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Wireless Networking Research at Berkeley
zootallure writes "An interesting article about a self-configuring, wireless networking project going on at Berkeley's Wireless Research Center. Apparently, these Berkeley guys are convinced that they're going to leave Bluetooth and 802.11 in the dust."
Just look at wired networks. That's where wireless is going (but it's not gonna reach it, read on). The enemy of wireless is the 1/r^2 law. One must try to reduce r by using multiple base stations and complex protocols so that the r in each "hop" is as small as possible (saves energy, reduces interference). When r is 0 then it's called a wired network, which is the most efficient design, but which is unfortunately *not* wireless. But the design will look the same. So keep reducing those r's, and look at wired design for inspiration.
Either the pressdrone have misheard or this is a specific project. Something like the X10 but on the air. It is quite cool for controlling devices and collecting data and stuff but it is a different niche. It is not competing with 802.11b(a) as suggested in the post
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
As I was reading the article, I was thinking that picoradio would make an excellent addition to a modern soldier's loadout. As low-power as they are, the transceivers could be used to share data within the small-unit level without radiating enough energy to alert an enemy.
Combine these with the Army's Intervehicular Information System (IVIS), and commanders would have real-time, accurate information on the location of not just every tank, APC, and field artillery piece on the battlefield, but also each soldier. It would definitely work to reduce the number of friendly fire incidents that occur in a future conflict.
Plus, you could connect them to biomonitor equipment that would allow medic teams to both locate and triage injured personnel much faster.
They that would sacrifice their
PicoRadio doesn't appear to be based on 802.11x at all so it doesn't have the same issues. Now it could have other issues, but I imagine that with all of the publicity that 802.11x garnered, that real security is being considered.
Two friends of mine is working in that project. As some of the posters have already noted, it's aiming to be something different than current systems e.g. ultra-cheap transmitters, which uses as less energy as possible. They are not quite yet there (as the article metions), the first prototype is actually quite large and uses lot of energy, but on the other hand only it's aimed to be a "proof-of-concept"
:-)
Their current prototype has also a built-in MP3-decoder chip (really!) so it's possible that RIAA & CO will try to shut down the project with DMCA
Here's the homepage of the project.
V.
They're called ad-hoc wireless networks and the military is fully aware of their potential - both systems for maintaining reliable communications on a rapidly changing battlefield, and also the potential to drop thousands of small sensors from planes, etc... They first started looking into them in the early '70s, just after the development of the first wired packet-switching networks.
In 1972 DARPA (the same people that brought you ARPANet, which later grew into the Internet as we know it) created a research project into a packet radio network, a.k.a. PRNet. They didn't get it working until around 1980, but in the end it did work, and was pretty fast too.
The research was eventualy taken by the Army, Navy and Air Force who all started working on ad-hoc wireless networks tailored for their particular needs (for example, while the Army is mostly interested in fairly short-range applications, which this would be useful for, the Navy and Air Force are interested in algorithms to create reliable connectivity between ships, aircraft and ground stations that are below the horizon from each other through networks of satellites and aircraft).
Current US military implementations of ad-hoc wireless networks that I'm aware of are the US Army TF XXI's Tactical Internet, the US Navy's ELB (Extending the Littoral Battlespace) ACTD (Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration) and DARPA's GloMo (Global Mobile) Information Systems program. These are all, for the most part, a bit more high-powered and high-speed than the system these guys are working on.
In the public world, the IETF MANET working group are also trying to create a standard for ad-hoc wireless networking, but like the military implementations these are also a bit higher-end than picoradio. But if you're looking for something to wipe the floor with IEEE 802.11, IETF MANET is what to watch - but be prepared to wait a little while.
According to Rabaey, each node in the picoradio network will draw no more than 100 microwatts of power, three orders of magnitude less than 802.11b's 300 milliwatts. The benefits of such a low power network are obvious: no batteries are needed because each node can harvest all the energy it needs from its environment.
As a current student in Professor Rabaey's classes, I can say that his ideas are pretty damn cool when he explains it in his own way.
Sure, it's neat that his nodes will need no energy because it "harvests" energy from it's environment.
Development is actually going on so that the "harvesting" actually comes from the natural vibration of a wall! [site: dailycal.org]
So what do you get, a bunch of folks each developing their own thing:
nodes the size of a button that you just stick on the wall and it just works.
Pin-and-Play anyone?
(infomercial voice)Set it and forget it!