EAGER: WideSpot: Enabling Predictable Wide-Area Coverage over Scattered Hotspots

Ohio State University, The, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Current cellular technologies fail to provide services with data rates that are anywhere close to the speeds available over typical Wireless LANs (WLANs). Large-scale deployments of WLANs have the potential to provide ubiquitous high data rate coverage, but the cost of deployment and management of a large number of WLAN access-points for providing full coverage is prohibitive. On the other hand, scattered deployments of WLAN hotspots are useful but they fail to provide any level of service assurance to mobile users. This project aims at developing the foundations for a system that will provide assured data services over a wide-area to data-intensive applications for mobile users using an economically scalable infrastructure consisting of heterogeneous technologies, and to demonstrate it with a prototype implementation. The project involves the following research objectives: 1) to develop solutions for hotspot deployment that enable the best possible services for mobile users through a limited number of hotspots; and, 2) to design solutions for meeting the needs of delay tolerant applications using dynamic resource control. The proposed research is transformative as it will build the foundations for bringing high-speed data services to mobile users through scattered hotspots and it has the potential to open up new research avenues along the lines of assured but interruptible services. A number of applications covering the entertainment, industrial and commercial sectors will get impacted by this research. Special efforts will be made to recruit women and minority students for this project.