MiMu BLOG

Professor WiFi’s Summer Project

Today I met Professor WiFi and his student Simon Rankine to kickoff a summer project to try and create the best possible wireless data link for the new version of the gloves. Professor WiFi (real name Professor Andrew Nix) is a Professor of Wireless Communication Systems here are Bristol University. I had contacted Andy for advice on our wireless systems and we met for the first time a couple of weeks ago. We talked about the gloves, x-OSC and several interesting projects Andy is involved in (including this light painting project) and parted with a rough plan to talk again sometime soon and maybe we could find a way to work together. The next week Andy emailed to say that he had found funding and a student to conduct a summer project on everything we had discussed. Wow!

So today Andy, Simon and I met to have a kick off meeting. Simon has just finished is third of four years on the Electronic and Communication Engineering M.Eng course, he’s got allot of cool hobby projects on the go and works on all the stage tech at the University union. Seems like the perfect guy for the job. Not only are Andy and Simon very knowledgeable on wireless technology but they also have access to allot of specialist (and expensive) equipment including a state-of-the-art anechoic chamber.

The project will last 10 weeks and between the three of us we agreed on the following goals:

1. Compare PCB antennae and external antennae version of x-OSC
2. Find optimal Access Point (AP) settings
3. Find optimal AP antennae arrangements
4. Tweak any x-OSC firmware settings we can to improve performance
5. Evaluate 802.11g (x-OSC) performance in presence of 802.11n
6. Explore 802.11n hardware solutions as an alternative to x-OSC

Andy is also keen for Simon to keep a project blog to share new of development and technical information. The project will end with a white paper covering the work done which will hopefully turn into an academic publication.

Simon’s going to put together a project plan before we meet again later this week to get down to business. I am really looking forward working with Andy and Simon to make x-OSC and the gloves even better and perhaps even learn a little about the elusive world of wireless communication.