Wireless innovation is no longer just about the handset, but many new developments are instead focused on the connected car, and on other sensors and embedded applications.
This is seen in a project by researchers at MIT, Georgetown University and the National University of Singapore. They are working on an algorithm to let hundreds of different vehicles use Wi-Fi to aggregate data and then send it over the internet via a single cellular connection. That could also be applied to other collections of objects with embedded connectivity, which can use free Wi-Fi to download content and communicate, only using paid-for 3G or 4G to get to the internet. The vehicles which aggregate the most data effectively become network nodes and then establish a cellular link to upload all the data.
Even more futuristically, a Europe-funded project called Smart (Search engine for MultimediA Environment generated content) is creating a new breed of search engine, which could interrogate networks of sensors and deliver real time results about the world around the user. This would interact with data from social networks and other sources to provide more detailed responses than conventional engines, especially when it comes to queries which include elements of location or personal history.
The project is a joint initiative between nine partners including the University of Glasgow, Atos, IBM’s Haifa Research Lab and Imperial College London. It is based on an open source search engine technology called Terrier developed at Glasgow. That university’s Dr Iadh Ounis explained: “The Smart engine will be able to answer high level queries by automatically identifying cameras, microphones and other sensors that can contribute to the query, then synthesising results stemming from distributed sources in an intelligent way. Smart builds upon the existing concept of ‘smart cities’, physical spaces which are covered in an array of intelligent sensors which communicate with each other and can be searched for information.’