Toronto Networking Seminar 2006


SolarMESH: Solar Powered Wireless LAN Mesh Networking

Terry Todd
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
McMaster University

Date:  March  17,  3pm
Location: BA1210 (Bahen Center)

Abstract


Wireless LAN (WLAN) hotspots are starting to evolve into outdoor hotzones, where contiguous Wi-Fi coverage is provided over extended outdoor areas. In the last year alone, many cities have announced aggressive plans for these types of WLAN deployments. WLAN mesh networks can be used in outdoor hotzones to reduce deployment costs by relaying back-haul traffic between end stations and the wired Internet. Unfortunately, providing outdoor Wi-Fi coverage is hampered by the fact that WLAN nodes normally need wired network and/or wired power connections. These requirements are often expensive or impossible in many outdoor hotzone situations. In this talk we will introduce and discuss SolarMESH, which has been under development at McMaster University for the last several years. SolarMESH is a WLAN mesh network intended for outdoor WLAN hotzone applications. One of the unique features of SolarMESH is that the nodes are solar powered and thus they are completely untethered. For this reason networks can be quickly and inexpensively deployed without the need for wired attachments of any kind. In this talk we will introduce SolarMESH and discuss the issues of resource allocation and protocol design for networks which use this type of renewable energy source.

Bio:

Terry Todd received the B.A.Sc, M.A.Sc and Ph.D degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. While at Waterloo he also spent 3 years as a Research Associate with the Computer Communications Networks Group (CCNG). During that time he worked on the Waterloo Experimental Local Area Network, which was an early local area network testbed. In 1991 Dr. Todd was on research leave in the Distributed Systems Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, NJ. He also spent 1998 as a visiting researcher at The Olivetti and Oracle Research Laboratory (ORL) in Cambridge, England. Currently Dr. Todd is on research leave at Research In Motion Inc., in Waterloo, Ontario.

Dr. Todd is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He currently directs a group working on wireless mesh networks and wireless VoIP. Professor Todd holds the NSERC/RIM/CITO Chair on Pico-Cellular Wireless Internet Access Networks. His interests include metropolitan/local area networks, wireless communications and the performance analysis of computer communication networks and systems.

Professor Todd is a Professional Engineer in the province of Ontario.