Multi-Hop Routing in Infrared Networks

Michael Beigl

TecO - Telecooperation Office - University of Karlsruhe
Vincenz-Prießnitz-Str.1, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany
michael@teco.edu

Abstract

Networked usage of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and other handheld and wearable computers will lead to novel mobile computing applications in office and home environments. In this article we argue that infrared is in principle - despite small range and bandwidth – a well suited technology for typical application domains that we foresee for PDAs, for example ubiquitous messaging, environment control, and mobile groupware. While most PDAs already support the IrDA infrared standard, there is no support for flexible ad hoc networking. To address this issue we describe a model of infrared communication that we have derived from experimentation. Based on this model we introduce algorithms for a peer-to-peer infrared network. This network enables multi-peer networking and in addition location-aware networked applications.