WWRF Working Group 2 - "Service Architecture for the Wireless World"

Editors:  

Stefan Arbanowski, Fraunhofer FOKUS, arbanowski@fokus.fraunhofer.de  

Wolfgang Kellerer, DoCoMo Euro-Labs, kellerer@docomolab-euro.com  

1. Description and Goals

The Service Architecture Working Group (WG2) is a working group within the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF). The working group exists to gather inputs and views from industry and academia, to synthesize these views, to influence future visions and research priorities, and to share results across the forum.

Since September 2001, the Working Group 2 has worked in the area of service architectures and service platforms for future wireless systems. The WG2 focuses on the user as the driving force in future communication systems following the approach of WWRF WG1 (Human Perspective). Based on a ubiquitously connected world, WG2 investigates how the user can be provided by future systems with an I-centric service environment. The services addressed by WG2 are settled on top of an all-IP environment, addressing the fulfillment of any user demand.

The vision of I-centric communications has been developed to put the individual (“I”) user in the center of all activities a communication system performs. WG2 aims for communication systems, which in the future are able to model each individual, his preferences, and adapt to different situations and resources in time. The developed Reference Model for I-centric communications addresses the individual user, interacting with the objects of their personal communication space.

The reference model for I-centric communications follows a top-down approach starting with the introduction of individual communication spaces and services. It is common understanding that I-centric services have to support ambient-awareness, personalization, and adaptability. WG2 investigates how future service architectures can provide these features supporting all involved parties of the business chain.

2. Scope

Following the I-centric view, the white papers provided by Working Group 2 explain in detail what future service architectures have to provide and how such service architectures can be established. To come up with a complete picture, WG2 starts to analyze future service architectures from high level user requirements breaking that down to already available technologies and needed research activities.

WG2 focuses on the following clusters of research:

• New concepts for I-centric Communications (Business Models, Ambient-Awareness, Service Personalization, Service Adaptation)

• Open Service Architecture for I-centric Communications (Defines the  transition from 3G to the Wireless World by means of components and their interworking, incluing open interfaces and stakeholder roles involved in service provisioning. In particular, openess means to reconsider the service creation value chain to support third party providers.)

• Service Capabilities for I-centric Communication (Defines the transition from 3G to the Wireless World by means of personalization, ambient awareness, and adaptability)

• New Service Building Blocks (Defines the transition from 3G to the Wireless World by means of service modeling, creation, discovery, adaptation & interoperability, and management)

• Content Analysis and Management (To provide adaptive multimedia services, metadata to describe content & context)

• Mobile Service Platforms (incl. terminal aspects)

• Service requirements to the underlying Communication Subsystems

3. Criteria for success

With respect to the goals and scope defined above, the success of WWRF Working Groups and Special Interest Groups can be measured by:

• The availability, completeness and quality of position documents

This is related to the number and quality of the white papers and presentations, available to the WWRF community and external bodies. It is critical to create and maintain white papers in all areas having active members. Outputs from any WG/SIG will be placed in the public area of the WWRF website, once they reach a stable state. The success can be measured through the regular creation, maintenance and release of such position documents and by performance to planned schedules for deliverables.

• The dynamic interchange of ideas

This can be measured by assessing the number and quality of contributions to group meetings, the number of participants, the level and consistency of contributions, and the degree of coverage of the WG/SIG research areas.  These should be of a level sufficient to sustain the activities of the working group and its value to the forum. Each group should achieve consensus and mutual understanding over white papers/presentations and have a successful and fruitful cooperation with other groups inside and outside WWRF.

• The influence on key stakeholders

This can be measured through the recognition and adoption of WG/SIG ideas and concepts by WWRF members and external bodies such as standardization bodies, research efforts, or products. This also relates to the number and quality of presentations to external bodies.

4. Duration

No duration limit is foreseen. As required by the WWRF, group charters will be revised at least annually and seek approval of the steering board.  The WWRF can terminate any WG or SIG at any time should the need arise.

5. Schedule and deliverables, Resource requirements

The following deliverables will be made:

• White Papers and shorter versions of them in presentation format, called “White Presentations” covering topics within the group’s scope.
• Short summaries of contributions and discussions at group meetings. These could also include reports on missing or over-represented areas in the WG/SIG activities.
  Report on group activities and progress to the plenary at each WWRF meeting.
• Dissemination of white papers and other documents through the WWRF Book of Visions and external media such as scientific journals, conferences and books, as requested and agreed.
• All deliverables will be reviewed and updated as necessary.

The Working Group requires the following resources:

• Adequate space and time in forum meetings to conduct group meetings, including sufficient time for fruitful discussions;
• Support for dedicated mailing list(s), website and document repository;
• WWRF mechanisms supporting liaison and collaboration with other WWRF groups and external bodies.

6. Liaison/collaboration with external organizations

Working Groups and Special Interest Groups will pursue the following liaisons and collaborations with external organizations:

• Standardization and regulation bodies, to influence future generation wireless systems (examples are W3C, OMA, ETSI, ITU-R, ARIB, IETF)
• Professional societies for widespread dissemination of WWRF results (examples are IEEE Societies, ACM)
• Complementary or similar groups in other fora, to share perspectives and co-ordinate activities toward common visions and research agendas (examples are mITF, UMTS Forum)
• Research funding bodies and large research projects with common interests and research goals (examples are multinational projects such as European FP6 IPs and NoEs, and nationally-funded projects such as FuTURE, DARPA and NSF projects)

Interaction with external organisations will utilise any liaison agreements and processes executed by the WWRF.

7. Co-ordination with other WWRF bodies

The WG/SIG chair and/or vice-chair will represent the working group in the forum steering board. Representatives of each WG/SIG will participate as members of the Vision Committee, contributing to the development of the visions and reference models that guide the technical direction of the forum.  The Vision Committee will develop specific technical action plans, from which the working group will derive specific deliverables and schedules.

Relationships will be pursued between all WGs and SIGs. Mechanisms ensuring that there is a continuous information flow between them should be put in place:

• Joint sessions and discussions on overlap issues, common studies and complementary activities in order to leverage synergies between the different WWRF Groups.
• Parallel sessions should mainly address diverging topics that are not of common interest.
• Presentation of white papers and relevant contributions in meetings of other WWRF Groups.

Since they treat related topics, very close relationships exist between WG1 and WG2, calling for appropriate scheduling of sessions during WWRF meetings, as reflected by the above stated rules.

8. Meetings and Communications

• Specific WG and SIG meetings will be held during each WWRF meeting, as well as cross-WG/SIG meetings, where found appropriate.

• Interim meetings may be scheduled as needed either through physical meetings or, more typically, via conference call. Specific task forces or drafting committees can be appointed by the chairman to prepare white papers, specific technical documents or to find solutions to technical problems.

• Communication outside the meetings will be conducted through dedicated mailing lists and exploders to distribute information such as meeting minutes or general announcements of interest to working group members.

wg2@wireless-world-research.org

To subscribe, please contact the mailing list administrator:

mail-lists@wireless-world-research.org.

• A web page within the forum's website will be maintained by each Working Group and Special Interest Group, for sharing of information and documents. 

9. Membership

Membership to Working Groups and Special Interest Groups follows the same rules as for WWRF:

• All WG and SIG activities are open to all representatives of WWRF member organisations. This includes contribution to and participation in WWRF meetings, as well as access to mailing lists, unfinished documents, and the “members only” section of the WWRF website.
• Representatives of non-member organisations are welcome to contribute to and participate in the WG meetings co-incident with WWRF meetings.
• Voting in Working Groups and Special Interest Groups is limited to attending representatives of member organizations.
• The Working Group and Special Interest Group charters are available to all interested parties.