The widely agreed upon rule for success in 4G telecommunication markets is to visualize a cooperative service chain of multiple suppliers to satisfy the ever-growing requirements of end customers (Roussos, 2003). The evolution of 4G systems in a multi-dimensional facet provided a scrupulous platform for deriving advanced and innovative user-oriented and cooperative services. Embossed to high level perspectives and equally leveraging on technical dimensions, we recognize several aspects of cooperative services; those related to personal (or group centric) services, intelligent transport network services, cooperative community networks and large scale ad hoc network services. As shown in Figure 1, these cooperative and heterogeneous services accounts for the efficient 4G convergence platforms that renders clear cut benefits in terms of bandwidth, coverage, power consumption and spectrum usage.
The personal and group-centric communication models put forth a multitude of interesting services, benefiting from the "cooperative clouds" formed as a result of multi-level social groups based on self-organizing common objectives. Within this context, various compelling services for smart-home networking, cooperative health care etc. are shaping up. One such service is the cooperative distribution of media content in stationary home networks, where the transparency enabled by the seamless and intelligent platform equips the home network to converge into an interdependent service ecosystem for the consumers. Other services in group communication which exploits collaborative behavior include symbolic resource sharing among communication groups (for example, user-centric dynamic content sharing similar to popular web services like MySpace or YouTube), ubiquitous and collaborative healthcare monitoring at home or hospitals etc. The intelligent transport network is also a setting for providing collaborative 4G services from a user perspective. The most interesting among them is the development of evolutionary cooperative multi-player games as a massive collaborative constellation for vehicular networks. These self-evolving games are targeted at intelligent transport networks which range from private vehicle owners to public transportation system users. Other envisaged services include varying location-based services in offer on a cooperative basis, where the consumers could either locate their intended footage leveraging on the collaborative platform or the customers could market their business availing on cooperative advertisement options. This creates an open service ecosystem beneficial for the entire service value chain in vehicular transportation networks.
Wireless community networks (commercial, public and non-profit), have matured enough through the continuing evolution of mesh networks, which are now exploiting heterogeneity in a third generation mesh context with the use of multiple-radios (including different radios for downlink-uplink), dynamic interference detection and avoidance mechanisms, automatic location updating mechanisms etc. This, along with the introduction of inter-community networking aspects has given new dimensions to collaborative service distribution in community networks. This includes community-based IPTV services, cooperative web-radio, collective surveillance etc apart from common service attributes like resource sharing among users. In general, large-scale user cooperation is an important aspect to the success of community networks triggering the collaborative service-profit chain and introducing competitive differentiation. Mobile Ad Hoc networks applications have made appealing progress, particularly in the field of wireless sensor networks. Many distributed applications are envisaged in sensor networks where collaborative computing assumes the center stage; smart messaging services for sensors, collaborative objects tracking etc to name a few.
In the search for niche markets and opportunity for 4G, large organizations and policy makers converge to accept that the 4G landscape will not just be about defining higher data rates or newer air interfaces, but rather will be shaped by the increasing integration and interconnection of heterogeneous systems, with different devices processing information for a variety of purposes, a mix of infrastructures supporting transmission and a multitude of applications working in parallel making the most efficient use of the spectrum. On the contrary, users are getting more vary about the services that they require and the modes with which they prefer to communicate and cooperate, which also hugely influences the future of 4G commercialization. These developments has led us to think in the lines of personal/group services as the most appealing and predominant platform for the development of 4G; where the users collaborate in a distributed and cooperative fashion. This user-centric cooperation and supporting issues which accounts for the development of cooperative, ubiquitous, personal communication models
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