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.
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