Ubiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural context

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dc.contributor.advisorBagula, Antoineen_ZA
dc.contributor.authorMaliwatu, Richarden_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2015-07-01T09:05:11Z
dc.date.available2015-07-01T09:05:11Z
dc.date.issued2014en_ZA
dc.descriptionIncludes bibliographical references.en_ZA
dc.description.abstractICT has furthered the social and economic development of societies but, rural African communities have lagged behind due to issues such as sparse population, low household income, a lack of electricity and other basic infrastructure that make it unattractive for telecommunication service providers to extend service provision. Where the service is available, ubiquitous service coverage has not translated into ubiquitous access for individuals because of the associated costs. A community-wide WMN offering VoIP using fixed telephone handsets has been deployed as a viable alternative to the cellular service provider. The effectiveness of this WMN VoIP service springs from the mobile phone usage statistics which showed that the majority of calls made are intra-community. This dissertation has been an effort towards improved communication and access to in- formation for the under-served communities. Key contributions include, mobile VoIP support, translation gateway deployment to make textual information accessible in voice form via the phone, IP-based radio for community information dissemination. The lack of electricity has been mitigated by the use of low-power devices. In order to circumvent the computational challenges posed by the processing and storage limitations of these devices, a decentralised system architecture whereby the processing and storage load are distributed across the mesh nodes has been proposed. High-performance equipment can be stationed at the closest possible place with electricity in the area and connectivity extended to the non-electrified areas using low-power mesh networking devices. Implementation techniques were investigated and performance parameters measured. The quality of service experienced by the user was assessed using objective methods and QoS correlation models. A MOS value of 4.29, i.e. very good, was achieved for the mobile VoIP call quality, with the underlying hardware supporting up to 15 point-to-point simultaneous calls using SIP and the G.711 based codec. Using the PEAQ algorithm to evaluate the IP-based radio, a PEAQ value of 4.15, i.e. good, was achieved. Streaming audio across the network reduces the available bandwidth by 8Kbps per client due to the unicast nature of streaming. Therefore, a multicast approach has been proposed for efficient bandwidth utilization. The quality of the text-to-voice service rendered by the translation gateway had a PESQ score of 1.6 i.e. poor. The poor performance can be attributed to the TTS engine implementation and also to the lack of robustness in the time-alignment module of the PESQ algorithm. The dissertation also proposes the use of the WMN infrastructure as a back-haul to isles of WSNs deployed in areas of interest to provide access to information about environ- mental variables useful in decision making.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationMaliwatu, R. (2014). <i>Ubiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural context</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Computer Science. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13259en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationMaliwatu, Richard. <i>"Ubiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural context."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Computer Science, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13259en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationMaliwatu, R. 2014. Ubiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural context. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Maliwatu, Richard AB - ICT has furthered the social and economic development of societies but, rural African communities have lagged behind due to issues such as sparse population, low household income, a lack of electricity and other basic infrastructure that make it unattractive for telecommunication service providers to extend service provision. Where the service is available, ubiquitous service coverage has not translated into ubiquitous access for individuals because of the associated costs. A community-wide WMN offering VoIP using fixed telephone handsets has been deployed as a viable alternative to the cellular service provider. The effectiveness of this WMN VoIP service springs from the mobile phone usage statistics which showed that the majority of calls made are intra-community. This dissertation has been an effort towards improved communication and access to in- formation for the under-served communities. Key contributions include, mobile VoIP support, translation gateway deployment to make textual information accessible in voice form via the phone, IP-based radio for community information dissemination. The lack of electricity has been mitigated by the use of low-power devices. In order to circumvent the computational challenges posed by the processing and storage limitations of these devices, a decentralised system architecture whereby the processing and storage load are distributed across the mesh nodes has been proposed. High-performance equipment can be stationed at the closest possible place with electricity in the area and connectivity extended to the non-electrified areas using low-power mesh networking devices. Implementation techniques were investigated and performance parameters measured. The quality of service experienced by the user was assessed using objective methods and QoS correlation models. A MOS value of 4.29, i.e. very good, was achieved for the mobile VoIP call quality, with the underlying hardware supporting up to 15 point-to-point simultaneous calls using SIP and the G.711 based codec. Using the PEAQ algorithm to evaluate the IP-based radio, a PEAQ value of 4.15, i.e. good, was achieved. Streaming audio across the network reduces the available bandwidth by 8Kbps per client due to the unicast nature of streaming. Therefore, a multicast approach has been proposed for efficient bandwidth utilization. The quality of the text-to-voice service rendered by the translation gateway had a PESQ score of 1.6 i.e. poor. The poor performance can be attributed to the TTS engine implementation and also to the lack of robustness in the time-alignment module of the PESQ algorithm. The dissertation also proposes the use of the WMN infrastructure as a back-haul to isles of WSNs deployed in areas of interest to provide access to information about environ- mental variables useful in decision making. DA - 2014 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 2014 T1 - Ubiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural context TI - Ubiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural context UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13259 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/13259
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationMaliwatu R. Ubiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural context. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Science ,Department of Computer Science, 2014 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/13259en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of Computer Scienceen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Scienceen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subject.otherComputer Scienceen_ZA
dc.titleUbiquitous mesh networking : application to mobile communication and information dissemination in a rural contexten_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMScen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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