ashu sabharwalrice university at-scale programmable wireless testbeds ashu sabharwal director, cmc...

Ashu Sabharwal Rice University

At-scale Programmable Wireless Testbeds

Ashu Sabharwal

Director, CMCRice University


At-scale Programmable Wireless Testbeds

Ashu Sabharwal, Ed Knightly, Behnaam Aazhang and Joe Cavallaro

CMC


Broadband Wireless Testbeds

• Programmable– Clean-slate design

• At-speed– Data-rate which users care about (10-100 Mbps)

• At-scale – 1000s of Real users


Broadband Wireless Testbeds

• Programmable– Clean-slate design– High-performance

• At-speed– Data-rate which users care about (10-100 Mbps)– Stay with the technology curve

• At-scale – 1000s of Real users– Deployment: capacity-coverage-cost tradeoffs

WARP

TFA-Rice


Wireless Open-Access Research Platform

• Xilinx Virtex 2Pro• 4 Daughtercard slots (upto

4x4 MIMO)• Fully operational & all

code open-source at warp.rice.edu


Wireless Open-Access Research Platform

• Performance• Flexibility• Deployability

• Xilinx Virtex 2Pro• 4 Daughtercard slots (upto

4x4 MIMO)• Fully operational & all

code open-source at warp.rice.edu


WARP: Performance

• Current PHY (2x2 MIMO)– 30 Mbps in 12.5 MHz– 60 Mbps tested in lab

• With optimizations, capable of hitting 100+ Mbps


WARP: Flexibility

• Spectrum usage with 4 radios– 160 MHz across 2.4GHz and 5 GHz – Upto 4x4 40 MHz MIMO (802.11n, WiMax)

• Many extensions– TI DSP: can implement a full cell phone– Video card: for raw video input (joint source-channel

coding)


WARP: Deployability

• Implements PHY, MAC, routing on every node– Can implement real-time clean-slate full stacks– All layers use conventional tools

• 8”x8” deployable like small access points

NetworkStack

Devices


TFA-Rice

• Houston Pecan Park• Low income community

(56% <$25K/year)• Empower via technology

– Education (36% graduation rate)

– Health (high chronic disease rates)


TFA-Rice

• Scalability• Observable• “Reality”• Applications

• Houston Pecan Park• Low income community

(56% <$25K/year)• Empower via technology

– Education (36% graduation rate)

– Health (high chronic disease rates)


TFA-Rice: Scalability

• Two-tier Architecture– Access-tier : Clients (home & mobiles) to mesh nodes– Backhaul-tier : Mesh nodes wirelessly hop to gateway

• Dramatically reduced deployment costs– Limited fiber & inexpensive nodes


TFA-Rice: Scalability (Pilot Program)

• Operational since 2004– 2000+ users @ 1 Mb/s over 3 Km2

• Growing to 4x4 scale - 4000 users over 4 Km2

• City inviting CFP to cover 620 Miles2 of Houston• Projected Growth: 1500 companies, $1 Billion market by 2010

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are needed to see this picture.


TFA-Rice: Observable

• Mesh nodes – Single-channel– Multiple antenna types

• Deployment research – Node spacing, path length to gateways– Link versus network-wide behavior


TFA-Rice: Reality Bite 1

• Research has to treat users like end-customers– Even if you made no promises– Police/Commuters are using TFA

• Key issue – Useful only if real users use it– Real users will use it only if the network is useful

(reliable)– Running experiments, reboots, unreliabilities not

tolerated even for free services

Reliability and Accessibility are critical



• Want a large user base ?– Devices have to be reliable, cheap like 802.11– Research devices can only be in small numbers

• Does not preclude innovation– Control and backhaul protocols– Applications - healthcare

Standard Access Protocol Key to Scale



• CAPEX ~$20K/Km2

• OPEX– ISP– Customer support– Maintain research devices– Deploy new protocols– Work with community

• Earthlink, Tropos handle such scale

OPEX >> CAPEX


TFA-Rice: Applications

• Rice, Methodist Hospital & TFA Collaboration• Addressing Chronic Cardiovascular Disease

– CVD responsible for 40% of all dealths in Texas– Higher occurrence in low-income



• Rice, Methodist Hospital & TFA Collaboration• Addressing Chronic Cardiovascular Disease

– CVD responsible for 40% of all dealths in Texas– Higher occurrence in low-income

• Dasco hypothesis: 1950’s medical literature for low-cost monitoring – Simple metrics + info-gap theory yield effective predictors



• Inter-connecting low-cost sensors, “health-phone,” pervasive wireless, and medical practitioners

• Collection, dissemination, and analysis of health data• Analysis alerts patient and community health worker of

potential problems

Health-phoneBlue Box


Near Future Plans

• Deploy WARP nodes with novel new protocols• Higher throughput backhaul• Target 3 Mbps/user


Conclusions

• Research challenges abound– Design, deploy, measure, model, …– Transformational applications


Conclusions

• Research challenges abound– Design, deploy, measure, model, …– Transformational applications

• What is our ultimate metric ?– CANNOT just be bits/sec

• Improving – Life expectancy– Education


More Information

• WARP : Ashu Sabharwal (warp.rice.edu)

• TFA-Rice : Ed Knightly (tfa.rice.edu)

• Health Phone: Lin Zhong (www.ruf.rice.edu/~mobile)

• Team: Behnaam Aazhang, Joe Cavallaro (cmc.rice.edu)

ashu sabharwalrice university at-scale programmable wireless testbeds ashu sabharwal director, cmc...

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