Yunhao Liu

In an age where real-time processing and interaction with the physical world through digital lenses are paramount, visual SLAM technology has become the backbone of mobile AR/VR applications, robotics, and autonomous systems. However, the demanding computational load of visual SLAM often strains the limited resources of mobile devices, hindering performance and accuracy. This is exactly where edge computing comes to the forefront, offering a potent solution by performing data processing at the edge of the network, closer to the source of data. This monograph is a pioneering exploration into how edge computing can elevate visual SLAM systems, overcoming the traditional challenges of computational intensity and resource constraints. Edge computing not only offloads heavy-duty processing from mobile devices to edge servers but also mitigates latency, enhances efficiency, and ensures robust, real-time performance. This monograph unveils the transformative potential of edge-assisted visual SLAM, presenting groundbreaking research and the latest advancements in task decoupling, collaborative mapping, and environmental interaction. This monograph could serve as a scholarly resource for those within the fields of computer vision and mobile computing. It presents a detailed exploration of current research in edge-assisted visual SLAM and anticipates future developments, offering readers a comprehensive understanding of the field's trajectory and its implications for the next generation of mobile applications and autonomous systems.

CTC not only creates a new avenue for inter-operation and data exchange between wireless devices but also enhances the ability to manage wireless networks. This book focuses on the enabling technology CTC and introduces readers to a variety of CTC techniques in heterogeneous wireless networks.

Time flies since the debut of this book. In the past ten years, localization technology has evolved from small saplings into towering trees. Robots and drones with autonomous positioning and navigation capabilities, once considered unreachable fantasies, have gradually become a reality. However, while we are being amazed at the groundbreaking changes brought about by technology, as researchers, we still need to remain acutely attentive to the current limitations of localization. Some significant challenges still impede the widespread deployment. For example, traditional Wi-Fi fingerprint-based wireless localization, due to various challenges in fingerprint database collection and maintenance, has remained stay in the laboratory, and even when using smartphones for localization in malls, we still cannot achieve the outdoor GPS-like experience. The list goes on and on. Against this backdrop, the reissue of this book aims to more comprehensively reflect the latest developments in localization technology. We have added introductions to emerging technologies such as passive high-precision localization based on wireless signal CSl and autonomous localization for smart devices. Additionally, we have integrated and further streamlined technical chapters that now appear outdated adapting to the pace of the times. This book aims to provide a comprehensive and in-depth view of location-awareness technology in today’s popular wireless networks. However, the obvious diversity of networks, from short-range Bluetooth to long-range telecommunication networks, makes it very challenging to organize materials. Although general principles exist, the implementation differs from network to network and application to application. The book can serve as a guidebook for the technicians and practitioners in the industry of location systems. They can expect to obtain a comprehensive understanding of the field, in order to compare and select localization solutions fulfilling various application requirements. Abundant references in the book open up a broader domain for advanced study. In addition, the book is tailored toward a textbook for college researchers and graduate students.

Content distribution, i.e., distributing digital content from one node to another node or multiple nodes, is the most fundamental function of the Internet. Since Amazon’s launch of EC2 in 2006 and Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007, Internet content distribution has shown a strong trend toward polarization. On the one hand, considerable investments have been made in creating heavyweight, integrated data centers (“heavy-cloud”) all over the world, in order to achieve economies of scale and high flexibility/efficiency of content distribution. On the other hand, end-user devices (“light-end”) have become increasingly lightweight, mobile and heterogeneous, creating new demands concerning traffic usage, energy consumption, bandwidth, latency, reliability, and/or the security of content distribution. Based on comprehensive real-world measurements at scale, we observe that existing content distribution techniques often perform poorly under the abovementioned new circumstances. Motivated by the trend of “heavy-cloud vs. light-end,” this book is dedicated to uncovering the root causes of today’s mobile networking problems and designing innovative cloud-based solutions to practically address such problems. Our work has produced not only academic papers published in prestigious conference proceedings like SIGCOMM, NSDI, MobiCom and MobiSys, but also concrete effects on industrial systems such as Xiaomi Mobile, MIUI OS, Tencent App Store, Baidu PhoneGuard, and WiFi.com. A series of practical takeaways and easy-to-follow testimonials are provided to researchers and practitioners working in mobile networking and cloud computing. In addition, we have released as much code and data used in our research as possible to benefit the community.

Cross-technology communication (CTC) is a technology that enables direct communication between heterogeneous devices that use different wireless standards. It works like a “translator” between two or more wireless technologies. CTC not only creates a new avenue for inter-operation and data exchange between wireless devices but also enhances the ability to manage wireless networks. This book focuses on the enabling technology CTC and introduces readers to a variety of CTC techniques in heterogeneous wireless networks. These techniques can be divided into two categories: packet-level CTCs based on energy modulation and channel intervention; and physical-level CTCs based on cross-demapping, digital emulation, and split encoding. The book offers a comprehensive comparison and analysis, granting readers a deeper understanding of CTC techniques in terms of throughput, reliability, hardware modification, and concurrency. Moreover, it highlights upper-layer CTC application scenariosand cutting-edge developments, which include but are not limited to interference management, channel quality estimation, network routing, etc. The book is intended for all readers – e.g., researchers, students, and even professionals – who are interested in the areas of wireless networking, wireless communication, mobile computing, and Internet of Things. The findings and summaries presented here can help: 1) guide researchers to rethink CTC techniques in connection with design methodology; 2) further advance the infrastructure of future IoT by introducing CTC; and 3) enable important IoT applications by delivering ubiquitous network connectivity.

Content distribution, i.e., distributing digital content from one node to another node or multiple nodes, is the most fundamental function of the Internet. Since Amazon’s launch of EC2 in 2006 and Apple’s release of the iPhone in 2007, Internet content distribution has shown a strong trend toward polarization. On the one hand, considerable investments have been made in creating heavyweight, integrated data centers (“heavy-cloud”) all over the world, in order to achieve economies of scale and high flexibility/efficiency of content distribution. On the other hand, end-user devices (“light-end”) have become increasingly lightweight, mobile and heterogeneous, creating new demands concerning traffic usage, energy consumption, bandwidth, latency, reliability, and/or the security of content distribution. Based on comprehensive real-world measurements at scale, we observe that existing content distribution techniques often perform poorly under the abovementioned new circumstances. Motivated by the trend of “heavy-cloud vs. light-end,” this book is dedicated to uncovering the root causes of today’s mobile networking problems and designing innovative cloud-based solutions to practically address such problems. Our work has produced not only academic papers published in prestigious conference proceedings like SIGCOMM, NSDI, MobiCom and MobiSys, but also concrete effects on industrial systems such as Xiaomi Mobile, MIUI OS, Tencent App Store, Baidu PhoneGuard, and WiFi.com. A series of practical takeaways and easy-to-follow testimonials are provided to researchers and practitioners working in mobile networking and cloud computing. In addition, we have released as much code and data used in our research as possible to benefit the community.

This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of wireless indoor localization for ubiquitous applications. The past decade has witnessed a flourishing of WiFi-based indoor localization, which has become one of the most popular localization solutions and has attracted considerable attention from both the academic and industrial communities. Specifically focusing on WiFi fingerprint based localization via crowdsourcing, the book follows a top-down approach and explores the three most important aspects of wireless indoor localization: deployment, maintenance, and service accuracy. After extensively reviewing the state-of-the-art literature, it highlights the latest advances in crowdsourcing-enabled WiFi localization. It elaborated the ideas, methods and systems for implementing the crowdsourcing approach for fingerprint-based localization. By tackling the problems such as: deployment costs of fingerprint database construction, maintenance overhead of fingerprint database updating, floor plan generation, and location errors, the book offers a valuable reference guide for technicians and practitioners in the field of location-based services. As the first of its kind, introducing readers to WiFi-based localization from a crowdsourcing perspective, it will greatly benefit and appeal to scientists and researchers in mobile and ubiquitous computing and related areas.

This book provides a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of wireless indoor localization for ubiquitous applications. The past decade has witnessed a flourishing of WiFi-based indoor localization, which has become one of the most popular localization solutions and has attracted considerable attention from both the academic and industrial communities. Specifically focusing on WiFi fingerprint based localization via crowdsourcing, the book follows a top-down approach and explores the three most important aspects of wireless indoor localization: deployment, maintenance, and service accuracy. After extensively reviewing the state-of-the-art literature, it highlights the latest advances in crowdsourcing-enabled WiFi localization. It elaborated the ideas, methods and systems for implementing the crowdsourcing approach for fingerprint-based localization. By tackling the problems such as: deployment costs of fingerprint database construction, maintenance overhead of fingerprint database updating, floor plan generation, and location errors, the book offers a valuable reference guide for technicians and practitioners in the field of location-based services. As the first of its kind, introducing readers to WiFi-based localization from a crowdsourcing perspective, it will greatly benefit and appeal to scientists and researchers in mobile and ubiquitous computing and related areas.

This book investigates the cloud-based techniques of content distribution mainly for mobile Internet. It starts with hot topics such as cellular traffic optimization and video content delivery. By integrating the cloud scheme, it further tackles issues of traffic-saving, energy-efficient, high-speed, and delay-tolerant content delivery with regard to mobile Internet. It covers both theoretical algorithms and their real-world system implementations. In particular, various well-known cloud platforms such as Baidu Traffic Guard, Tencent QQXuanfeng, Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, and Dropbox are elaborated respectively in the book. Lastly, it includes an educational and experimental cloud computing platform allowing public access, which benefits researchers, practitioners, and developers in the field of cloud computing/storage and mobile Internet. Throughout the book there are helpful and practical tips on setting up cloud systems that readers can easily follow.

This book reflects up-to-date research, fundamental theories, and key techniques of of wireless localization technology and error-controlling techniques. It also presents and discusses the issue of localizability, as well as privacy issues associated with LBS. This book encompasses the significant and quickly growing area of wireless localization technology. It presents comprehensive and up-to-date research in both fundamental theories and key techniques of network localization. In addition to localization approaches, it also is the first book to address the issue of localizability. The privacy issue of LBS technology is also discussed.