Joe Finney

Six in the city: introducing Real Tournament - a mobile IPv6 based context-aware multiplayer game

It is rapidly becoming clear that entertainment will be one of the killer applications of future wireless networks. More specifically mobile gaming is predicted to be worth

LARA: A Prototype System for Supporting High Performance Active Networking

1.2 billion by the year 2006 to providers in the U.S. alone [20]. The driving force behind this is the introduction of powerful feature rich handsets and ubiquitous access to high performance wireless networks. However, mobile applications face issues that are subtly different from fixed network applications, including fluctuating connectivity, network QoS and host mobility issues. To investigate the requirements of future mobile applications we have deployed a wireless MAN consisting of GPRS and IEEE 802.11 hotspots based on Mobile IPv6 around the city of Lancaster and have built an augmented reality game designed to evaluate future mobile application requirements.In this paper we introduce Real Tournament, a prototype multi-player mobile game, which uses handheld computers augmented with an array of sensors to enable true mobile interaction in a real-world environment. We then evaluate current approaches to real-time interaction and follow by outlining our own architecture more suited to wireless environments and based on the peer-to-peer approach. The approach provides adaptation, shared state, and consistency mechanisms in order to provide support for scalable, low latency, soft real time mobile applications.

Toward emergent technology for blended public displays

There are a number of alternative directions in which active networking is progressing, each of which have their own advantages and disadvantages. This paper presents the Lancaster Active Router Architecture (LARA), as a means to integrate these distinct active network environments in a single system, to allow increased flexibility in network programming. There are a number of issues involved in accomplishing this, including scalability, resource management, performance and security. The remainder of this paper describes our prototype composite hardware/software solution, which takes the first steps towards tackling these issues.

On the effects of loose causal consistency in mobile multiplayer games

Public displays are becoming increasingly commonplace, yet recent studies place the effectiveness and user acceptance of them into doubt. This paper motivates the need for a new class of display technology that can more effectively blend with its environment and introduces the concept of self-organizing emergent displays as a vehicle to achieving this. The paper goes on to briefly describe Firefly, a prototype emergent display system, and evaluate its scalability, effectiveness, and user acceptance through experimental analysis and a field trial.

Experiences of designing and deploying intelligent sensor nodes to monitor hand-arm vibrations in the field

It is well understood that distributed multiplayer games, as soft real-time systems, require a degree of support from the underlying network in order to function correctly, in terms of predictable end to end bandwidth, latency and jitter. In a mobile environment, such applications face even greater challenges, as the latency of wireless networks is much higher than their wireline counterparts, jitter is often much higher due to network handoff and bandwidth is at a premium. In fact, the latency of many wide area wireless networks is beyond the tolerance of most multiplayer games, rendering such applications unusable.This paper presents the design and experimental evaluation of Rendezvous, a novel decentralized consistency management mechanism that enables the collaboration of multiple players in mobile real-time games, even in a high latency environment. The operation of the mechanism is validated through the analysis of a real world example - a distributed mobile multiplayer soccer game called Knockabout, which is designed to operate on the Smartphone platform. Experimental results are included not only comparing Rendezvous to an existing consistency mechanism, but also measuring the length of network delay tolerated by the platform and its effect on the players.

An access control architecture for microcellular wireless IPv6 networks

The NEMO project is exploring the use of mobile sensor nodes toaugment physical work artefacts in order to ensure compliance with health and safety regulations. In this paper we present our experiences of designing and deploying the NEMO Hand Arm Vibration (HAV) monitoring system. Long term exposure to hand arm vibration can lead to serious health conditions and the NEMO HAV monitoring system offers an integrated architecture for capturing HAV exposure data in the field, providing feedback about exposure levels both in the field and as input to a back-end database. Our design allows health and safety regulations specified at the enterprise level to be embedded within the wireless sensor nodes allowing them to operate without any infrastructural support. The system has been the subject of a two week field trial that took place with the collaboration of a British construction and maintenance company. During the field trial, the NEMO HAV system was deployed to a roa dmaintenance patching gang and data were collected on HAV exposure caused by hydraulic drills. The paper reports on the results of the field trial and the lessons learned through the real deployment of the system.

Exploring the Design of Pay-Per-Use Objects in the Construction Domain

This document introduces a novel access control architecture for publicly accessible wireless overlay networks. The architecture is designed to address the problems of ubiquitous Internet service provisioning within the city of Lancaster. The proposed access control mechanism is based on the concepts of secure user authentication, packet marking, and network-level packet filtering. The novelty of the architecture lies in its use of microcellular layer three networks to acquire fine grained access control in a link independent manner. The paper describes the concepts behind the access control architecture and demonstrates to what extent it addresses the security, performance and extensibility concerns of public access packet switched wireless networks.

Network interrupts: supporting delay sensitive applications in low power wireless control networks

Equipment used in the construction domain is often hired in order to reduce cost and maintenance overhead. The cost of hire is dependent on the time period involved and does not take into account the actual use equipment has received. This paper presents our initial investigation into how physical objects augmented with sensing and communication technologies can measure use in order to enable new pay-per-use payment models for equipment hire. We also explore user interaction with pay-per-use objects via mobile devices. The user interactions that take place within our prototype scenario range from simple information access to transactions involving multiple users. This paper presents the design, implementation and evaluation of a prototype pay-per-use system motivated by a real world equipment hire scenario. We also provide insights into the various challenges introduced by supporting a pay-per-use model, including data storage and data security in addition to user interaction issues.

The need for real time consistency management in P2P mobile gaming environments

The importance in maintaining energy efficient communications in low power networks such as sensor and actuator networks is well understood. However, in recent years, a growing number of delay sensitive and interactive applications have been discovered for such networks, that are no longer purely limited to the data gathering model of sensor networks. Providing support application requiring low latency interaction in such environments without negatively affecting energy efficiency remains a challenging problem. This paper outlines the importance of this emerging class of application, discusses problems involved in supporting them in energy challenged environments, proposes a combined hardware and software mechanism based on heterogeneous wireless networking which works toward solving this problem, and goes on to evaluate this mechanism through experimental analysis. The paper concludes with a discussion of the applicability of the mechanism to typical application scenarios.

Network layer access control for context-aware IPv6 applications

The introduction of more powerful, feature rich, portable handsets is enabling more engaging mobile multimedia entertainment. Improvements in wireless technology infrastructure are enabling access to ubiquitous, always-on data networks. We believe that based on the popularity of multiplayer games over IP networks, there will be significant demand for mobile multiplayer games. Based upon our early trials, we also believe that the current trend for using centralised client/server models will not offer the most suitable architecture to enable them. To support our research we have built a novel augmented reality real time game as a requirements gatherer for gaming in a wireless environment. In this paper we indicate why a centralised approach will not be suitable for real-time interactions. As an alternative we propose a decentralised approach which includes support for consistency and interest management over heterogeneous networked wireless environments.