IPA Tutorial

Presented by Peter G. Cook, Hypres, Inc., USA, and James Neel, Cognitive Radio Technologies, LLC, USA

Information Systems are having a profound impact on our society, invoking great changes, with an impact similar to those brought about by steam power, electricity, and electronic communication. Communication Systems are a major item of interest for the Wireless Innovation Forum. We are also looking at the consequences of system expansion that leads to intersection, interaction, and integration of independently developed systems, and the resulting Complex Systems. As the means by which data is exchanged between system participants , the role of Communication Systems can best be understood in context of the architecture of Complex Systems. The Cognitive Radio Working Group and the Public Safety Special Interest Group recently released volume 1 of the Information Process Architecture (IPA) project - a multi-part effort to improve understanding of how information and communications systems are evolving to exhibit increasingly intelligent behavior, grow to interact with one another, and enable new applications and capabilities. Future work will further refine these concepts, develop new applications, and further explore how understanding context can improve the performance of automatic information systems. In this tutorial we cover the work to date of the IPA project and describe our future plans. A brief description of the major themes of the tutorial are described in the following.

1 Project Overview

This section provides an overview of the IPA project and its objectives and provides context on how the project relates to cognitive radio.

2 The Historical Context of Innovation

This section of the tutorial will place the development of intelligent information processing systems in historical context, examining how the technical progression through steam, electricity, electronic communication, information, and the new intelligence epochs has lead to increased automation of the operation, implementation, and design of systems.

3 Information Systems Framework

This section introduces the first primary concept of the Information Process Architecture - the Information Systems Framework (ISF). The ISF consists of the following major components shown below and can be used to understand the role and purpose of information systems.

4 Information Systems Structure

This section introduces the second primary concept of the Information Process Architecture - the Information Systems Structure (ISS). The ISS consists of the following major components:

• System Services - Functions and processes provided by operating systems and other system functions to support system operation
• Data Storage & Management - Storing, safeguarding, organizing and retrieving
• Data Communication - Transfer of data
• Application Processing - Use, transform, combine, compute, create, present information to advances system goals.

5 Context and Communications

This section reviews the use of communications and context in information systems. Using the model shown below to explain how intelligent agents communicate, this section describes how context influences communications and how two intelligent agents can move beyond to sharing data to sharing an understanding of critical details.

6 Applications

The tutorial concludes with a review of several applications applying the concepts of the IPA to current information processing systems including:

• Broadcast TV
• Cellular systems
• Transaction processing
• Land Mobile Radio
• Kindle applications

7 System Structure Notation

To facilitate the application discussion, a short hand System Structure Notation (SSN) is developed. In this representation, stylized representation of Origination, Communication, and Reception are used, and a time sequence of events used to provide a high-level overview of information system functionality.

8 Future Work

To conclude the tutorial, directions for future development are described.