Seminar by Prof. Pravin Bhagwat
Turning Wireless LAN Inside Out
Prof. Pravin Bhagwat
Visiting Faculty
Computer Science and Engineering Department
Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur
Date: Thursday, September 19, 2002
Time: 04:15 PM
Venue: CS-101
Abstract
In Asia/Pacific part of the world, a pressing need of the current times is a low cost wireless technology which can bridge the digital divide between rural and urban sector. IEEE 802.11 Wireless LAN technology (also known as Wi-Fi) offers a great promise: it is inexpensive and is license free in most parts of the world. IEEE 802.11 WLAN standard was designed primarily for indoor use where communication is needed only over distances of 20-30 meters. However, the application of our interest demands a technology which can be used outdoors and over long distances. For the past seven months, we have been conducting a large scale outdoor experiment to assess viability of Wi-Fi technology for extending Internet connectivity to remote villages. The results so far are very encouraging. We have succeeded in extending wireless Internet access up to 25 Km distance from IITK campus.
In this talk we will describe the key challenges of using Wi-Fi in an outdoor setting. We will present an overview of our progress so far and what we plan to do in the near future. This project is being conducted under the auspices of Medial Lab Asia Kanpur-Lucknow lab.
About the Speaker
Pravin Bhagwat is a researcher in the area of wireless and mobile networking. Currently, he is a visiting faculty in the Computer Science and Engineering Department, IIT Kanpur. Prior to this, he worked as technology consultant in the Networking Research group at AT&T Labs-Research, and as a member of research staff at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. He actively serves on program committees of ACM and IEEE networking conferences and has published numerous technical papers and holds patents in the area of mobile computing and wireless communication. He is the Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and IEEE Wireless Communication and has also served as a guest editor of IEEE Network. He also holds and adjunct faculty appointment at Winlab, Rutgers University. Pravin Bhagwat is an alumni of IIT Kanpur, having received his BTech degree in Computer Science & Engineering in 1990. He received his PhD from University of Maryland, College Park, in 1995.