WIP

The WIP project aims at studying how to build an all-wireless Internet that could grow and gradually replace the existing Internet. In our vision, the access points of unlicensed cellular networks cooperate to create a wireless communication infrastructure. Such a wireless network “backbone” must be self-organizing to maximize the network capacity and capabilities. Ultimately, the all-wireless interconnection of cooperating access points will only require limited connectivity to the wired infrastructure. We call this all-wireless infrastructure the Radio Internet. The goal of the project is to study how to make the Radio Internet become a reality with an Internet-like growth towards a scalable and robust communication infrastructure.

The objective of the project is to design, implement, and experimentally validate an all-wireless interconnection architecture based on advanced wireless transmission techniques, mesh networking, cross-layer optimization, and mechanisms for seamless mobility. We will develop a suitable measurement methodology and set up experimental prototypes to validate our concepts. Testbeds will be used or deployed for proof-of-concept and validation of the proposed architecture and communication mechanisms.

We believe that to achieve the vision of the Radio Internet, we need to adopt a disruptive approach with respect to the current Internet: rethink the overall architecture with wireless networks as the central technology and propose a new interconnection architecture founded on the principle of all-wireless networks with some isolated wired long-haul links. By defining new topology and routing schemes, designing simple interconnection rules, elaborating new performances objectives, and designing self-configuring, and self healing mechanisms, a large number of wireless access networks can be dynamically interconnected to provide wide coverage with a large capacity. In addition, such a network infrastructure will enable new mobility perspectives.

Consortium

Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris (France) (Coordinator)

Intel Research, Cambridge (UK)

Siemens AG, Munich (Germany)

Telecommunications Technological Center of Catalonia, Barcelona (Spain)

– Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble, LSR Laboratory, Grenoble (France)

Instituto de Telecomunicaηυes, Lisbon and Aveiro (Portugal)

– Informatics & Telematics Institute, Centre for Research and Technology Hellas (Greece)