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 scenarios and 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.

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.