COM 522 Blog

Week 12:

My report is now finished! It can be seen here. I hope you enjoy reading it.

I got the most of my report finished up at the end of last week and just had to wi rte my evaluation and a fe touch ups this week. I submitted to TurnItIn for the first time and got a similarity percentage of 19%, which goes down to 9% once quotations and references are excluded. I'm not really sure if this is good or bad but it has given me a few points to look at. Hopefully next time I submit a better rating will come back.

I've just submitted my report for the second time, apparently I won't get a report back for awhile so I will just have to wait to then to see how I did compared to the first time. Thankfully that is me finished now, I just need to go hand all my work in.

I would love to say I enjoyed this module but in reality i found it quite hard. I'm not normally a good writer, never mind a researcher, so a lot of work had to be put in to get to the end. It has shown me though what I can do and all the different resources that are available to me that I previously didn't know about.

Week 11:

So my what WiMAX is section is now complete. It took a lot of work and a lot of time trying to understand what I was reading from the different sources but I got there in the end. I think this will have been the hardest part of the report and I am very glad it is over. I will hopefully finish off my report by the end of this week to give me time to concentrate on my other work.

I've been looking at the strengths and weaknesses of WiMAX a lot this week. A lot of the strengths are obvious and I have covered them in other sections but the weaknesses are lest obvious and have taken a wee bit more research. I found this on home-wlan.com that has given me a few ideas of the weaknesses of WiMAX.

Week 10:

This week I began work on my what WiMAX actually is and does section. I have discovered that the basics of WiMAX that I have previously looked into does not go into enough detail. From reading up more about it I have decided to go into a lot of detail on what the 802.16 standard is. Apparently it describes the physical layer and the media access control layer. I found a great article on WiFi-planet.com that has helped me understand it further.

Week 9:

This week I began to write my report. As I a not a writer in any way I'm finding this kind of hard, but I'll get through it. I've decided small steps is the best way and have started off with my introduction this week.

Last week I said that I would look at what WiMAX does for the multimedia industry. i found this great page on the Motorola that I hope to include in my report.

I also have been looking at how WiMAX moves things forward. and found this great PDF from the WiMAX forum that includes all sorts of great information.

Week 8:

Last week I looked at the strengths and weaknesses of WiMAX, this week I want to find information on the comparison of WiMAX with other current technologies such as WiFi and 3G.

First of all 3G

Now onto Wifi

Next I want to look at 4G

Finally Wibree

Above is only a very small list of the links that I have been looking at but they are the ones that I found most interesting. I also found a very interesting paper by Michael Richardson and Ryan Patrick titled "WiMAX: Opportunity or Hype?" which can be found at Social Science Research Network. Next week I want to move on to look at what WiMAX does for the multimedia industry and hopefully begin to write my report.

Week 7:

In last weeks lecture George gave us a brief run down on what our final reports need to include. The headings he gave us were:

Last week I looked at what the technology actually is and this week I want to look at its strengths and weaknesses. I found the following good articles on this:

This has given me a good start into the strengths and weaknesses of WiMAX. I want to start next week by looking at at a comparison to current technologies such as WiFi and 3G.

Week 6:

Last week I had decided on using WiMAX as my topic for this module. I've spent some time researching this and I have found some very interesting things. I decided that it would be best to start with the basics. What exactly is WiMAX? Wikipedia probably puts it most simply:

"WiMAX, the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access, is a telecommunications technology aimed at providing wireless data over long distances in a variety of ways, from point-to-point links to full mobile cellular type access. It is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, which is also called WirelessMAN. WiMAX allows a user, for example, to browse the Internet on a laptop computer without physically connecting the laptop to a router, hub or switch via an Ethernet cable. The name WiMAX was created by the WiMAX Forum, which was formed in June 2001 to promote conformance and interoperability of the standard. The forum describes WiMAX as a standards-based technology enabling the delivery of last mile wireless broadband access as an alternative to cable and DSL." (Wikipedia 2007)

One thing that caught my eye in this short extract was the term "last mile wireless broadband". I had never heard this term before and as it is mentioned quite a bit in the rest of the Wikipedia article I decided I better find out what it means. Wikipedia puts it best when it says:

"The last mile is the final leg of delivering connectivity from a communications provider to a customer. Usually referred to by the telecommunications and cable television industries, it is typically seen as an expensive challenge because "fanning out" wires and cables is a considerable physical undertaking. In countries employing the metric (as opposed to the imperial) measurement system, the phrase "last kilometre" is sometimes used." (Wikipedia 2007)

So basically the "last mile" is the part of a users connection to the internet that WiMAX will cover.

That's what's meant by the term WiMAX but how does it work? I found a very interesting article on howstuffworks.com about this. Basically for WiMAX to work two pieces of equipment are required, A WiMAX tower and A WiMAX receiver. The WiMAX tower is the same idea as a mobile phone tower and the WiMAX receiver is similar to a WiFi receiver. This article also included good information on the two forms of WiMAX networks, i.e. non-line of sight and line of sight.

One thing I forgot to mention last week when discussing my decision to choose WiMAX as my topic for this module was what relevance it has to the multimedia industry. WiMAX is a fast growing technology that could bring internet connectivity to home is rural or blackout areas that are not currently covered by broadband providers, thus bringing the internet to more people. WiMAX has a greater range than current WiFi setups. "WiFi hotspots" take a number of WiFi transmitters to work and even then the distance covered isn't that great but a single WiMAX tower could cover an entire city with a WiMAX internet connection giving many people internet on the move.

References

Wikipedia. (2007). WiMAX. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WiMAX. Last accessed 02 Nov 2007.

Wikipedia. (2007). Last Mile. Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_mile. Last accessed 02 Nov 2007.

Week 5:

So at the end of last week I had narrowed down my final topic selection to two (Wireless networking and Open moko). I've spent this last week looking into these two topics more in depth to decide which one I should go for. I found a lot of interesting sites on Open Moko, some of these include:

There definitely is a lot of information out there openmoko One interesting quote I found from Wired.com referring to why phones are not all open source and consumers can get the most out of them:

"the wireless mobile industry is the laziest and least innovative sector of the entire high tech world, full stop. It's more interested in preserving its old-school profit mechanisms than in breaking new ground." (wired.com 2007)

With that and much more I don't think I would be short on sources of information on this topic but It isn't interesting me enough to keep me going for the next 6 weeks or so. Therefore I think I am going to avoid the topic of openmoko and concentrate more on Wireless networking.

I have also found plenty of information on Wireless networking. The only problem with this topic is that it covers so much, for example WiMAX, Wibree, 4G and many more. As the company I worked for on my placement (Intel) uses WiMAX technology and they are one of the founding members of the WiMAX Forum and as it is a big up and coming technology I think this could be a good topic to pursue. Here are a few interesting links I found this week on WiMAX:

References

Clive Thompson. (2007). Why Wireless Carriers Cripple Your Cell Phone. Available: http://www.wired.com/gadgets/gadgetreviews/magazine/test2007/st_essay. Last accessed 25 October 2007.

Week 4:

I finished my initial shortlist and handed it in at the end of last week. My initial shortlist can be viewed here. My final decision made in this report was that I am going to undertake USB 3.0 for my main investigation. So now the research starts! Before I can begin to write my investigation findings I need to know everything there is to know about USB.

The lecture at the this week has thrown a different light on this module. In the lecture George went through all the topics to give us a bit of help and advice on them. Unfortunately he said that USB 3.0 was not a good topic to use for this investigation. I thought about it for awhile and I do think George is right. USB 3.0 is a product and as it is only and evolution of the original USB there really isn't that much to investigate about it, I would probably end up going back to the original USB and that isn't really a future and emerging technology. So having said that I am going to have to come up with a new topic, and fast as I need as much time as possible to research the topic. During the lecture I noted down some of the topics that George thought would be good to do. The topics that I found interesting and I'm considering taking further include:

George also said that the topic we choose should interest us and be of use to us in the future. So I need to choose something that will be of use to me in my career, whatever that may be. During my placement I got my eyes opened to lots of different areas of the I.T. industry and one area that interested me a lot was the network side of things. This could be a possible career path that I choose to follow so maybe Wireless networking could be a good topic to undertake. I also have a big interest in open source software, so possibly Open moko would be a good choice. There are so many choices out there but whichever topic I do choose I need to be sure it will be good for this module. I'm going to spend the weekend and probably most of next week researching the topics I have listed and then hopefully decide on my final topic choice.

Week 3:

The initial shortlist is due at the end of this week so I have been doing lots of research before I start compiling it. I decided at the end of last week my initial shortlist would include USB 3.0, Broadband Speeds and HD-DVD Vs Blu-ray. Obviously I've been using Wikipedia a lot for my information so far, so I've spent the beginning of this week looking for other sources to gain information from. I found that there is an official USB web site with a lot of useful information on the new USB 3.0. Also seeing as Intel announced the development of USB 3.0 during their Developer Forum I decided to check their web site, there I found this great News Release on USB 3.0. What got me thinking about broadband speeds was an American company called Internet2 announced the completion of a new 100 Gb/s network. This is definitely a major achievement in data transmission rates and it would be very interesting to investigate this further. Finally I want to look at HD-DVD Vs Blu-ray, one very interesting source I found on this was on Engadget. As you can see from the publication date of this article it's maybe not a technology of the future, it's been around for quite some time now and the only recent development was the DVD Forum approving the triple layer 51GB HD DVD-ROM disk.

Week 2:

After last weeks initial research I have found a few more topics to keep me going:

I think I am going to narrow these down to USB 3.0, Broadband Speeds and HD-DVD Vs Blu-ray. Time for more research so I can start my initial shortlist next week.

Week 1:

We had our first lecture this week and got a good overview of the module. Basically this is a research module, we need to pick a technology, fully investigate it and write a 2000 word report on it. Firstly we have to write an initial shortlist of three possible technologies for discussion and possible further consideration. This is due by the end of week three so I need to start thinking of a few ideas for this.

After doing a few searches on the internet I've came up with a few ideas on technologies to add to my shortlist. I would quite like to do something a bit different and something that I know nothing about, should make it more interesting and help to keep me at it. I need to research each one of these ideas a bit more before I decided which one I'm going to undertake. Here is what I've come up with so far: