Irish academics in worldwide WiFi breakthrough

Galen

Cyberspace traffic jams could be a thing of the past after number crunchers cracked a code to free up clogged WiFi networks.

A team of 20 researchers at the Hamilton Institute in NUI Maynooth have developed cheap internet software that international academics spent the last 10 years trying unsuccessfully to create.

Professor Doug Leith, director, said the solution to slow, clogged up WiFi would be perfect for cities and revealed he was targeting the 2012 Olympics.

"London is the one I'd be interested in talking to. They seem to have some momentum," he said.

Mayor Boris Johnson has said the city will get blanket WiFi coverage by the 2012 games with the internet available on every lamp post and bus stop.

Dublin City Council announced it was planning for widespread free WiFi in 2007 but has been unable to roll it out.

The NUI team drew up a series of codes which can be simply installed on existing hardware and the equipment used to transmit WiFi signals.

The system is to be piloted in the spring on an unnamed large university campus with high levels of WiFi use.

Prof Leith and colleagues Ken Duffy and David Malone also plan to bring the software to the market next year.

"It's a very complex problem and a decade of research internationally had failed to provide any real progress. The key was to stop looking for complex solutions, think differently about the issue and come up with simple answers to the issues," Prof Leith said.

"We took this on as a challenge and have worked intensively on it over the past two years. Our hope is that it will be an enabler for civic society and for commerce.

"At the end of the day, broadband is for everyone and we all should be able to share in it as cheaply and freely as possible."

The team developed a new mathematical framework to analyse the functioning and behaviour of radio signals on WiFi networks and used this to work out where and why access was being interrupted.

Their software allows wireless transmitters to operate more effectively by sorting signals.

The Hamilton Institute is a world leading multi-disciplinary research centre, focused on the bridge between mathematics and other disciplines, including information technology and biology.

Read more: http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/irish-academics-in-worldwide-wifi-breakthrough-487026.html#ixzz19FtqrhBt

oscarBravo

I'd love to see a more technical article, but this:

The NUI team drew up a series of codes which can be simply installed on existing hardware and the equipment used to transmit WiFi signals.

...already has me skeptical. The "existing hardware" also includes the WiFi clients; in other words the hardware installed in people's laptops and phones. That's not a simple software upgrade, and I'm having trouble imagining that an AP-only solution could achieve what they're talking about.

watty

Even if it's "true" for a special definition of "true" it can't achieve what is claimed.

The limits that control capacity are Power, channel noise, Aerial Performance and spectrum used. You can only get closer to the limit with better software.

http://www.techtir.ie/comms/signal-loss-limits

Improvements in % terms not order of magnitude are possible. Like 11 or 12 users at performance of 10 Users. At best.

Mayor Boris Johnson has said the city will get blanket WiFi coverage by the 2012 games with the internet available on every lamp post and bus stop.

Hmm... How many WiFi Points?
How is power limited so they don't interfere?
The 11 or 13 channels are really only 3 channels for 802.11g
How is the back haul done?

Or are we talking dialup speed WiFi?

What about existing user's WiFi in London?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WLAN_channels

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognio#Cognio_spectrum_expert_for_WiFi_interference_monitoring

Galen

Probably nui advertising for some badly need cash.