Supporting Evaluation of Protocols and Applications in Real-World Settings

Pervasive Wirless talks about the current problems of radio standards interoperability that prevent the emergence of pervasive computing (ad-hoc, mesh networks). RFID tags use one set of standards, cell phones still others, and various Wi-Fi devices several versions of a third. Linking such devices into a pervasive network means providing them with a common protocol.

To test potential unifying wireless protocols, Rutger, Columbia, Princeton, IBM, Thomson and Lucent have setup ORBIT, a facility that researchers can use to study multiple wireless devices and network technologies.

“The sort of real-world complexity, dealing with real-world numbers that [the test bed] allows you to do, is something that really makes it quite unique”

One aim of this project is to reduce “friction” in daily life (i.e. latency)

“If I want cars not to collide, it cannot take 10 seconds to determine that a car is nearby. It has to take a few microseconds.”

ORBIT is a two-tier laboratory emulator/field trial network testbed designed to achieve reproducibility of experimentation, while also supporting evaluation of protocols and applications in real-world settings.
Relation to my thesis: Projects focusing on dealing with real-world complexity of ubicomp settings are emerging. Interoperability and scale need to be taken into consideration. Understanding what daily life “frictions” to reduce would be equally important.