OSA applying as a mentoring organizations for Google SoC 2011

The Open Spectrum Alliance is applying as a mentoring organization for Google's Summer of Code 2011.

Paul Fuxjaeger, OSA member and researcher at FTW (Vienna Telecommunications Research Center) has proposed several ideas and volunteered to mentor students during SoC 2011.

These are the ideas for 2011:

WiFi context

Idea 1

802.11 Load balancing on standard MIPS AP platforms (based on OpenWRT)
A scheduler that does not differentiate between traffic classes but takes
into account the rate-adaption and balances the amounts or radio "airtime"
that are shared amongs clients
Task: Modify a OpenWRT AP to do all that.

Idea 2

802.11 Self-advertising beacon framework on standard MIPS platforms ...
The beacons currently are only used for announcing "existance and encryption
type etc" but they do not convey conditions of the WLAN "cell". Such as,
what is the current channel load, how many clients are currently active on
this ESSID, what is the capacity of the "link" that is used to backhaul.
Task: Modify a OpenWRT AP to do all that.

Idea 3

802.11 Multihoming setup that includes multi-radio terminals. Or
single-radio in case of same-channel case. A terminal is thus logically
associated to more than one AP at the same time etc.

Task: Modify the stack on a client to do all that.

Idea 4

Free implementation of DLEP
http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-ietf-manet-dlep-00

"When routing devices rely on modems to effect communications over
wireless links, they need timely and accurate knowledge of the
characteristics of the link (speed, state, etc.) in order to make
forwarding decisions. In mobile or other environments where these
characteristics change frequently, manual configurations or the
inference of state through routing or transport protocols does not
allow the router to make the best decisions. A bidirectional, event-
driven communication channel between the router and the modem is
necessary."

Software defined radio (SDR) context

Idea 5

A generic interface that enables to couple arbitrary PHYs with a software
MAC and the standard IP part of the stack. Related to the click modular
interface, the VITA radio transport protocol or the UHD driver from Ettus.

It would enable open-source innovation on the lower part of the stack,
developers and enthusiasts can simply exchange those lower parts and
experiment with all kinds of radios and still leverage all the upper parts
that care for the routing etc like OLSR and the like.
Task: combine all state-of-the-art methods into one, maximizing flexibility
and minimizing overhead share, demonstrate it in GNUradio.