Cooperative Personal Ubiquitous Environments and Services – A Novel Dimension of Cooperation in 4 G –

Fourth Generation (4G) of wireless networks is no more a dream, already knocking at the doors of our information village. 4G promises to offer a vast range and diversity of converged devices, services and networks in order to revolutionize the way we communicate today. 4G would also influence today's networking architecture where the inter-user communication is realized with the help of third-party communication infrastructure. In 4G, the centralized third-party controlled networking architecture can emerge into a hybrid model, where a part of user-to-user interaction would be envisaged by the short/medium range wireless communication systems. Moreover, 4G would not only offer ultra-high data-rates but would also enable ubiquitous computing paradigm, particularly interesting for the enduser with the help of various personalized and user-friendly services. This increase in short-range communication among users and introduction of personalized services could form a "Personal Ubiquitous Environment" around the user. Since in such environments, multiple users will come closer (without any third-party barriers); their cooperation would be the key to success. In this paper, we focus on cooperative services in 4G systems. After giving a general overview of the futuristic cooperative services in 4G, we discuss personal/group services in greater details. Furthermore, we dwell deeper into the socio-technical dimension of potentials and limits of cooperation in 4G systems. Finally, we summarize the whole discussion by giving our personal views on cooperation in 4G systems towards personalized, innovative converged services.