Research Seeks to Improve Peer-to-Peer Wireless Communications

Assistant professor Sunho Lim at South Dakota State University is seeking to make it more convienient to share information via cell phones. And a recent $50,000 grant from the National Science Foundation is helping move the research along.

According to Lim, data access via Internet-based wireless mobile networks - for cell phone users in a given city or area, for example - is a hot research topic now as more people are using handheld or mobile devices to access data. Lim's research seeks to develop algorithms and communication protocols that will make that process more efficient via in peer-to-peer networking.

If a cell phone user in peer-to-peer communication range accesses the Internet and downloads, for instance, the day's weather forecast, he or she could make that information available to other mobile device users in the area, says Lim.

Lim and other scientists at other institutions are also focusing some of their research on "vehicular ad hoc networks," or VANETs -- a term for the emerging communications that are now possible between vehicles or nearby fixed roadside equipment.

VANETs are already used in a limited fashion to allow vehicle-to-vehicle communications that can help motorists to avoid collisions, for example. But the idea of the vehicle as part of a communications network to exchange other kinds of information is still developing.