Urban Mobility:Municipal Wireless Networks as an Enabling

Technology

Prof. Antonio CaponePolitecnico di MilanoAdvanced Network Technologies Laboratory

MuniWireless NetworksA new emerging application area of wireless networksTremendous interest worldwidePublic utility services as distinguishing featureLocal governments and authorities as new actors for building up infrastructures and providing services

Big cities Medium-small cities Solution to digital divide

MuniWireless ServicesDeployment of a city-wide pervasive wireless network for offering a large set

of services to public agencies, local police, fire dept, citizens, shops, local companies, and visitors.

The wireless network as a key enabler for a large set of value-added public-utility services for the

community.

Virtual LAN for public access

Virtual LAN for public utility

services

Virtual LAN for public security

Metropolitan Area Network

Tourist services

Traffic controlPublic AccessParking lots

management

Citizen mobility management

Support servuces for Police, Fire

Depts, etc.

E-health

Video Surveillance

… and many others

One network

many services

Pollution mapping and control …

Public Information Services

Traffic control and parking

management

Personal mobility

Support to Public Health service

Infoservices

Social netwoking

Vehicle sharing

… e molti altri ancora

Services for utility

Public Security Services

Support to public police, fire

brigates, etc.

Videosurveillance

… e molti altri ancora

Monitoring and control of pollution (air, noise,

etc.)

Research Projects on Public Utility Services

Context/Location aware information services. ANTLab PoliMI

VehicularLab @ UCLA

Which technology for MuniWireless?

WiFi is today the only available solution able to cope with the request of open platform for public utility service development

The development of services and applications on mobile wireless networks is complex due to:

The constraints posed by mobile service operators that need to completely control service provisioning according to their classical business modelFrequency licences that prevent local government to make investments directly into the communication infrastructures

Like the history of Internet teaches us, in order to develop a large number of popular services we need:

Open platformsComplete freedom of developing of applications for third parties (wrt manufacturers and service providers)

WiFi MESH

The problem: WiFI for large scale public networks has to cope with the problem of the broadband wired infrastructure

Ethernet

Solution: Replacing wired infrastructure with wireless links

Internet

Wireless Mesh Networks

Mesh routers (MRs) manage routing automatically based on ad hoc network technologiesDevices are flexible and self-configuringAll or a subset of MRs act as access points (Wi-Fi hot spot)Some devices are the gateways to the InternetBackhauling: WiFI, Hiperlan, WiMax, BPLC ... (maybe LTE MESH in the future)

meshgateway

meshrouter

meshclient

Access LinkBackhaulGateway Link

Experimental Projects in the Academic Labs

MIT RoofnetFirst experimental projectLow cost HWSoftware open-source

Other projectsGeorgiaTech BWN-MeshRice UniversityRutgers Winlab ORBITSUNY Stonybrook HyacinthMobiMESH PoliMI

Several academic projects have contributed to the commercial exploitation of the technology

MobiMESH ProjectStarted by ANTLab, Politecnico di Milano in 2004Initial goal:

Create an experimental platform for testing innovative solutions for routing, mobility management, network configuration and management

Soon coupled with the goal of:Designing advanced mesh networking solutions and products for the market

Today MobiMESH is a spin-off company of Politecnico di Milano

MobiMESH firstprototype

ThanksContact:Antonio CaponeEmail: antonio.capone@polimi.itFor more information:

www.antlab.elet.polimi.itwww.mobimesh.it