Training Materials for Wireless Networks from WiLAC available for download

WILAC, an initiative to promote wireless technolgies in Latin America and the Caribbean ("Tecnologías inalámbricas para el Desarrollo en América Latina y el Caribe"), has published some of their training materials in English. I uploaded their presentations to Slideshare for people to be able to embed them into their websites and blogs. Here is the presentation with an introduction to Wimax.

As part of the TRICALCAR project a set of 7 brand new modules, which
we are please to share with the group of technicians part who develop
the original curriculum of the CWCA project in Africa. We know publish
this materials in English, as a feedback to the community who has been
using the original curriculum. The materials are publiched under the
same formats and conditions of the rest of the TRICALCAR project. (16 Junio, 2008 – 11:00 AM, http://www.wilac.net/mod…)

The materials were created by different wireless experts including Ermanno Pietrosemoli (well-known for his longrange wireless connections), Alberto Escudero-Pascual, Louise Berthils, Lilian Chamorro, Dafne Sabanes Plou and Alberto Escudero Pascual.

The WILAC website is part of an initiative of ESLARED with the support of the Instituto para la Conectividad en las Américas (ICA). More presentations and Handouts can be downloaded or viewed at my Slideshare account. The Spanish versions of the workshops are also available at their site.

To learn more about Wimax, check out Wikipedia:

WiMAX, the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a telecommunications technology that provides wireless data in a variety of ways, from point-to-point links to full mobile cellular type access. It is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, which is also called WirelessMAN. The name "WiMAX" was created by the WiMAX Forum,
which was formed in June 2001 to promote conformance and
interoperability of the standard. The forum describes WiMAX as "a
standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL" (and also to High Speed Packet Access).(Version 17 June 2008, at 10:39, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX)

Wireless OpenHardware

Hi all,

at the fantastic WSFII meeting during SAX at guifi.net in Spain we started to specify two wireless hardware devices. There were people from various free wireless network communites from Europe and the US. We had a three hour workshop and tried to define our wish list for cheap free open source software compatible open wireless hardware. Now we are trying to find the manufacturers who is willing to build those devices.

If you have any contacts that could help, please talk to them and show them our results. The company should best sell those products direct to the communites over webshop and only ship the bulk boards in charges of 20,50,100 or more. We think, that’s the best way to make them as cheep as possible.

There are quite a lot of people willing to help in e.g. software/driver-development or hardware-design. I am very positive that sooner or later some manufacturer is going to see their chance in our global movement!

JuergeN

— SCHNIPP —

1. Simple Node
– single wireless a/b/g radio device with support for virtual access points
– single Ethernet port with high tolerance PoE support (4-30V)
– power system must resist reverse polarity
– 4 Mbyte Flash
– 16 Mbyte RAM
– 200 MHz CPU
– serial port
– JTAG interface
– one Antenna plug (reverse SMC) and no explicit need for diversity
– for outdoor usage (which is regarded to be a standard scenario) the
board does not need a box and does not need to be shipped with antenna
and power supply
– power consumption should be as little as possible (solar systems!)

Comment: Finding the consensus on the design for the simple node was
quite easy and did not take very long. It seams that the needs and
wishes of the different groups represented by the attendees are very
similar.

2. Super Node
– two embedded wireless a/b/g radio devices with support for virtual
access points
– two Ethernet ports with standard 802.3af PoE support
– power system must resist reverse polarity
– 8 Mbyte Flash
– 32 Mbyte RAM
– 500 MHz CPU
– two USB 2.0 ports
– two miniPCI slots (both stackable up to 8 cards)
– serial port
– JTAG interface
– two Antenna plugs (reverse SMC) and no explicit need for diversity
– for outdoor usage (which is regarded to be a standard scenario) the
board does not need a box and does not need to be shipped with antennas
and power supply
– power consumption should be as little as possible (solar systems!)

Comment: Finding a compromise on the super node really was a hard time,
because there can be different ways to achieve the same goals. For
example, if wireless USB devices had a better FOSS support, many of the
super nodes could just easily be built without the need for miniPCI.
Also super nodes can be built with simple wireless bridges connected
over ethernet (high power consumption?). But anyway, after many looong
discussions the group had a consensus on the points listed above.

3. wireless USB devices
As already mentioned, super nodes could well be build using wireless USB
devices instead of mini PCI cards (less expensive cabling, less
interference between the devices). But to be able to use them, people
need FOSS drivers for them, which support all wireless modes (managed,
ad-hoc, AccessPoint), and the USB devices should have a reverse SMC
antenna connector.

— SCHNAPP —

http://wiki.freifunk.net/OpenHardware

WiOpt’08 – International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks

(vie Thomas Hirsch)
Vielleicht interessant für den ein oder anderen, der der Wissenschaftswelt einmal über seine Erfahrungen und Ergebnisse im Freifunk-Netz berichten möchte.

Was bringts:
– Feedback. Das Papier wird auf jeden Fall von drei Leuten aus verschiedenen Fachgebieten quergelesen. Anschließend darf man einen Vortrag vor noch mehr Leuten halten, und wird im Konferenzjournal abgedruckt. Potentiell erreicht man also viele Leute, die Ahnung von Mesh-Dingen haben, Interessante Dinge  mit Funknetzen machen, oder sich das ganze auch mal nur aus der Mathematikerbrille betrachten.
– Aufmerksamkeit über den eigenen Kiez hinaus.

Übersicht über die Beiträge und Teilnehmer hier:
http://www.wiopt.org/wiopt07/program.html

#####   ANNOUNCEMENT / CALL FOR PAPER    ######
WiOpt'08
6th Intl. Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc, and Wireless Networks March 31 – April 4, Berlin, Germany
http://www.wiopt.org

Scope of the Symposium
This symposium intends to bring together researchers and practitioners working on optimization of wireless network design and operations. It welcomes works on different perspectives, including performance analysis and simulation, protocol design, numerical communication and optimization theory, for all forms of wireless networks: cellular, wide, metropolitan, local and personal-area networks, dense and sparse ad-hoc networks, domain specific vehicular, public-transport, application-specific sensor networks, as well as any combination of these.
Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* Modeling, simulations and measurements
* Protocol design
* Spectrum allocation
* Security and intrusion detection
* Pricing and incentives
* Scalability, manageability and optimization
* System capacity and performance
* Mobility and multihoming
* Opportunistic and cooperative scheduling
* Cognitive radio
* Interference control
* Energy efficiency

Submissions

The submission format for the papers is an extended abstract, up to eight pages long. Please use the IEEE Transactions format, 11 pt character size, one column text, one-and-a-half line spacing, letter paper. This page budget should contain all figures, tables, references, etc. The extended abstract should also include a brief abstract of up to 150 words. The submission will be handled via EDAS ( http://edas.info ). Only PDF files are acceptable; please make sure that the paper prints without problems (take care to embed all required fonts, etc.). Adjunct Workshops Several one-day workshops are planned to accompany the main WiOpt

Symposium:

WiNMee/WiTMeMo 2008 : International Workshop On Wireless Network Measurement RAWNET 2008 : Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks
SPASWIN 2008: Spatial Stochastic Models for Wireless Networks
WNC3 2008 : Wireless Networks: Communication, Cooperation and Competition

Important Dates

Conference: April 1-3, 2008
Workshops: March 31-April 4, 2008
Submission deadline: October 1, 2007
Notification of acceptance: December 15, 2007 Camera-ready copy: January
15, 2007

Freifunk auf dem Turm beim Wireless Community Camp

Freifunker sitzen nicht nur vor dem Computer und basteln Antennen. Echte Freifunker klettern auch schon mal auf Dächer und Türme. Ein Video von Julian Percy (Kamera) und cyper (Schnitt) von Visual Berlin zeigen uns das jetzt sehr anschaulich.

YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpO7LEBud1o