II-EN: A Metro-Scale Vehicular Wireless Testbed with Spectrum Awareness and Spectrum Agility

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

This project builds a unique metro-scale, vehicular wireless testbed, called MadBed, with capabilities for wide-area wireless connectivity, with specially designed nodes mounted on Madison area city buses. The testbed is also being leveraged to provide Internet services to the passengers of these city buses. Further the testbed is also providing various vehicular communication services to the bus network, e.g., tracking of city buses, and some specialized law enforcement capabilities. The infrastructure is enabling a large number of specialized wireless and mobile networking research projects in the UW-Madison campus. A few examples include exploration of new wireless network management techniques for wide-area wireless networks, exploration in design of new cooperative MAC protocols, exploration in wide-area spectrum sensing and their utilization, and in vehicular delay tolerant networking. As part of its educational component, MadBed is allowing a greater hands-on experience to students in the classroom on design and performance of wide-area wireless environments. In its outreach component, the PIs of MadBed are partnering with a local governmental organization called Educational Communications Board of Wisconsin to to provide city-wide broadcasts of certain educational content. The PIs are also organizing annual visit days for certain local area high schoolers, and exposing them to some interesting aspects of careers in computing, through various aspects of MadBed. Finally, MadBed has also built great synergies with a number of local, national, and international industrial partners, e.g., Cisco, Sprint, MadCity Broadband.