Mobile appliances and wireless communication are enabling technologies in many pervasive computer systems. Many kinds of mobile appliances are used in the context of both work and leisure. Examples of mobile appliances range from standard products such as mobile phones and PDAs to specialized products with very limited functionality. The wireless networks spans from global infrastructures for mobile phones (GPS, GPRS, and UTMS), over wireless LANs to Proximity networks (Bluetooth, IR).

The technologies can be used to implement a variety of services such as WAP enabled phones, Internet accesses from PDAs, location dependant information services, digital packet radio combining general broadcast and more restricted information.

The term ‘mobile systems and wireless communication’ has been used both to denote the wide area of pervasive computing, and the mainly technical area of wireless communication protocols and development of portable networked appliances. This has the implication that much of the research inside the area of mobile systems and wireless communication naturally will be joined work with other of the research areas in CfPC.

Research Themes
The main interests are:

• Ad-hoc networks:
  • Routing in ad-hoc networks
  • Parasitic networks
  • Self organizing networks
    
• Network technology:
  • How do networks support mobility?
  • Mobile IPv6
  • G2.5, G3 networks
  • Digital Broadcast
  • Bluetooth
  • Ultra Wideband networks
    
• Devices:
  • PDA/Phone converges
    
• Model Driven Systems Development:
  • The use of models to capture the behavior of mobile, context dependant
  • and multi modal systems.
  • How do we overcome the limits of UML?
    

Partnership activities
Examples of ongoing student projects:

• Diet PDA - The Diet Diary
  The Diet PDA makes use of the fact that today‚s consumer foods are labeled with bar codes. This provides us with a possibility to uniquely identify a specific food article using a bar code scanner. The bar code scanner is an efficient short range data capture system and has been integrated in a wide range of mobile and wearable devices. The technology can be remotely connected to information databases using wireless network technology.
  
• Bluetooth access-point
  The basic idea is to install a Bluetooth access-point, connected to a fixed IP connection in the homes. This will allow you to connect your Bluetooth mobile phone, and use the Bluetooth access-point as an alternative to the GSM connection. You will gain a much higher bandwidth for data connections, and cheaper rate for your phone calls. The IP connection has to be routed to the backend of your mobile phone service provider to allow calls to your phone to be routed through your IP/Bluetooth connection. The project will allow an investigation of the possibilities and problems in bridging wireless and guided communication, and can provide a first step in connecting appliances in the home with IP services available on the Internet.

Partners
We are currently in the process of setting up projects with a number of partners including the following organizations:

• The Alexandra Institute
• Ericsson Telebit
• Ericsson Diax
• Innovation Lab
• Personics

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