Intel Unveils Wireless Docking Station

The future of personal computing does not include wires and cables, according to Intel. With this in mind, the company is showing its WiGig docking station that provides power to mobile devices and other technologies. The technology is based on the high-speed WiGig wireless-communications standard, which enables data transmission at speeds up to 7 Gbits per second, and immediately connects to any devices within its short range, confined to a single room.  Intel expects to introduce the technology commercially by 2016. (ValueWalk)(Gizmodo)(CNET)

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Home-Based Wireless Routers Notoriously Insecure

Security experts conclude there are so many potential vulnerabilities in home-based wireless routers that it is best to consider them insecure. The issues came to light following the discovery of problems with Linksys routers, which enabled TheMoon worm to infect and thrive on the home hardware. Security researchers found these types of products are shipped with several other bugs that make them open to infection, according to SANS Institute Internet Storm Center researchers Kyle Lovett and Matt Claunch. This includes home routers from Linksys, Cisco and Netgear. Compounding the problem is most consumers don’t know how to properly protect these networks, through which personal and financial information can be sent. In addition to wireless routers, security experts say home networking devices are particularly vulnerable through the Universal Plug and Play protocol. Independent Security Evaluators, a security firm, identified 55 new and undisclosed vulnerabilities in home routers, which led its analysts to conclude few, if any, home routers could be properly secured. (SlashDot)(Symantec Security Focus)(SANS Institute Internet Storm Center) 

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US Wireless Carriers Wheel and Deal in Advance of Spectrum Auction

A planned large US spectrum auction in 2015 has prompted major wireless carriers to buy, sell, and trade spectrum licenses as they seek to shore up their market positions. The broadcast television spectrum auction, which the Federal Communications Commission is still planning, will sell 600MHz spectrum, traditionally used for TV broadcasts, to wireless carriers. The band has properties similar to the 700 MHz frequency. T-Mobile, for example, announced in January it would be buying some 700MHz spectrum from Verizon in several markets for $3.3 billion, which should help the carrier quickly build out its 4G services. Explosive consumer demand for mobile bandwidth, which Network World expects to increase 11 times in four years, is causing carriers to acquire spectrum and otherwise upgrade their infrastructure. Experts forecast that Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Dish Network will spend about $50 billion on spectrum licenses in the next two years. (SlashDot)(Network World)(Federal Communications Commission)

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Frog calls inspire a new algorithm for wireless networks

ScienceDaily (July 17, 2012) — Males of the Japanese tree frog have learnt not to use their calls at the same time so that the females can distinguish between them. Scientists at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia have used this form of calling behaviour to create an algorithm that assigns colours to network nodes -- an operation that can be applied to developing efficient wireless networks.

How can network nodes be coloured with the least possible number of colours without two consecutive nodes being the same colour? A team of researchers at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia have found a solution to this mathematical problem with the help of some rather special colleagues: Japanese tree frogs (Hyla japonica).

These male amphibians use their calls to attract the female, who can recognise where it comes from and then locate the suitor. The problem arises when two males are too close to one another and they use their call at the same time. The females become confused and are unable to determine the location of the call. Therefore, the males have had to learn how to 'desynchronise' their calls or, in other words, not call at the same time in order for a distinction to be made.

"Since there is no system of central control organising this "desynchronisation," the mechanism may be considered as an example of natural self-organisation," explains Christian Blum. With the help of his colleague Hugo Hernández, such behaviour provided inspiration for "solving the so-called 'graph colouring problem' in an even and distributed way."

A graph is a set of connected nodes. As in the case of the frog's 'desynchronised calls', operating in a 'distributed' fashion implies that there is no other way of central control that helps to solve the problem with a global vision and all the information on the situation.

In the same way, the researchers have devised a new algorithm for assigning colours to network nodes ensuring that each pair of connected nodes is not the same colour. The end goal is to generate a valid solution that uses the least amount of colours.

Application to WiFi connections

As Blum outlines, "this type of graph colouring is the formalisation of a problem that arises in many areas of the real world, such as the optimisation of modern wireless networks with no predetermined structure using techniques for reducing losses in information packages and energy efficiency improvement."

This study falls under the field of 'swarm intelligence', a branch of artificial intelligence that aims to design intelligent systems with multiple agents. This is inspired by the collective behaviour of animal societies such as ant colonies, flocks of birds, shoals of fish and frogs, as in this case.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Plataforma SINC, via AlphaGalileo.

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Journal Reference:

Hugo Hernández, Christian Blum. Distributed graph coloring: an approach based on the calling behavior of Japanese tree frogs. Swarm Intelligence, 2012; 6 (2): 117 DOI: 10.1007/s11721-012-0067-2

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Flexible channel width improves user experience on wireless systems

ScienceDaily (June 4, 2012) — Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique to efficiently divide the bandwidth of the wireless spectrum in multi-hop wireless networks to improve operation and provide all users in the network with the best possible performance.

"Our objective is to maximize throughput while ensuring that all users get similar 'quality of experience' from the wireless system, meaning that users get similar levels of satisfaction from the performance they experience from whatever applications they're running," says Parth Pathak, a Ph.D. student in computer science at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research.

Multi-hop wireless networks use multiple wireless nodes to provide coverage to a large area by forwarding and receiving data wirelessly between the nodes. However, because they have limited bandwidth and may interfere with each other's transmissions, these networks can have difficulty providing service fairly to all users within the network. Users who place significant demands on network bandwidth can effectively throw the system off balance, with some parts of the network clogging up while others remain underutilized.

Over the past few years, new technology has become available that could help multi-hop networks use their wireless bandwidth more efficiently by splitting the band into channels of varying sizes, according to the needs of the users in the network. Previously, it was only possible to form channels of equal size. However, it was unclear how multi-hop networks could take advantage of this technology, because there was not a clear way to determine how these varying channel widths should be assigned.

Now an NC State team has advanced a solution to the problem.

"We have developed a technique that improves network performance by determining how much channel width each user needs in order to run his or her applications," says Dr. Rudra Dutta, an associate professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of the paper. "This technique is dynamic. The channel width may change -- becoming larger or smaller -- as the data travels between nodes in the network. The amount of channel width allotted to users is constantly being modified to maximize the efficiency of the system and avoid what are, basically, data traffic jams."

In simulation models, the new technique results in significant improvements in a network's data throughput and in its "fairness" -- the degree to which all network users benefit from this throughput.

The researchers hope to test the technique in real-world conditions using CentMesh, a wireless network on the NC State campus.

The paper, "Channel Width Assignment Using Relative Backlog: Extending Back-pressure to Physical Layer," was co-authored by former NC State master's student Sankalp Nimborkhar. The paper will be presented June 12 at the 13th International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing in Hilton Head, S.C. The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the Secure Open Systems Initiative at NC State.

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Flexible channel width improves user experience on wireless systems

ScienceDaily (June 4, 2012) — Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a technique to efficiently divide the bandwidth of the wireless spectrum in multi-hop wireless networks to improve operation and provide all users in the network with the best possible performance.

"Our objective is to maximize throughput while ensuring that all users get similar 'quality of experience' from the wireless system, meaning that users get similar levels of satisfaction from the performance they experience from whatever applications they're running," says Parth Pathak, a Ph.D. student in computer science at NC State and lead author of a paper describing the research.

Multi-hop wireless networks use multiple wireless nodes to provide coverage to a large area by forwarding and receiving data wirelessly between the nodes. However, because they have limited bandwidth and may interfere with each other's transmissions, these networks can have difficulty providing service fairly to all users within the network. Users who place significant demands on network bandwidth can effectively throw the system off balance, with some parts of the network clogging up while others remain underutilized.

Over the past few years, new technology has become available that could help multi-hop networks use their wireless bandwidth more efficiently by splitting the band into channels of varying sizes, according to the needs of the users in the network. Previously, it was only possible to form channels of equal size. However, it was unclear how multi-hop networks could take advantage of this technology, because there was not a clear way to determine how these varying channel widths should be assigned.

Now an NC State team has advanced a solution to the problem.

"We have developed a technique that improves network performance by determining how much channel width each user needs in order to run his or her applications," says Dr. Rudra Dutta, an associate professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of the paper. "This technique is dynamic. The channel width may change -- becoming larger or smaller -- as the data travels between nodes in the network. The amount of channel width allotted to users is constantly being modified to maximize the efficiency of the system and avoid what are, basically, data traffic jams."

In simulation models, the new technique results in significant improvements in a network's data throughput and in its "fairness" -- the degree to which all network users benefit from this throughput.

The researchers hope to test the technique in real-world conditions using CentMesh, a wireless network on the NC State campus.

The paper, "Channel Width Assignment Using Relative Backlog: Extending Back-pressure to Physical Layer," was co-authored by former NC State master's student Sankalp Nimborkhar. The paper will be presented June 12 at the 13th International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing in Hilton Head, S.C. The research was supported by the U.S. Army Research Office and the Secure Open Systems Initiative at NC State.

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Efficiency of multi-hop wireless networks boosted

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2012) — Multi-hop wireless networks can provide data access for large and unconventional spaces, but they have long faced significant limits on the amount of data they can transmit. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a more efficient data transmission approach that can boost the amount of data the networks can transmit by 20 to 80 percent.

"Our approach increases the average amount of data that can be transmitted within the network by at least 20 percent for networks with randomly placed nodes -- and up to 80 percent if the nodes are positioned in clusters within the network," says Dr. Rudra Dutta, an associate professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research. The approach also makes the network more energy efficient, which can extend the lifetime of the network if the nodes are battery-powered.

Multi-hop wireless networks utilize multiple wireless nodes to provide coverage to a large area by forwarding and receiving data wirelessly between the nodes. However, these networks have "hot spots" -- places in the network where multiple wireless transmissions can interfere with each other. This limits how quickly the network can transfer data, because the nodes have to take turns transmitting data at these congested points.

Data can be transmitted at low power over short distances, which limits the degree of interference with other nodes. But this approach means that the data may have to be transmitted through many nodes before reaching its final destination. Or, data can be transmitted at high power, which means the data can be sent further and more quickly -- but the powerful transmission may interfere with transmissions from many other nodes.

Dutta and Ph.D. student Parth Pathak developed an approach called centrality-based power control to address the problem. Their approach uses an algorithm that instructs each node in the network on how much power to use for each transmission depending on its final destination.

The algorithm optimizes system efficiency by determining when a powerful transmission is worth the added signal disruption, and when less powerful transmissions are needed.

The paper, "Centrality-based power control for hot-spot mitigation in multi-hop wireless networks," is published online by the journal Computer Communications, and is in press for a print version of an upcoming issue of the journal. Pathak is lead author. The research was supported in part by the U.S. Army Research Office.

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Journal Reference:

Parth H. Pathak, Rudra Dutta. Centrality-based power control for hot-spot mitigation in multi-hop wireless networks. Computer Communications, 2012; DOI: 10.1016/j.comcom.2012.01.023

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