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    Article

    UTM researcher publishes article in international journal

    Gustavo Carneiro, a researcher at the Telecommunications and Multimedia Unit (UTM) has had an article published in the Computer Networks (COMNET) journal. The title of the article is "Transparent and Scalable Terminal Mobility for Vehicular Networks" and it presents a WiFi network for passengers on public transport with mobile devices.

    19th April 2012

    The article outlines the theory that was used for project SITMe that aimed to develop communication technology for public transport users. The article describes a new metropolitan mesh network that links mobile vehicles to WiMax stations and bus stops equipped with communication devices.

    This network uses communication equipment (Rbridges) that is put on buses to offer WiFi access to passengers, allowing them to connect to the Internet, for example. The main advanced innovation in this article is the fact that the boxes support various types of access technology and any necessary change will not have an impact on the mobile terminals that are connected. The protocols used are also suitable for large-scale networks with thousands of nodes that allow the mobile terminals to change their access point, for example from the bus stop to the bus, without interrupting the connection.

    The article pays particular attention to two aspects: firstly scale - it had to be able to support tens of thousands of passenger terminals and Rbridges on the vehicles, and secondly the automatic configuration of both the terminals (common terminals had to be supported without having to install additional software or configure the network) and the networks (so the network devices did not require special configuration, they just needed to be put in place and turned on) was important.

    This also makes extending and maintaining the network much simpler and keeps operational costs low, while supporting multiple types of access technology and offering total mobility.

    In addition to Gustavo Carneiro, Pedro Fortuna was also a co-author, along with Jaime Dias and Manuel Ricardo from the same Unit. The work also resulted in various contributions for NS3 network simulators [1] and the majority was from Gustavo Carneiro, who will soon defend his dissertation.

    UTM/INESC TEC