Delay Tolerant Science Dissemination Networks

Proposer: Antoine Bagula

Marco Zennaro + (Possibly Enrique Canessae)

Abbreviation: DTSDNET

Brief Description:

Science dissemination is a key parameter upon which developing countries will build to bridge the scientific divide. While some positive steps have been made to reduce this divide, they have been implemented in the context of recording material which is distributed either as electronic copies or downloadable copies from a web page. While both distribution models may be available in more developed countries, bandwidth capabilities do not allow such distribution techniques in bandwidth poor countries. Delay tolerant distribution of such content may be used to address this issue by having the recorded content to be sliced into small pieces of information which are disseminated on a number of servers and distributed on a peer-to-peer, mesh or ad-hoc basis through an exchange of the pieces of information from local servers. These pieces of information may also be distributed on a couple of cellphones used as data mulles and disseminated using Bluetooth from various gateways where they have been deposited using different communication interfaces such as WiFI, GPRS, etc. In collaboration with the Science Dissemination unit of the Abdus Salam Centre for Theoretical Physics, this project aims to extend the Open Eya recording system developed by the unit with voice and image retrieval capabilities and achieve content dissemination based on a delay tolerant paradigm.

Computer Science Content: Speach and voice recognition, Delay Tolerant Networks networks

Specific Learning Outcomes:

Skills Required by Team as a Whole:

• Theory: Speech and voice recognition techniques and communication networks

• Implementation: HIGH: Implementation intensive project

Facilities needed: Open Eya systems, Cellphones, Laptops, PDAs

Supervision: Will be decided upon selection. However regular recorded meetings using the open eya system will be scheduled for interaction with the co-supervisors in Italy.

Members of the ISAT group working on similar projects will also be involved.

Number of Students: 3