPERLAN/2 (High Performance Radio Local Network) must be mentioned. Its standardisation is widely finished. HIPERLAN/2 has a bit rate of up to 54 Mbit/s and - which is very important - it has a well-defined set of quality of service classes [KHUN-JUSH, J. et al.]. Also, for very short distances (maybe in an office environment) and special services, the before mentioned Bluetooth technology could be the easiest and cheapest solution.

Finally, a coming together of mobile radio and broadcast networks can be expected. An example of an application that could be mentioned is a motorist on the motorway who wants to download a movie from the wireless network. It could be done, of course, from the wireless WAN but this would cost a huge amount of time and money because it requires several Gigabits and a WAN, which even in the fourth generation, will be very restricted in its capacity (maybe of some 10 Mbit/s). Now the idea is to install high-speed data media points (like petrol stations) along the motorway, for example on bridges or dedicated buoys, which blow a high bit stream into the car while it is passing that point (figure 5-15). The request for the data material, the uplink communication, runs over the WAN (e.g. the UMTS network).

Figure 5-15. High-speed data transfer based on wireless mediapoints

5.4.5 Convergence of Services and Networks

The current situation is characterised by a wealth of different networks:

Figure 5-16. The landscape of networks and services, today and tomorrow [ERICSSON]

It will be a very challenging (maybe the most challenging) task for the telecommunication society to unify all these networks in such a way that, after a service- and network-specific access, one single backbone network performs the transport of the information and at the exit (or the input - from the reverse view) the information is split into communications applications and media gateways (figure 5-16).

5.5 Future Services for Disabled and Older People

The development of forthcoming technologies promise new broadband services that will be more comfortable and more flexible for the user [SHIPLEY, T]. Above all, the mobile communication will strongly grow for both, local (Bluetooth) and global (GPRS, UMTS, Hiperlan) areas. Bluetooth technology will make communication much easier because it avoids cables, plugs and complicated installations. On the other hand, mobile communication systems will have an easy and powerful access to cable-based wide area networks and will be able to use many of their attractive services.

The increasing migration of LANs, MANs and WANs make a smooth transition between all network areas possible and at least all networks can be used with one communication device.

Higher bandwidths in the mobile communication (UMTS, Hiperlan) allow video transmission and multimedia services for everybody. In connection with intelligent antennas the bit rates, needed e.g. for video communication, can be made available at a reasonable price for many users including disabled and older persons. A key point is, of course, a simple and individually adaptable user interface. This requirement can be optimally met by the before mentioned Virtual Home Environment (VHE). For a visually impaired person it could mean big letters and for a blind person perhaps a purely acoustic output or a mixture of speech and Braille.

5.6 Two Possible Scenarios

5.6.1 Scenario A: Paula's Life in a Smart Home in 2007

Paula is a lady of 75. She lives alone in her two room flat in the middle of a small town in Germany. She is still very active, has many friends, likes to walk into the park and is very interested in the politics.

Paula has problems with her legs and climbing up the stairs to her flat causes her some difficulty, she is also forgetful and the function of her ears and eyes leaves something to be desired.

Ten years ago, when she retired, she and her family discussed moving her to an apartment for older people, supervised by a healthcare organisation. However, she was so accustomed to her flat, friends and surroundings that she decided to stay.

Fortunately, her flat was constructed according to barrier-free guidelines and her basic telecommunications infrastructure could be used with the latest technology. The invisible nature of this high-tech environment meant that a visitor would not even notice the TV "painting" hanging on the wall in the form of flat plasma display.

Figure 5-17. This home environment communication centre is far more than just a television station. It also offers many new services such as video on demand, home theatre, broadband video telephony and many other smart home services. An essential part of the information located in the centre accompanies Paula when she leaves her flat through mobile wireless channels (UMTS or GSM) which transmit this information to different receiving devices such as her multimedia handy. which shows nearly the same pages as her plasma display at home

That night, when Paula was fast asleep, it suddenly started raining. Two windows that were detected as open by the sensors were immediately closed.

At eight o'clock the next morning on this sunny Autumn day Paula awoke to the sound of classical music from the wake-up programme she had activated the previous evening. In parallel to the music, the blinds are automatically opened to let in the early morning sunshine. The central heating is also automatically turned on and raised to her favourite temperature of 20°C.

Paula gets up and the light is switched on. What a relief not to have to keep remembering to switch the lights on and off. Before having her shower, she passes through the kitchen and tells her coffee machine to get to work. The coffee machine repeats the order by way of confirmation and begins brewing the coffee.

Figure 5-18. Speech activated coffee machine

After getting dressed Paula goes to the kitchen where her coffee is waiting for her and suddenly feels the urge to read her e-ink paper-thin electronic newspaper. The layout and the content of her newspaper is adapted to Paulas interests and reading habits.

Figure 5-19. The principal components of the electronic ink are millions of tiny microcapsules with the diameter of a human hair. Each micro-capsule contains positively charged white particles and negatively charged black particles suspended in a clear fluid. The ink is printed on to a sheet of plastic film that is laminated to a layer of circuitry.

Figure 5-20. E-INK in research [www.wired.com]

While she is still reading, the voice of the communicator reminds her that it is time to go to the doctor. She puts on her I-Wear coat with an integrated mobile and personal communication system with a microphone and camera in the collar. On the back of the coat a flexible antenna is mounted and the acoustical information is sent to Paula via her hearing aid which has also a Bluetooth component

Sensors in the coat hook inform the home system that Paula intends to leave her flat. Before she opens the door, a memory system asks her whether she has taken her keys, money and personal documents. Paula has in fact forgotten to switch off the coffee machine. The system detects the fault and informs her.

When Paula enters the street, the communicator tells her that there is a broken water mains on the way to the doctor and the street is closed to the public. This is a regional information service via UMTS. The voice from her I-Wear computer coat asks her if she wants to take a detour or order a taxi. Paula prefers to walk and as she still has some time in hand she asks her communicator to direct her to the nearest cash dispenser. The voice of her communicator immediately describes the way to her and in addition she receives visual information of the dispenser's location which is projected on her eyeglasses with a mini monitor.

Paula arrives at the doctor. He welcomes her and then they talk about her health problems. Since having her first dizziness attack, Paula has had an emergency call system installed in the form of a wrist watch sensor measuring her bio data which is then sent to an invisible receiver station in her flat and compared to baseline bio data.

The doctor is well prepared because his computer has a direct connection to the emergency system in Paula's flat and her bio data are automatically transmitted to this computer. It is an easy way for him to keep up with Paula's latest condition of health. Fortunately, the news today is good and she leaves the doctor with a spring in her step.

On the way home she buys bread and rolls from a local bakery. When Paula reaches her flat, the door automatically opens. She has, of course, a normal key to unlock or lock the door but integrated into the key there is a microchip that operates as a Bluetooth transmitter and receiver.

Figure 5-21. Module automatically communicating with the Bluetooth station which is behind the door under the floor. Since radio waves go through walls and other obstacles, there is no need to have any devices or modules outside the flat, which considerably raises security.

After lunch, she decides to order food and drinks. She sits down in the living room in front of the painting, speaks the command "wake up" and immediately the painting changes to a screen that indicates a set of pictograms, each for a special service or function. Paula starts a spoken dialog with the screen. She logs into the home page of a big mall and makes a virtual walk through different shops. She has become a real expert in detecting and catching special offers. Her virtual shopping trolley becomes fuller and fuller and suddenly she realises that she has bought much more than she had planned. She checks again her selection, puts some things back and pays with electronic cash.

After two hours a kind young man from the mall brings her the many items she had bought. It takes more than half an hour for her to store the many goods into the fridge and other places and she is just ready when she hears a tone sequence indicating that a good friend of hers has initiated a video telephone contact and wants to meet her.

When Paula enters to the living room, she can see her partner on the screen waiting for a response. They have a long chat and during the session some other friends join the meeting. Shortly afterwards, another tone sequence sounds, indicating that someone is in front of the door and she recognises her daughter Betty in the camera view. Paula speaks a command which is received by the recogniser and transferred to the door opener and Betty comes in. She gives her mother a new water cooker because the old one had a severe defect and could not be repaired. The new one is equipped with a Bluetooth chip and when Betty puts it on the table of the kitchen, it immediately tries to find other Bluetooth partners. It takes some seconds and then, via the home bus, the cooker is automatically integrated into the family of Bluetooth devices and it is indicated as a new icon on the screen.

Figure 5-22. Bluetooth Water cooker

When Betty leaves in the evening, Paula is a bit tired. She decides to have a look at the weather forecast. She speaks a short command and the weather forecast appears on the screen. Paula then prepares a light evening dinner in the kitchen and after the meal she goes back to her favourite place in the living room just opposite the screen. She remembers that somebody has told her that a great concert was announced which could be ordered by the TV home service.

She decides to look and listen to this concert and she gives a spoken command. The communicator recognises it and orders the concert from the pay TV channel automatically. The concert hall appears on the screen and the orchestra and the choir are already sitting in. In a few minutes the concert will begin and with her big screen and the wireless headphones with head tracking Paula has the feeling of sitting in the middle of the hall. Behind her she hears the noise of a bag of crisps and turns around automatically, but there is only the wall of her living room, no crisps. The head tracking technology of the headphone makes sure that the orchestra is always in front of Paula even if she turns the head.

After the concert she decides to watch a movie. It is a two-hour movie, but after a while, Paula falls asleep in her armchair.

This is a challenging situation for the automatic monitoring system. At eleven in the evening, Paula is normally in bed, but the bed sensors indicate that no one is there. On the other hand, the system has the information that the TV is still in full operation. Has something happened to Paula? A short check of the emergency system, done by the central computer, fortunately does not pick up any problems. The computer of the smart home makes a careful search of a comparable situation in the past and the search is successful. Three months ago, Paula also fell asleep in front of the TV. When the system noticed, it immediately reacted with a wake-up tone sequence. Paula was very scared and then extremely angry and shouted some unkind words to the system. At first, the speech recogniser had problems because her voice sounded very different (compared to her normal voice) but then after the analysis of her intonation the recogniser detected the anger in her voice. This information was analysed by the central computer which concluded that it had reacted wrongly.

Figure 5-23. Wristwatch sensor

The computer therefore decides not to wake her up but it automatically checks all systems and sensors. The door flat is electronically locked and the alarm sensors start their supervision. Also, the energy saving procedure is performed perfectly: the temperature is reduced and the lights are switched off, except in the living room. When Paula, after some hours, awakens in her arm chair, the light and the heating is still on, only the TV is switched off. At this moment, Paula has a feeling of immense gratitude towards her smart home system which has reacted like an attentive butler.

5.6.2 Scenario B: Mrs Lewis, Written on a nice October Day in 2010
Jan Engelen

Mrs Lewis is a housewife, but not a typical one. She is blind from birth and looks after her husband and children.

In the morning, she needs to wake up quite early in order to get the children ready for school. Her alarm clock is her mobile phone. The previous evening she talked to the phone to fix the wake-up time. After going off, her phone alarm speaks to her from time to time giving her the exact time so that she can judge the right (latest) moment to jump out of the bed.

After breakfast, her refrigerator tells her that she should buy milk and cheese. Via a connection between the fridge and the mobile, she just passes her command to the local supermarket. The supermarket requires immediate payment which she simply arranges by slipping her chip card into the phone. Before she used a secret pin code, but her oldest boy had found out the code and had ordered and paid for chocolates and sweets when he had felt in need of an extra treat.

Somewhat later, her phone announces the arrival of a message. Her friend has found out about a new cosy coffee shop and invites her to go there. Most of he information actually came from the shop itself as they send all details and a few pictures via SMS or email if you call the coffee shop phone number. Mrs Lewis just has all the text spoken to her, together with an automatic description of the images but that did not teach her very much so she relied more on her friend's advice than on the pictorial descriptions of "marvellous tasteful Dame Blanche Ice creams". That image description information was added by the shopkeeper as it became a legal requirement after the introduction of the eEurope 2006 law.

She quickly answers her friend that it looks fine, but only at 3 pm, after some more serious work. She replies with an SMS message and a few seconds later the meeting is agreed upon. Mrs Lewis, who used to be a history teacher, is still very interested in current affairs and politics and carefully reads her electronic newspaper every morning. Some time ago she had a subscription to one-out-of-all so that she could choose every morning the newspaper that she was getting electronically that day. Now she has gone back to her favourite one. For reading she uses her personal computer to which she has connected a Braille reading line. Although speech output is available too, she still prefers "pure reading" herself and anyhow her speech synthesizer cannot pronounce yet the names of the current day Tadzjik and Tuvaluan politicians correctly.

After reading the newspaper, she plans to study some Spanish. Her computer-server-teacher reminds her that she stopped her grammatical exercises the last time and apparently was also very distracted: new, adapted work is therefore presented to her. But she is not in the mood, and connects to an Internet based Spanish chatting service. Apparently quite a lot of Spanish speaking housewives are active today and explain to each other how to make the perfect gazpacho. Mrs Lewis gets used to the Spanish cuisine terms and at the same time plans to surprise her family tonight with an almost perfect Andalucian recipe.
Around noon she checks the family finances with her banking program, eats a little snack and decides to go to the hairdressers'. But on her favourite hairdresser's agenda (that is online available), she sees that it is too late to arrange an appointment for today.

Mrs Lewis then decides to walk with her white stick to the new coffee shop but, at a roundabout in town, she does not pay attention and takes the wrong street. As soon as she feels that she has taken a wrong turning, she switches her mobile phone to "local" news and when passing a bank and a few shops, they announce themselves to her. She finds out that she is definitely wrong. No problem anyhow: her friend's SMS message with all the information on the coffee shop is recalled, she also retrieves the announcement from the shopkeeper (containing its coordinates) and a few seconds later her "mobility service provider" (which obtains Mrs Lewis' location through GPS) just tells her that she can take the next street to the right and that the coffee shop is then on the next corner.

She enjoys the coffee and the talking with her friend and walks back home via the school to pick up her youngest girl. At home she finds out that her husband has sent her an email announcing that he will be back soon too. Mrs Lewis keeps an eye on her children's homework: as both of them use computers on the home intranet, she can check their work with the screen reading program on her own computer.

Actually she spends most of her time checking that the children do their homework themselves and do not get the information via SMS or email from friends. She has blocked the access to homework-help-sites on the Internet but that does not help very much as these sites change IP address every day and offer SMS notification to the pupils (together with some commercial stuff). So her presence is crucial to homework being carried out properly.

Later that evening, when the children are in bed, she watches a TV series with her husband. Through an extra information channel she gets more information about the series and what is seen on the screen so that she can follow it easily. She still remembers old times back in the beginning of the nineteen nineties when audio-description was a vision of a few brave researchers who were usually considered to be slightly foolish by others. But times had changed.
Due to the multi-cultural society most TV programmes now had several language channels together with the audio description, the subtitle reading and the "subtitle in sign-language" channel.

She could therefore remedy her not-so serious Spanish learning by watching a James Bond film in the Spanish version. She ordered it and paid for it with her mobile phone, that she can also use as the remote control for the TV, as well as an interface to control kitchen devices or to connect to her bank or even to program her GPS receiver. She orders her microwave to prepare two good cups of tea, to be ready at the time boring commercials start interrupting her programme.

Tomorrow she plans to write a letter to her deaf friend in Japan. Mrs Lewis who does not speak Japanese, found one day in the most recent COST219's Issues book (probably the 2007 edition) the address of the written-English-to-Japanese-sign-language relay service. Her Japanese friend answers the letter in sign language that is sent over the broadband network to an international sign language interpreting service. This service transforms the images into English text again.

These services are not free but a long time ago you even paid for having letters moved from one place to another. Nowadays one only has to pay if a valuable object has to be moved. Just moving a few papers around the world does not make sense anymore, it is cheaper to pay for a few gigabytes of data transfer.

5.7 References

ASKELÖF, J. et.al. (2001). Wireless image applications and next-generation imaging. Ericsson Review, No. 2, 2001.

AUGUST, K.G.et.al. (2000). An Introduction to Future Communications Services and Access. Bell Labs Technical Journal. April-June 1999, pp. 3-20

BI, Q., et.al. (2001). Wireless Mobile Communications at the Start of the 21st Century.

IEEE Communications Magazine, January 2001

DAY, M. (2000). Text Direct- A User's Perspective. British Telecommunications plc 2000.

DOWDEN, D.C. et.al. (2000). The Future of Network-Provided Communications Services. Bell Labs Technical Journal. July-September 2000, pp. 3-11.

ERRICSSON (2001). Ericsson Review 2/2001.

FRODIGH, M. (2000). Wireless ad hoc networking-The art of networking without a network. Ericsson Review No. 4, 2000

KHUN-JUSH, J. et.al. (2000). HIPERLAN type 2 for broadband wireless communication. Ericsson Review No. 2, 2000, pp. 108-119

MAASS, H. (1998). Location-aware mobile applications based on directory services. Mobile Networks and Applications 3(1998) 157-173

RALPH, D.; Aghvami, H. (2001). Wireless application protocol overview. WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS AND MOBILE COMPUTING. 2001; 1:125-140

SHIPLEY, T. (1999). Outwardly Mobile. RNIB, ISBN 1 86048 021 7, Aug. 1999

SIETMANN, R. (2001). Quo vadis, Mobilfunk? (in German) c't 2001, H. 5 pp. 94-101

SKY: www.Skystation.com

SCHOEBORN, F. (2000). UMTS - der Weg zur ultimativen Kommunikationsfreiheit. Telekom praxis 6/2000

WALKE, B. (2000). Mobilfunknetze und ihre Protokolle, Band 1, Teubner Stuttgart.

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