Knowledge Center
Wireless and RF Communications
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Distributed Computing for IoT: Data Management in a Fog Computing Environment
Mobile cellular operators are making plans for Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), which enables Cloud computing capabilities and an IT service environment at the edge of the cellular network. It is a concept developed by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) that aims to bring computational power into Mobile RAN (radio access network) to promote virtualization of software at the radio edge. MEC brings virtualized applications much closer to mobile users ensuring network flexibility, economy and scalability for improved user experience.
Related Courses :
- Onsite Training: Emerging Technologies, SDN, NFV, Cloud, Blockchain and General Networking
- Onsite Training: 5G Wireless, M2M, IoT, SDN, NFV, Cloud
- Onsite Training: Defense, Security, Public Safety
- Onsite Training: IoT, IPv6, VoIP, EoIP, IMS, MPLS, SNMP
- Onsite Training: M2M, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zig Bee, IoT
Check out our courses on 5G Wireless technologies, applications, and marketplace along with related courses on M2M and IoT.
LTE Advanced: A Quick Look at Releases 10 to 12
Emerging trends such as social networking, cloud computing and storage, and video sharing, together with mobile computing will continue to put an enormous pressure on the cellular infrastructure. It is anticipated that at least a 30 fold increase in capacity, as well as additional services that will enhance the user experience, are required to make it all work. The LTE-A advanced project was initiated to meet this increasing traffic demand.
Related Courses :
The Eogogics LTE Curriculum …
… includes two dozen courses covering such topics as LTE Advanced/LTE RAN and Core, Design and Optimization, LTE Evolution to 5G, VoLTE, LTE-IMS Inter-work, LTE for Public Safety, and much more.
e-Learning Course - LTE Technology: For Technical Audiences (6 hours long)
This is a web-based video recording of the 6-hour long course webcast live on Dec. 10-11, 2009. It’s aimed at technical audience involved in the design and deployment of LTE networks, equipment, or software.
e-Learning Course - LTE Explained: For All Audiences (3 hours long)
This is a web-based video recording of the 3-hour long course webcast live on Nov. 4, 2009. It is aimed at the non-engineers involved in business planning and forecasting, policy making and regulation, marketing and sales, management, and procurement for the advanced 4th generation wireless networks.
Related Courses :
Spot Light on LTE Curriculum
Given the number of queries we get daily on LTE, I thought it’d be good to summarize what we’ve got, and it’s a lot: 20+ courses available for private classes (at your offices or WebLive™) and a growing e-learning collection open to individuals.
e-Learning - WiMAX Short Course
PDF of a 43-slide, narrated Power Point e-course, addressed to technical audiences that provides a short introduction to the WiMAX (IEEE 802.16) network architecture, physical layer, and MAC layer.
Related Courses :
The Eogogics WiMAX curriculum includes courses on WiMAX and Mobile WiMAX, WiMAX network design/optimization, and WiMAX traffic/capacity engineering.
e-Learning - WiMAX Explained for All Audiences (3 hours long)
This is a web-based video recording of the 3-hour long course webcast live on Oct 22, 2009. It is aimed at the busy executives and non-engineers involved in business planning and forecasting, policy making and regulation, marketing and sales, management, and procurement for the advanced 4th generation wireless networks.
e-Learning - 4G Technologies & Services: For All Audiences (3 hours long)
This is a web-based video recording of the 3-hour long course webcast live on Oct. 21, 2009. It is aimed at all audiences new to 4G, nontechnical or nontechnical, who wish to learn what 4G is all about.
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3G, IMS, and the Evolution of Carrier Network Economics
It’s not easy to be a mobile industry executive in a developed country at this time. As a matter of fact, a wireless exec’s life has never been more complex. Just when the wireless carriers are starting to look at service differentiation made possible by 3G technologies, the subscriber penetration is starting to slow and the shareholders are starting to ask for higher OBIDA margins.
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Paul’s Puzzler: Mission Impossible!
Can the receiver obtain the correct packet after one or more retransmissions, without it ever being received correctly? This may seem like “Mission Impossible”. To figure out whether it is or not, we’ll consider a brain teaser. You may have run into a version of this teaser before, but here is the version suited to the discussion of the problem at hand.
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The Internet of Things (IoT) Revolution: Are You Ready?
Powered by the expansion of connectivity fueled by IPv6, the Internet is quickly morphing from a ‘network of computers’ into a ‘network of things’, and this technology is developing at a much faster pace than other such technologies of the past. Smart phones, cars, homes, buildings, wearable computing devices, unseen but ubiquitous sensors embedded into appliances, equipment and infrastructure, and many other “things” (including living things such as cattle and wildlife) are all getting linked up into a vast and pervasive Internet of Things (IoT)! It’s a disruptive technology that — though largely invisible to consumers — will have profound impact on our everyday lives, how businesses operate, and on the world economy as a whole (multi-trillion dollars) — all in as little as five to 10 years.
Related resources:
Article: Distributed Computing for IoT: Data Management in a Fog Computing Environment
Course: Internet of Things Workshop
Research publications on IoT (look for ‘IoT’ in our Store‘s ‘Search Product’ field)
Nearly every industry vertical stands to be transformed by the coming IoT revolution. The IoT technology is creating enormous opportunities for new services as well as more efficient delivery of existing services. The rapid pace at which this technology is evolving is also giving rise to major privacy/security risks for individuals, institutions, and public infrastructure — creating new vulnerabilities and giving rise to not-as-yet-thought-of attack modalities, including those of remotely engineered death and destruction. Yet, many businesses and government agencies wonder if this is all passing hype — which it is not — and many do not know how the IoT should fit into their organizational strategy.
So is your organization positioned correctly to benefit from this coming Internet of Things (IoT) revolution? Starting with this issue of the Eogogics Quarterly, we will be publishing a series of articles, courses, and research publications to help our readers better understand the underlying technologies, business and societal impact, potential, and market landscape of the Internet of Things (IoT). Featured in this issue are an article on distributed computing for the IoT and an update on the new courses and research publications on IoT that have been recently added to our product line-up. Are there IoT issues you’re interested in that are not covered by our courses and research publications? Call us (+1 703 345-4375) or drop us a line at info@eogogics.com. We may be able to help.
Telecommunications
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SDN/NFV: Enhancing Network Capacity and Functionality
SDN and NFV have been developed to help meet the challenge of increasing demand for services and user expectation of rapid provisioning and universal availability. Both rely on virtualization, the ability to make a piece of equipment look like another via the magic of software. SDN was originally developed to address the problems of large data centers, where virtualization of hardware and operating system is important. It will likely spread to other areas, including the WAN, where virtualization and the ability to dial up bandwidth and related characteristics would be extremely valuable as well. NFV is an outgrowth of SDN in many respects, concentrating on backbone networks, where the need to rapidly reconfigure resources is key.
Related Courses :
Blockchain and Other Cutting Edge Tech
Blockchain, the Distributed Ledger Technology behind Bitcoin, has attracted interest across many industries including financial services, legal, real estate, digital rights, identity management, healthcare, asset tracking, supply chain management, and the Internet of Things (IoT). A disruptive technology, it has the potential to transform the way many transactions are conducted.
Related Courses :
Optical Networking: Past and Future
Light-based methods have been used for information transmission for thousands of years. Probably the earliest method is the fires that have been used for signaling since Biblical times.Smoke signals have been used for communications for a long time, most notably by Native Americans. Lanterns hung in Boston’s Old North Church ("One if by land, and two if by sea") figure prominently in Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride in 1775.
Related Courses :
Distributed Computing for IoT: Data Management in a Fog Computing Environment
Mobile cellular operators are making plans for Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), which enables Cloud computing capabilities and an IT service environment at the edge of the cellular network. It is a concept developed by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) that aims to bring computational power into Mobile RAN (radio access network) to promote virtualization of software at the radio edge. MEC brings virtualized applications much closer to mobile users ensuring network flexibility, economy and scalability for improved user experience.
Related Courses :
- Onsite Training: Emerging Technologies, SDN, NFV, Cloud, Blockchain and General Networking
- Onsite Training: 5G Wireless, M2M, IoT, SDN, NFV, Cloud
- Onsite Training: Defense, Security, Public Safety
- Onsite Training: IoT, IPv6, VoIP, EoIP, IMS, MPLS, SNMP
- Onsite Training: M2M, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zig Bee, IoT
Check out our courses on 5G Wireless technologies, applications, and marketplace along with related courses on M2M and IoT.
e-Learning Course - MPLS Backbone for Technical Audiences (6 hours long)
This is a web-based video recording of the 6-hour long course webcast live on Oct 28-29, 2009. It’s aimed at those who wish to develop a deeper understanding of Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS), related issues, and the competition.
Related Courses :
MPLS and the Evolving Telecom Landscape
By 2010 both ATM and FR were in fairly steep decline, relegated to the status of legacy technologies. MPLS usage is growing and new applications for it continue to emerge, making it the technology of choice for most large-scale networks. Nowadays the great buzzword is “cloud computing”, with different versions such as Software as a Service (SaaS—Gmail, Google maps, YouTube, Facebook), Platform as a Service (PaaS—Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Windows Azure, Salesforce). All of these utilize MPLS-based networks.
Related Courses :
Good Mobile Backhaul: There's No App for That!
Mobile backhaul and wireless backhaul are two names for the same thing: the communications link between the practically ubiquitous cellular antennas on radio towers, buildings, highway signs, church steeples, fake Sequoyah trees and elsewhere that connect mobile subscribers to the carrier IP network and/or Internet.
Our Comprehensive Mobile Wireless Backhaul Curriculum
Includes making a business case for backhaul, application case studies, market, technology deep-dive, and security
Tutorial: Internet Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)
Communications networks are rapidly evolving into policy-based, packet-oriented networks designed to provide a particular quality-of-services (QoS) for subscribers while reducing the costs associated with capital expansions, network operations, and management. If you are involved with telecommunications planning, engineering, deployment, strategy, marketing, or services creation, it is critical that you understand the technology and business implications of IMS.
Related Courses :
e-Learning Course - NextGen Networks (NGN) Explained: For All Audiences (3 hours long)
This is a web-based video recording of the 3-hour long course webcast live on Oct 21, 2009. It’s aimed at those who need a quick, “technical light” introduction to Next Generation Networks (NGN).
The Three C’s of VoIP: CODECS, Codes, and Convicts!
Anyone who has ever been engaged most certainly can list the four “Cs” of diamonds: Color, Clarity, Cut and Carat weight. But did you know that there are also three “Cs” of Voice over IP?
Related Courses :
Eogogics Courses on Multimedia Technologies
Check out our multimedia curriculum for courses on IMS, SIP, VoIP, and EoIP.
TV Studios, Airborne Military Platforms, James Bond … and SNMP
Do you know what the following have in common: television broadcast studios, automated fare collection systems, airborne military platforms, energy distribution systems, and emergency radio networks? It’s SNMP, a protocol designed to manage a diverse set of networked equipment.
Related Courses :
Tutorial: Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is a widely used protocol designed to facilitate the management of networked devices from a central location. Designed originally for the management of devices such as routers and switches, its usage has grown rapidly to encompass the monitoring of nearly any electronic device one can think of.
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SDN/NFV (Software Defined Networking, Network Functions Virtualization): Networking Game Changers?
The terms SDN and NFV have acquired magical connotations for those who work with networks but are not technical, raising many expectations. Are SDN and NFV really such a game changer for networking? SDN and NFV are among the half dozen or so technologies seeking to address the issues that trouble contemporary networks. The other major technologies in the play include GMPLS, ASON, high-speed Ethernet, NGN, and OTN, with a good deal of overlap between the various solutions that have been proposed.
In this issue of the Eogogics Quarterly, focused on SDN and NFV, we share a number of free knowledge resources with you:
- You can read this article for a great introduction to Virtualization, SDN, and NFV, including the concepts that underlie these technologies, how the technologies work, their interrelationships, applications, benefits, and their future
- You can download this tutorial (PDF) on SDN and NFV
- Or watch this interactive web-presentation (“Sway”) on SDN and NFV
If you are looking for onsite courses (available for presentation worldwide) or research publications on SDN and NFV, take a look at:
- Onsite course on SDN
- Onsite course on SDN and NFV
- Market intelligence research publications on SDN and NFV (for our full research lineup, check out our Store)
So are SDN/NFV game changers for the networking industry? Take a second to create a free Eogogics account (using the blue ‘Join/Log in’ button up top), then post your comments to this blog and let us know. The free account will also give you access to free educational resources and discounts. It’s clear though that SDN and NFV are here to stay and grow in application and importance! If you’d like to learn more about them, this website is a good place to get started.
Technologies
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MOOCs: A Revolution … or Just Plain Hype?
As of this writing, hundreds of MOOCs are being offered by US and foreign universities and millions of people have registered for them. But are they effective? They have been criticized for their lack of academic rigor. They also suffer from poor completion rates, with the bulk of participants dropping out in the first few days of the course. But they do offer the promise of making higher education and degrees accessible to a much larger chunk of the world’s population at a fraction of the cost, significantly reducing the cost of corporate training, and providing a convenient and cost-effective option for lifelong learning.
Blockchain and Other Cutting Edge Tech
Blockchain, the Distributed Ledger Technology behind Bitcoin, has attracted interest across many industries including financial services, legal, real estate, digital rights, identity management, healthcare, asset tracking, supply chain management, and the Internet of Things (IoT). A disruptive technology, it has the potential to transform the way many transactions are conducted.
Related Courses :
Why a PM Certification Program May Not Translate into an Improved Project Success Rate
There are many possible roles in a project. The obvious ones include the project sponsor who pays for the project, the project manager (PM) who directs the project, and various project team members who perform project work.
Related Courses :
Eogogics Technical and Project Management Curriculum
This curriculum includes nearly two dozen courses on technical management, project management (including courses that meet the PMI certification requirements), engineering economics, cost reduction, and related management topics.
Decision-Making Tools: Expected Monetary Value (EMV)
EMV is a balance of probability and its impact over the range of possible scenarios. If you have to make a decision between two scenarios, which one will provide the greater potential payoff?
Related Courses :
Computing in the Cloud: A Practical Review
Cloud computing appears simple but is very complex. The apparent simplicity has caused many organizations to move to cloud computing somewhat blindly, driven largely by promises of simplification which will result in cost savings, or just sheer cost savings. Cost savings alone is often enough cause for celebration. And, interestingly, the results achieved by those organizations who “just go for it” are, unexpectedly, usually very positive.
Related Courses :
Root Cause Failure Analysis: Reducing Costs and Increasing Customer Satisfaction
You know the problem: You’ve had a product in production for years with recurring failures you can’t seem to stop. Your people say it’s inherent to the product, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Production continues and so do the failures. You get to watch a sizeable chunk of your profits continue to move from the production line to the scrap bin.
Related Courses :
Eogogics Reliability Engineering Curriculum
This curriculum offers courses and workshops on FMEA, Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), Design of Experiments, and Industrial Statistics, besides an overview course on Reliability Engineering.
Statistical Tolerance Analysis
Dimensional tolerances specify allowed variability around nominal dimensions. We assign tolerances to assure component interchangeability while meeting performance and producibility requirements. In general, as tolerances become smaller, manufacturing costs become greater.
Related Courses :
GD&T Demystified
To better define a part, Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T) is often used as a symbolic way of showing specific tolerances on drawings. GD&T is a valuable tool that effectively communicates the design intent to manufacturing and inspection.
Related Courses :
Web Classes: NGN, MPLS, IMS, SIP, VoIP, EoIP/VoIP, IPTV, 3G LTE/4G, WiMAX, OFDM, MIMO, SDR, FMC ….
“Why don’t you offer online classes on emerging telecom technologies, so those of us who’re too busy to travel to public classes can keep up with the industry?” asked a fellow telecom exec in a recent conversation. “Aren’t there plenty of companies already offering free webinars?” I asked. “Yeah, but it’s not training. They’re all selling something: hardware, software, tools, or whatever” he countered.
Related Courses :
Contradictions: A Tool for Systematic Innovation
The Quest for a Killer App for Identifying Problems and Generating Solutions
Through the first 20 years of my engineering career, I unsuccessfully sought the “killer app” for Systematic Innovation (“SI”). Each time I began employment with a heavy-hitter organization (such as the US Air Force Research Lab, Johnson and Johnson, Philips, and Intel Corp.), I enquired if they had a systematic problem deconstruction and solution generation methodology at the ready to help me join the ranks of the world-class problem solvers who were surely responsible for their standing in the industry. Each time the answer was, “No, but you’ll figure it out, that’s what engineers do”.
After having acquired a lot of problem-solving experience with complex systems, I began to see why it might be difficult to conceive, let alone develop, a general methodology that could help you understand the workings of a complex system (in fields as diverse as microbiology and nuclear engineering), then allow you to systematically develop effective solutions to its problems.
But wait, such problem-solving systems do exist for some fields! We do not have to look further than mathematics, chemistry, statistics, and other such areas. What do such disciplines have in common? They all shift the analysis from the real to the abstract world and then back again during solution generation. Can we not develop a methodology that generalizes the approaches used in such disciplines to allow us to apply it to any type of system?
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
Having spent 20 years in the industry, I finally discovered that elusive “killer app.” Around ten years into my employment with Intel, a relatively new methodology called TRIZ was introduced into the company. TRIZ (an acronym for the Russian equivalent of “The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving”), is based on a long-running study of over four million patents from the worldwide patents data base. It lets you abstract your specific problem in a manner that allows it to be compared to other, seemingly unrelated, problems. This allows you to explore solutions that have worked for related abstractions and apply those solutions to your own problem. The methodology is both broad and deep, but this article will take a look at Contradiction Analysis, one of the many tools that are part of the TRIZ toolkit. Contradiction Analysis clarifies the root of, and provides tremendous insight into, the problem you are trying to solve.
Contradiction Analysis
Contradictions were first explored in a dialogue by Plato written in 384 BC. His pupil Aristotle’s law of non-contradiction says that “One cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time”. Clearly, the concept of contradictions is not unique to TRIZ, but the application to engineering problems and the specific formulations of those abstractions is.
In TRIZ there are two forms of contradiction statements. The form that represents the highest level of abstraction, and therefore provides the clearest view of the root problem to be solved, is called a physical (or inherent) contradiction. Capturing a physical (or inherent) contradiction is simple but does required adherence to a particular formulation. That formulation is as follows:
Want a specific situation for the purpose of a specific benefit
-and-
Want the opposite of the original specific situation for the purpose of a different specific benefit.
Some examples are:
- Want a large automobile engine for the purpose of high power AND Want a small engine for the purpose of high gas mileage.
- Want a power cord for the electric lawnmower for the purpose of providing electricity to the machine AND Want no power cord for the electric lawnmower for the purpose of increasing the mobility of the machine.
- Want high temperature water in the clothes washer for the purpose of loosening and dissolving grease AND Want low temperature water in the clothes washer for the purpose of not damaging the clothing.
It turns out that to innovate, one must transcend a limiting situation. Stating the contradictions that characterize the design of a system, or its sub-components, helps us visualize the system’s limiting factors as well as the ways to get around them.
Contradiction Analysis in Action
As far as the automobile engine size is concerned, auto manufacturers only recently started resolving the contradictory requirements of high power versus high gas mileage. Before that, they simply created different designs for different applications, e.g., large engines for sports cars and trucks (high power and low gas mileage) and small engines for sub-compacts (low power and high gas mileage).
The physical (inherent) contradiction statement around the size of the automobile engine clearly shows that we want both a large and small engine at the same time and what the benefits of those opposites are. Within the past few decades, the auto industry has indeed introduced design changes that begin to resolve the contradictory requirements around the size of the engines utilized. For example, in 1979 GM introduced the V8-6-4 engine which deactivated and reactivated cylinders based on instantaneous power needs, thus increasing the overall gas mileage. Hybrid engine vehicles accomplish the same by using a small gas powered engine (higher gas mileage) combined with an electric motor (higher power). And, as of late, auto manufactures are more often turbo-charging small gasoline engines providing higher power when needed but allowing high gas mileage for the reminder of the drive time.
In relation to the electric lawnmower power cord versus no power cord contradiction, the advancement of lithium-ion batteries has allowed battery powered electric lawnmowers to have sufficient power and run time to allow the loss of the traditional extension cord. In the not too distant future, the equipment that is now powered by batteries may be instead powered by wirelessly beamed electricity.
While I have not yet seen clothes washing machines that address the contradictory requirements around the water temperature used during the washing cycle, stating the contradictory requirements (i.e., hot water to loosen and dissolve grease and cold water so as not to damage the clothing), we greatly increase our chances of resolving that contradiction.
When resolving a physical contradiction, we strive to address the contradictory requirements in either space, time, or condition (a.k.a., relationship). For instance, can we separate the contradictory requirements of water temperature in space? Where do we want hot water? In the washing machine. Where do we want cold water? Also, in the washing machine. Since the location requirements for the hot and cold water are the same, it will not be easy to try to separate the contradictory requirements in space.
When do we want hot water? When washing the clothes. When do we want cold water? Also, when washing the clothes. As with separation in space, we have the same requirements for the hot and cold water at the same time. Once again, since the temporal requirements for the hot and cold water are the same, it will not be easy to try to separate the contradictory requirements in time.
This leaves us with separation in condition (or relation). Under what condition (or relationship) do we want hot water? In relation to the grease. Under what condition (or relationship) do we want cold water? In relation to the clothing. Now we have two different answers when testing for the separation of hot and cold water in condition (or relationship). How might we have hot water at the site of the grease but have cold water everywhere else (on the clothing)? The purpose of the hot water is simply to raise the energy level at the site of the grease. Might we be able to accomplish the same by adding a micro-wave generator to the washing machine that is tuned so that the micro-waves are only absorbed by the grease (and not the water or the clothing)? This particular solution may or may not work, but it is intriguing. The main take away from this example, though, is that a potential solution has been generated by capturing the contradictory requirements for both hot and cold water in clothes washing machines. By generating and pursuing several such solutions, we may discover the one that results in a breakthrough innovation.
A Wireless Network Case Study
Now that we understand the basics of contradiction analysis, let’s apply it to a case study in the wireless industry. Suppose that a wireless phone company needs a significant amount of equipment to improve the system’s coverage area, but the company also wants very little equipment because it is expensive.
Generally speaking, there are two boundary conditions (existing at the opposite ends of a continuum) that define the range of available solutions to this problem within the restrictions set forth by the existing system design. In other words, based on how our fictitious wireless service provider’s technical systems are designed, there are two extremes defined by the current system limitations and therefore the solution can only exist somewhere between them. Figure 1 shows these two extremes.
- In situation one of Figure 1, the amount of wireless network equipment is at a maximum (large blue circle). This large amount of equipment drives two results: First, the cost of the system (large green circle on the left), which is very high, represents an undesirable situation. Second, the performance (or effectiveness) of the system (large orange circle on the right), which is excellent, represents a desirable situation.
- In situation two of Figure 1, the amount of wireless network equipment is at a minimum (small blue circle). This small amount of equipment drives two results: First, the cost of the system (small green circle on the left), which is very low, represents a desirable situation. Second, the performance (or effectiveness) of the system (small orange circle on the right), which is poor, represents an undesirable situation.
Therefore, the large amount of equipment needed for quality services is in conflict with the small amount of equipment needed for controlling costs. On the one hand the company wants a large amount of cell towers, repeaters, and switching circuits and on the other hand the company does not want to have to pay for any equipment at all. This represents a contradictory requirement that serves as a system limitation. So, the question is: how can the company spend very little on network equipment but have the system perform as if there is a lot of equipment in operation? In order to solve this problem with an innovative solution, it is necessary to resolve the limiting system contradiction.
The abstract model of such a solution is shown in Figure 2. In this diagram, the solution (which is not necessarily just based around equipment quantity) is the “unknown” solution state depicted as a white circle. The yet unknown solution must result in the best of both worlds as reflected in the two previously defined contradiction models (Figure 1). First, the solution should be relatively inexpensive (small green circle at the left in Figure 2), representing a good situation. Second, the solution should have a high level of performance (large orange circle at the right in Figure 2), representing a good situation. Any solution that simultaneously meets the inexpensive and high-performance requirements of the abstract solution model (Figure 2) will be an innovative solution. To resolve the contradictory requirements around the parameter of equipment quantity, we will need to resolve the contradictions.
How can the system simultaneously contain substantial equipment, so it can support the need for wireless services, and very little equipment, to help control costs?
- Where should there be substantial amount of network equipment to increase the coverage area? Where the cell phones need service.
- Where should there be a minimum amount of network equipment to reduce costs? Where there are no, or few, cell phones.
Since there are different answers to the separation in space questions, we may very well be able to separate the contradictory requirements in space. One idea is to design smart phones with repeater capabilities so that the collection of phones in the network are orchestrated to also act as the network itself. The higher the density of the phones, the better the bandwidth and coverage. While this may be a somewhat simplistic case study (driven by the article’s space limitations), it does bring to light a very real problem faced by the wireless service providers. Further, the considered solution space, though seemingly impossible when viewed through the lens of current mobile phone technology, does provide a solution vector that could possibly drive new technologies. Remember, it is also doubtful that the designers of early vacuum tube based computers would have ever imagined that in a mere 60 years most everyone on the planet would be carrying in their pocket a computational device with millions of times more capability.
The Wider Systematic Innovation Toolkit
As shown in Figure 3, contradiction analysis is just one of the many techniques leveraged by TRIZ. Moreover, and also shown in Figure 3, the larger category of systematic innovation (SI) contains even more tools. A few of them are listed below. Though only a single problem modeling tool has been presented (i.e., contradiction modeling) in this article, TRIZ offers a host of solution generation tools (see Fig. 3).
Additional SI techniques Included in Step 1 of Figure 3:
- Functional Modeling: A graphical model of a function being performed. Function analysis deals with the entity components that are material objects and are related by way of an action (function) of one of the components on the other. Details what is happening within a complex engineering system.
- Cause and Effect Chains: A graphical model of the analyzed engineering system that reflects the inter-dependence of its disadvantages. Related directly to the associated functional model and details why things are happening within the engineering system.
- Process Function Analysis: A series of linked functional models that details an engineering process and allows the value ranking of all process functions (like Lean on steroids).
Additional TRIZ techniques included in Step 2-4 of Figure 3:
- (Step 2) Technical or Engineering Contradictions: An abstraction of a simplified problem and represents a situation in which an attempt to improve one parameter of an engineering system leads to the worsening of another parameter.
- (Step 3) Contradiction Matrix: A TRIZ tool that allows the identification of specific 40 Principles applicable to the technical contradiction under analysis.
- (Step 4) The 40 Inventive Principles: A problem solving tool that provides generalized recommendations for modifying a system to solve a problem formulated as an technical/engineering or physical contradiction (an inventive principle is an abstract model of the solution to the problem).
- (Steps 2 and 4) Su-field Problem and Solution Models: Symbolic model of a problem or solution formulated in terms of interactions between substances and fields (virtual, real, or improved).
- (Step 3) The 76 Standard Solutions: A set of solutions, in the form of substance-field (Su-field) models, to typical problems that are also expressed in the form of Su-field models.
When employed as an orchestrated set, the SI and TRIZ tools and methods can be used to decompose, abstract, and solve extremely complex and convoluted problems. I personally have used SI and TRIZ to help a national lab develop quantum computing R&D platforms, improve US Air Force satellite control systems and super structures, design ways for the US Army to stop speeding vehicles with little to no damage to the vehicles and no harm to their occupants, advance corn embryo breeding for a world-wide agribusiness, enhance diabetes medications for an international drug company, and improve the utilization rate of operating room suites for Presbyterian Hospitals of New Mexico, to name a few. My very first SI/TRIZ project at Intel Corp. saved the company $250M/year in damage losses to its micro-processor test platforms and an analysis of another 32 projects (executed by my Intel TRIZ students) showed a $1.3 billion impact to Intel’s bottom line. Oh, and guess what, SI/TRIZ is also used for business and organizational problem solving on a regular basis.
TRIZ is the only advanced problem solving methodology that utilizes solution generation engines based on a systematic study of the world-wide patent data base. Perhaps this is why SI/TRIZ is the most powerful problem solving and innovation engine on the planet. If your organization could benefit from a step function improvement in your problem solving and innovation capabilities, I highly recommend that you begin down the exciting and powerful TRIZ pathway. Eogogics offers both courses and consulting to help your organization become a power user of TRIZ. Give us a call!
Editor’s Note: David W. Conley, Eogogics Principal TRIZ faculty, is one of the TRIZ industry’s tier-one experts with International TRIZ Association’s (MATRIZ) Level 4 certification, 15 years as a TRIZ and innovation trainer and practitioner, eight years as the chair of Intel Corp’s world-wide innovation program, 35 years of engineering experience, and 27 years in manufacturing process improvement. David has served on the Executive Board and Certification Committee of the US-based Altshuller Institute for TRIZ Studies. He is the author and presenter of dozens of papers on Systematic Innovation and TRIZ.
Blockchain and Other Cutting Edge Tech
Blockchain, the Distributed Ledger Technology behind Bitcoin, has attracted interest across many industries including financial services, legal, real estate, digital rights, identity management, healthcare, asset tracking, supply chain management, and the Internet of Things (IoT). A disruptive technology, it has the potential to transform the way many transactions are conducted. Eogogics now offers a fast-paced, one-day tutorial on Blockchain for managers and professionals.
Blockchain is just the latest of the 60+ courses and research publications introduced by Eogogics this year, covering such subjects as the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G Wireless Technology, LTE Evolution to 5G Wireless, LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), Software Defined Networking (SDN), Network Functions Virtualization (NFV), Modern Telecommunications, SONET/SDH, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) Communications, Smart Workplace, Connected Home, Smart Cities, Wearable Tech, FinTech, and more. We’ve also updated many of our popular course and workshops for 2017, including Satellite Communications (SATCOM), Root Cause Failure Analysis (RCFA), Geometric Dimensioning and Tolerancing (GD&T), Engineering Creativity, Project Management, Influencing, and Internal Consulting.
So as you dive into your plans and budgets for the year 2017, please keep Eogogics in mind for what we can do to help your organization advance its agenda in 2017. To help you to stretch your budgetary dollars, we’re offering – only till December 16 – 15% off all research publications and 25% off all onsite courses taught in 2017. All online courses are off 50% until then as well. This is an unprecedented offer, limited to first 25 customers in each product line, so be sure to call in early! Course and e-course orders must be called in (1-703-345-4375 or 1-888-364-6442) and onsite courses held down with a deposit by Dec 16, 2016. All discounts are off list prices (minimum class size and other terms apply) and available to both new and returning customers. Call us now to order an e-course or product or schedule an onsite course! Happy budgeting and happy holidays!
Engineering Creativity
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Articles appearing in various Engineering magazines in support of the Eogogics Engineering Creativity Celebration (March-April 2013)
Product Design and Development Magazine: Unleashing Engineering Creativity Product Design and Development Magazine: Kano Model Design News Magazine: The Engineering Creativity Challenge Product Design and Development Magazine: Nine Screens Technique Product Design and Development Magazine: Concept Fans
Eogogics Workshops on Engineering Creativity
If you are charged with designing new products or processes, or improving existing ones, you’d be interested in our workshops on Unleashing Engineering Creativity. They can help your organization achieve breakthrough results instead of the incremental improvements that are the norm. These workshops, ranging in duration from two to three days, are customized to each client’s engineering environment and are available worldwide.
e-Learning – Unleashing Engineering Creativity
In this exciting 35-minute video, Joe shows you how to overcome self-imposed creativity obstacles and apply TRIZ, the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, to address real-life engineering challenges. You will also get a feel for our onsite workshops on Unleashing Engineering Creativity. It’s a real course, not ‘sales pitch’, and it’s aimed at engineers, business strategists, business development specialists, and others charged with creating innovative products, processes, or offerings (or improving the existing ones).
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Unleashing Engineering Creativity
Creativity. We deem it essential for business and technical success, yet we are often puzzled about how to find it, how to empower our people to exercise it, and how to apply it. Do we need creativity for solving engineering or business problems, designing completely new products, improving existing products, or developing and improving processes? Are we born with creativity, or do we need to develop our creativity skills?
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Take the Torrance Test of Creativity
Here’s a quick way to assess your creativity based on one of the Torrance tests of creative thinking. Don’t read anything below the tin can yet. Just focus on the tin can below and in one minute list as many uses for it as you can. When you are done making your list, read on.
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Obstacles to Creativity …. And How to Overcome Them!
Creativity obstacles can emerge as the result of structured thinking patterns, timidity, a fear of failure, resource myopia, fear of the unknown, overconfidence, personal and physiological factors, and not knowing how to be creative. This article outlines and recommends approaches for overcoming creativity obstacles.
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Excerpt from the Book
Chapter 1 of Unleashing Engineering Creativity, textbook for the Eogogics Unleashing Engineering Creativity workshop, which is available for presentation worldwide. (You can buy the book separately as well.) The workshop builds on the book with advanced creativity techniques, real world examples, interesting case studies, and stimulating exercises to ensure that the participants thoroughly understand the techniques taught in the course and can apply them on the job.
March Madness, Scientific American, and Engineering Creativity
Take a FREE Web class on Unleashing Engineering Creativity (real class, not a sales webinar). It’s FREE, so sign up now!
While the NCAA is celebrating March Madness this month, Scientific American and Eogogics are celebrating Creativity, SciAm with its cover story exploring the evolutionary origins of human creativity and Eogogics with its Engineering Creativity Celebration, starting today and lasting well into April.
An article on the Eogogics website (www.eogogics.com) delves into why we all – engineers and non-engineers alike – are born creative but lose much of that natural creativity by the time we graduate. You don’t have to take my word for it; there is a quick do-it-yourself test of creativity that you can take to validate the truth of this for yourself. Implications of this are enormous: Sans creativity, much of the engineering endeavor amounts to only incremental improvements, not major breakthroughs. Think about what that means in terms of opportunities missed and revenue lost when it comes to designing new products, systems, and processes … or improving existing ones!
So what keeps us from being creative? Another Eogogics article explores the obstacles to creativity and how we can overcome them. The loss of creativity with age notwithstanding, there are well researched and validated techniques we can use to tease more creativity out of us, resulting in a more creative response to a scientific or engineering challenge, be it the design of a product or process or the solution of a problem. For all the well-publicized examples of organizations achieving dramatic results from the use of creativity stimulation techniques, there are many more using these techniques quietly (and profiting from it); however, for the vast majority of technical organizations, these techniques remain an undiscovered secret. There are creativity courses, of course, but they are not developed or taught by engineers/scientists or customized to an organization’s own issues, and the technical community is rightly skeptical of them.
We believe the Eogogics Unleashing Engineering Creativity (“UEC”) Package, the subject of a press release to go out shortly, will change all that. It’s developed and taught by engineers with a lifetime of engineering experience and is extensively field-tested. More than a year in the making, it consists of a three-day hands-on workshop (which can be tailored to include your scientific/engineering challenges) and a lavishly illustrated 170-page textbook created just for the workshop (but also sold separately). You can read more about the workshop and the book on our website, but better yet, take a free 1-hour UEC Mini-workshop on the Web at noon, Eastern on April 25. The mini-workshop, led by Joe Berk, an Eogogics Principal Instructor and author of the UEC book, will discuss how TRIZ, just one of the many techniques taught in the UEC workshop, can be used to solve real engineering challenges. (If you’d like to find out more about TRIZ before attending the mini-workshop, read our article on TRIZ.) We expect this mini-workshop to fill up fast, so you would want to sign up for it early. First 50 to sign up will also be entered into a draw for a free copy of the UEC book. To make things a bit more exciting, Eogogics is also holding an engineering design contest with a couple of prizes worth $1,000 each.
All this and more – including podcasts, screencasts, and videos featuring interviews with technology executives on the subject of creativity – are coming right up in the weeks ahead. The easiest way to find out about all this as it comes out is to connect with us on social media (just click on the icons on top of this page). So get connected, and stay tuned!
Soft Skills
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What’s Your (Myers Briggs) Type?
Jung noted that we’re always either taking in information (perceiving) or organizing that information and drawing conclusions (judging). Perceiving can involve sensing (what is) or intuition (what could be). Similarly, judging can involve objective considerations (thinking) or its impact on people (feeling).
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Eogogics Professional Development Curricula
Do Guard Dogs Play Basketball?
It’s a story that made the national sports headlines a few years back. It’s a fine example of creative risk-taking as well as teamwork, and one that I often use in my team-work classes.
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MBTI Decision-Making Style Test
How does your decision making style differ from that of your colleagues? Take our brief score-yourself MBTI inventory and find out.
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Eogogics Management Development Curricula
Listening: Are You Listening?
How good are you at listening? Take our quick score-yourself test and find out.
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Give Employees Feedback the Same Way You Want It Given to You
How would your employees like you to provide feedback to them? More than likely, the same way that you’d like it to be given to you by your own boss.
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SOX and Other Compliance Training Bugaboos!
Government regulations and business best practices dictate that you not only conduct certain courses but also maintain records to show that they have been taken and understood by all concerned. Not offering such training can jeopardize the health and safety of your workers, earn the ire of your shareholders, and/or get you on the wrong side of the regulatory authorities.
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Do Guard Dogs Play Basketball?
A high school basketball player got his 15 minutes of fame, but not in the manner he had ever expected. His coach taught the whole team an interesting play but said, “We can only use this once in a lifetime, so be sure you choose the right moment.” Well, that moment came in a championship game with seconds left on the clock. His team had the ball and were down by one. They had to make this shot and were being heavily defended. This young man watched his teammates pass the ball back and forth without being able to penetrate. The clock was ticking. He knew it! This was the moment his coach had talked about in practice many months earlier.
He quickly dropped to his hands and knees and began barking wildly! All defenders turned to him for just a second to see what he was doing. There, on all fours, he just barked and barked like a dog. His distraction allowed his teammate to get inside to the basket and make the final shot to win the game.
When asked after the game why he did that, he said that although he would have rather been the one making the final shot, he was willing to do whatever it took to win the game.
It’s a story that made the national sports headlines a few years back. It’s a fine example of creative risk-taking as well as teamwork, and one that I often use in my team-work classes. If you’ve read or heard about or experienced an incident of this type, please share it with others by posting it to the Eogogics blogs.
Contribution of Eogogics Faculty and Inner Circle Members
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TRIZ: How to Stimulate Engineering Creativity Using TRIZ
TRIZ is an acronym for teoriza rezhinija izobretatalskih zadach, or the theory of inventive problem solving. The TRIZ technique was developed by Genrich Altshuller, a Russian navy officer who worked in the Soviet patent office. After reviewing 40,000 patents, Altshuller reached the following conclusions: Inventions and innovations follow common patterns that cut across industry and technology boundaries.
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Blockchain and Other Cutting Edge Tech
Blockchain, the Distributed Ledger Technology behind Bitcoin, has attracted interest across many industries including financial services, legal, real estate, digital rights, identity management, healthcare, asset tracking, supply chain management, and the Internet of Things (IoT). A disruptive technology, it has the potential to transform the way many transactions are conducted.
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Do You Support Eunuchs?
Members of the press waited along with company executives and industry dignitaries for the long-anticipated unveiling of the WANG Professional Computer. The newest member of the WANG Laboratories’ computer family was a “blazing fast” MS-DOS machine boasting a 16 bit processor and up to 640 kilobytes of memory – “the most memory”, I recall Bill Gates saying – “that would ever be needed”. The date was April 5th, 1983.
MPLS and the Evolving Telecom Landscape
By 2010 both ATM and FR were in fairly steep decline, relegated to the status of legacy technologies. MPLS usage is growing and new applications for it continue to emerge, making it the technology of choice for most large-scale networks. Nowadays the great buzzword is “cloud computing”, with different versions such as Software as a Service (SaaS—Gmail, Google maps, YouTube, Facebook), Platform as a Service (PaaS—Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, Windows Azure, Salesforce). All of these utilize MPLS-based networks.
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Computing in the Cloud: A Practical Review
Cloud computing appears simple but is very complex. The apparent simplicity has caused many organizations to move to cloud computing somewhat blindly, driven largely by promises of simplification which will result in cost savings, or just sheer cost savings. Cost savings alone is often enough cause for celebration. And, interestingly, the results achieved by those organizations who “just go for it” are, unexpectedly, usually very positive.
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Distributed Computing for IoT: Data Management in a Fog Computing Environment
Mobile cellular operators are making plans for Mobile Edge Computing (MEC), which enables Cloud computing capabilities and an IT service environment at the edge of the cellular network. It is a concept developed by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) that aims to bring computational power into Mobile RAN (radio access network) to promote virtualization of software at the radio edge. MEC brings virtualized applications much closer to mobile users ensuring network flexibility, economy and scalability for improved user experience.
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- Onsite Training: Emerging Technologies, SDN, NFV, Cloud, Blockchain and General Networking
- Onsite Training: 5G Wireless, M2M, IoT, SDN, NFV, Cloud
- Onsite Training: Defense, Security, Public Safety
- Onsite Training: IoT, IPv6, VoIP, EoIP, IMS, MPLS, SNMP
- Onsite Training: M2M, WiFi, Bluetooth, Zig Bee, IoT
Check out our courses on 5G Wireless technologies, applications, and marketplace along with related courses on M2M and IoT.
Obstacles to Creativity …. And How to Overcome Them!
Creativity obstacles can emerge as the result of structured thinking patterns, timidity, a fear of failure, resource myopia, fear of the unknown, overconfidence, personal and physiological factors, and not knowing how to be creative. This article outlines and recommends approaches for overcoming creativity obstacles.
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A “Cheap” Second Opinion
The nature of much of the “training” that Eogogics does has been changing over the last twelve months. I hadn’t really noticed it until a training client brought it up. “This training session is really great”, he said. “It provides a “cheap” second opinion on a lot of our development directions.”