VenChar

Solar-powered wireless-enabled parking stations

Daily Wireless writes about wireless parking stations being rolled out in Montreal to replace traditional parking meters. You would pull in to a parking spot, walk over to the parking station, enter the parking spot identification code and pay with cash or credit. Meter maids would be able to query the parking station using a wireless handheld and determine which (if any) of the spots are illegally parked.

Benefits to the city:
* fewer parking stations required (each parking station replaces 12 parking meters)
* more convenient for the meter maids - they don't even have to get out of their vehicles to check the meters
* stations are solar-powered, so no access to regular power is required
* parking rates can actually be altered from a central location, allowing the city to charge a higher rate during sporting events, concerts, etc.

The parking stations are being developed by 8D Technologies in partnership with Cale Systems. The system runs Linux and uses GPRS for connectivity. Daily Wireless makes the point that when you tally up the access fees for GPRS, this begins to look like a pretty expensive solution. Yet another good application for ubiquitous WiFi coverage.

Googling WiFi hotspots

You can now use Google's location search to find WiFi hotspots near you - frinstance look here for hotspots near where I live. The rankings look a little weird - the Starbucks from which I'm writing this appears seventh on this list, behind a number of hotspots that are further away. Via Glenn Fleishman who writes:

Google Lab’s new Search by Location service lets you aggregate results for hotspots: This is nifty idea which aggregates the address information that Google is parsing from its results (any time it sees anything that looks like an address) and tying it to keywords.

It’s particularly useful for Wi-Fi aggregation, because you’re finding locations that not only my business partner JiWire lists or libraries that Bill Drew has assembled, but you’re seeing even individual locations like coffeeshops that mention they have Wi-Fi, community wireless pages, and other randomly related content.

Of course, I'm looking forward to the day when we have WiFi everywhere, obviating the need for such a service :)

Motia - smart antennas for WiFi

Motia just emerged from stealth mode. Their product, Javelin, an analog signal-processing chip that does adaptive beam-forming, supposedly works with any existing WiFi baseband and RF solution chipset. My understanding is that they perform MRC (Maximal Ratio Combining) in the analog domain and can be used with 4 antenna elements of any kind. From the EETimes article:

"Other companies are building entire systems with the smart antenna built in. We are the only ones I'm aware of working to bring smart-antenna technology to the component level, to Wi-Fi systems builders," said Jack Winters, chief scientist for Motia and a former manager in the wireless division of AT&T Labs. The Javelin chip can work with any WLAN transceiver chip set, Motia said.

At the heart of Motia's product lies a 68-pin analog signal-processing chip that uses polarization techniques to derive up to four signals from the two existing antennas typically found in an 802.11 PC card or access point. OEMs may wish to modify their existing internal antennas to maximize benefits of the Motia approach, Winters said.

The chip takes the four incoming RF signals and calculates on a packet-by-packet basis their average weighting to optimize signal strength, making calculations of analog signal data in as little as 2 microseconds to reduce latency. Javelin passes on a combined and optimized signal to any existing Wi-Fi transceiver via a standard antenna port.

Motia said the chip delivers a 6-dB gain improvement in line-of-sight applications, 13 dB in multipath environments and up to 18 dB when used at both the client and access point to handle signal transmission and reception. The increased gain can translate into a two- to fourfold extension of range, as well as higher data rates and lower power consumption, the company said.

Sounds very cool for at least two reasons: (1) it adds-on to any 802.11b/g chipset, (2) delivers significant gains in range and performance even when applied to onloy one end of the link, so that it's backwards-compatible with the installed base of clients. They've raised $7.5 million in funding to date from Kodiak Venture Partners, Axiom Venture Partners and Carrot Capital.

Email over bus transport

Rajesh Jain links to an interesting approach to extending Internet access to rural areas in India (see the Economist or Financial Express articles). The basic idea seems to be the following: a mobile WiFi access point on a bus makes the rounds of an area. When the bus appears within range of an Internet kiosk or a home PC equipped with WiFi, the client device uploads/downloads email to/from an email server on the bus. The bus returns to home base once a day and transfers the emails over the Internet.

Great example of adapting technology to the needs of a specific problem. The problem: universal access to email or other queries. This application doesn't have high bandwidth requirements or even require the access to be synchronous - a store-and-forward approach will suffice. The design considerations are (1) high cost of delivering wired/wireless backhaul to end-user devices, (2) high cost of building out a ubiquitous wireless network, (3) low cost and ubiquity of WiFi clients, (4) short range of WiFi devices, (5) store-and-forward or non-real-time transport are acceptable.

The solution is nothing short of brilliant in its simplicity - backhaul data over physical transport, i.e., bus. Somewhat similar to Netflix using the USPS to move digital video content (rather than the Internet as others tried (prematurely) to do).

T-Mobile's Wi-Fi strategy

Interview with the GM of T-Mobile USA's hotspot service. Points to an evolution of their strategy from achieving broad availability (all Starbucks, Borders locations) towards a more targeted approach aimed at achieving coverage where their customers want it. Specifically, this means don't look to T-Mobile to start building out ubiquitous Wi-Fi anytime soon.

The first couple of venues that we partnered with--specifically Starbucks and Borders--were about ubiquity and being every place that people go. It was very important to have a broad footprint. The announcements that you've seen since then target a specific behavior, not generalized coverage. Starbucks gives us broad coverage, whereas a Kinko's is very much about the small- to medium-size business workers.

Was that a change in strategy?

It was an evolution in strategy. It's very important to have a broad footprint to begin with but then to begin to narrow that by going after venues where the targeted customers go...We know about 88 percent of our current users use our service for business, so instead of trying to figure out what venues to go build, we ask them, "Where are the places you go all day?" And that's where we're looking for venue partners.

It's also important that with our venue partners that our service is in all of their stores or locations so you don't have to wonder which locations have our service.

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Where you can expect to see T-Mobile Wi-Fi service to start extending to:

Are you going to stick with the strategy of partnering with large chains?

Broadly distributed brands that mobile workers know and trust--that's a good bet. You're going to see some other announcements in the near future about major brands that are broadly distributed across the United States.

Is the music offering at Starbucks locations indicative of the sorts of services you will provide with your partners?

Yes. That's a joint project with content produced and provided by Starbucks and the network is provided by T-Mobile. We're helping them by hosting some of the content and helping them to manage the interaction with their back-end servers.

The cooperation makes sense because you wouldn't expect customers at a Kinko's to want to download music, they'd be more concerned with sending out faxes or working on work-related projects. Is that the sort of thing that T-Mobile will work on with their partners?

That's a perfect example. With Kinko's we're working on a customized print solution for them so that when customers walk into a Kinko's store they can access print resources without going out over the open Internet. We're providing a differentiated service for a partner in their venue. You'll see more of that with other venues.