Peter Iannucci, Ravi Netravali, Ameesh Goyal, Hari Balakrishnan
HotNets 2015: Fourteenth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, November 2015
This paper makes the case for “Room-Area Networks”
(RAN), a new category that falls between personal area networks
and local area networks. In a RAN, a set of nodes can
hear each other only if they are in the same room, broadly
construed as being within earshot. We define a RAN abstraction,
and we present example applications ranging from
social contact management to building automation to gaming
where this abstraction will help. The requirements of
a RAN are poorly served by current technologies such as
Bluetooth, near-field communication (NFC), Wi-Fi, and infrared.
Acoustic channels, on the other hand, are well-suited
in principle for effective propagation within human earshot
and sharp attenuation at room boundaries. We provide a
portable reference implementation of an 802.11a-like physical
layer for the acoustic medium that works on current mobile
devices, with successful communication even in noisy
environments at distances over 8 meters.
[PDF (744KB)]
Bibtex Entry:
@inproceedings{iannucci2015room-area, author = "Peter Iannucci and Ravi Netravali and Ameesh Goyal and Hari Balakrishnan", title = "{Room-Area Networks}", booktitle = {HotNets 2015: Fourteenth ACM Workshop on Hot Topics in Networks}, year = {2015}, month = {November}, address = {Philadelphia, Pennsylvania} }