Collaborative Research: CRI/IAD: Programmable and At-Scale Infrastructure for Wireless Access, Mobile Computing, and Health Sensing

The Methodist Hospital Research Institute, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

The collaborative project focuses on the deployment of a complete, scalable, multi-tiered and integrated wireless mobile infrastructure at urban scale that addresses: 1. at-scale design and evaluation of network protocols; and 2. the compilation and analysis of medical health data collected via the integration of medical health sensors into the wireless network. This collaborative project team will develop, deploy, and operate an information technology infrastructure that serves as a platform for research and societal change. The key innovations of this project and platform are: 1. A multi-tier wireless access network with fully programmable and observable nodes that serves 4,000 users over 4 km2 (an at-scale density surpassing existing deployments), 2. A fully instrumented and deployed mobile computing platform that enables joint assessment of user behavior and end system performance, providing energy-efficient and user-friendly access to the network, and 3. A deployed wireless health-sensing platform that monitors and processes physiological data and seamlessly interconnects it with the mobile-computing and wireless network platforms to enable radically new low-cost treatments for chronic diseases. The research infrastructure will be deployed in an under-resourced area, Pecan Park, a community in the heart of Southeast Houston with 4,760 residents per km2, a density that is unprecedented for research and has not been reached even by commercial mesh deployments. This scale provides a replicable and sustainable template of what is possible in similar communities world-wide. The infrastructure serves as both a platform for societal change and a platform for research innovation and proof-of-concept system design.