Staying connected seems to be the need of the hour, and with each passing day, the world of technology has cropped up several solutions for the same. Well, one such means to stay in touch comes from MIT scientists who believe that data rates on mobile devices can be increased by simply tapping motion sensors such as GPS, accelerometers and even gyroscopes, found in smartphones.
Every time a user moves out of one transmitter’s range into another’s, the network has to allegedly perform a ‘handoff.’ However, when a handset is engaged in a call or lost a Wi-Fi connection while walking, networks may fail to accomplish handoffs. Researchers have now developed a set of new communications protocols that utilize information about a portable device’s movement to improve handoffs. Effectuated experiments showed that protocols can boost network throughput while on the move by up to 50 percent.
“Let’s say you get off at the train station and start walking toward your office,” Professor Hari Balakrishnan said. “What happens today is that your phone immediately connects to the Wi-Fi access point with the strongest signal. But by the time it’s finished doing that, you’ve walked on, so the best access point has changed. And that keeps happening.”
Four distinct communications protocols seemingly improved motion detection. They apparently select an access point on the basis of the user’s inferred trajectory. Only one version of the protocol can supposedly switch a mobile phone 40 percent less frequently than existing protocols. With variation of the protocol, throughput was found to be enhanced by over 30 percent. The other protocol controls a phone’s selection of bit rate, or the rate at which it sends and receives information.
“If you asked me which problems in the paper were the ones where I saw the shortest-term benefit to lots of users,” added Brad Karp, head of the Networks Research Group at University College London’s Computer Science Department, “It’s the automatic bit rate adaptation and, as a second choice, access point selection.”
Once a device is in motion, the available bandwidth appears fluctuating hence selecting a bit rate becomes complicated. But the device employing the MIT protocol purportedly knows when it’s in motion, so becomes extra careful while choosing a bit rate. The gains in throughput from bit rate selection probably varied between 20 percent and 70 percent but were consistent at around 50 percent. And the third protocol looks after the behavior of the wireless base stations instead of the devices that connect to them.
A base station may be aware that a smartphone has broken contact only after a long enough silence. The station supposedly tries to send the same data to the device over and over, waiting acknowledgment and wasting both time and power. What happens here is that, the base station is supposedly unable to gauge when the connection was broken. The fourth protocol employs motion data to ascertain routing procedures for networks of wirelessly connected cars, whose relative positions are altering.
Scientists believe that these experimental protocols can help boost throughput, but generally require more intrusive modification of existing network infrastructure. Reportedly, this piece of research has laid hands on at least half-dozen other communication protocols that can benefit from information about device movement.