Activities
Testbeds
Operational
E-Bike
Outputs
Information
IPv6 Showroom

Nautilus6 - Demo Testbed - E-Bike

Description

The E-bike testbed will be used to demonstrate the benefit of network mobility for all types of configurations (i.e. nested mobile networks and multihomed mobile network). The testbed would be a portable IPv6 Personal Area Network (PAN) made of several IPv6 devices with several access technologies. It is currently under development and is expected to be composed of:

PDA (e.g. Zaurus)
IPv6 sensors (temperature/humidity sensor, 2-axis acceleration sensor, direction sensor) which can be accessed using SNMPv1/UDP/IPv6.
Microphone, video-camera
GPS
Internet access: 802.11b, Ethernet, cellular (e.g AirH, mobile phone)
A bicycle

Demonstration Scenarios

While readers may wonder what is the usefulness of Internet access on a bicycle, it's also easy to notice that such a testbed is easy to move around and thus ideal for demonstrations at remote sites. It is also ideal to demonstrate energy constraints. The usefulness is not an issue either when we think about all the demonstrations that can be demonstrated using such a tiny, funny, convenient and inexpensive testbed: video streaming while on the move, real-time monitoring while on the move, adaptive applications (access networks and quality changes over time). It will be enough to convince many people about the usefulness of the underlying technology. In addition, this technology can easily be brought to a motor-cycle, an automobile (as already demonstrated by the InternetCAR project, or even a wheelchair).

We have thus defined several scenarios. All scenarios require network mobility support. One is targeted to people that need permanent medical monitoring, one is targeted to tourists in a city that would rent E-Bike for sightseeing, and one for live-news reporters or live video-games (treasure quest in the city). All would obey to the following succession of events:

IPv6 sensors, a microphone, a video-camera and a PDA are carried by a person and are components of a mobile network. The PDA acts as a mobile router.
At first, the person is located at home or at office, with 802.11 Internet access.
Data sent by IPv6 sensors, voice and video is transmitted permanently and receivers by one or more receivers located anywhere in the Internet.
The person is leaving the house or office, and take his bicycle. The PDA is put on the bicycle. Other sensors on the bicycle are activated and start to transmit the speed and the acceleration through the mobile router (nested mobility). Live voice and video keep transmitting through the PDA.
The mobile router detects the other access networks, i.e. cellular (l2 trigger, multihoming)
The cyclist moves around. The GPS provides the location to the PDA, and the rider receives suggestions (which road he should take, places to visit).
When the cyclist leaves the coverage area of 802.11, the mobile router automatically switches to the other available access network.
The cellular network is low bandwidth. The flow of the video streaming is automatically adapted to the available bandwidth. The transmission is not interrupted (adaptive applications), voice and data collected by sensors are always transmitted.