Smart Phones
The Center for Network Engineering & Communication Technologies, in conjunction with the Wireless Communication Laboratory and the Electromagnetics and Microwave Laboratory, is sponsoring student research at Texas A&M University. Each project explores a fundamental concept in electrical and computer engineering, and it entails developing applications for the HTC EVO 4G smart phone and the Android™ platform. Smart phones were obtained through the generous support of Google™, and are available for academic purposes. They remain in the possession of students for the duration of their respective projects.
While enrolled in the Dwight Look College of Engineering, it is crucial for students to develop several facets of engineering, beyond acquiring technical skills. Important aspects of their education include teamwork, programming and marketing skills, time management and creativity. The smart phone initiative seeks to complement the traditional classroom experience with weekly research meetings and an environment akin to the workplace. Students are accountable for design decisions, progress reports and they must produce deliverables upon completion of every phase of their project. Altogether, this offers a rare opportunity for students to work on all aspects of their future career and, hence, the smart phone initiative assists them in becoming well-rounded professionals.
Development Tools
Research projects typically involve writing specifications, designing components, verification and testing, and providing proper documentation. Many of these activities arise naturally when using the Android™ framework. Through their training, students are expected to become proficient in writing applications and documentations. In the process, they are introduced to useful engineering tools, e.g., integrated development environment (IDE), software development kit (SDK), revision control system and extensible markup language (XML).
Developing applications for the Android™ platform is attractive for many reasons.
- Students get to learn industry standards.
- Programming is performed using world-class environments.
- Applications are tested on the latest hardware.
- Participants interact periodically with researchers and practitioners.
Students go through the Android Roadmap, a five-week guide designed to get participants started with developing applications for smart phones. To a large extent, the purpose of the roadmap is to help students navigate through the documentation provided by Google™ and available on the Internet. By the end of the fifth week, students are expected to start writing their own apps. This activity assumes that students possess a basic understanding of Java™ programming.
An overarching goal of the smart phone initiative is to increase the productivity potential at graduation day of these students. Moreover, Android™ projects can be motivating and rewarding, especially given the current excitement for emerging smart phone devices. Finally, successful projects become great recruiting tools in promoting electrical and computer engineering.
Sample Projects
A list of potential projects is included below for illustrative purposes.
Wi-Fi Channel and Propagation Modeling - Understanding complex propagation environments is essential in the deployment of wireless communication systems. This project will use propagation modeling software and the geo-location capabilities of smart phones to inspect and analyze the signal quality of directional antennas in multi-path indoor and outdoor environments.
P2P Content Delivery - A major application for smart phones is to obtain content from the Internet. The restricted bandwidth of the wireless medium motivates the construction of Pico-Networks, wherein a few handheld devices download content initially and then share the content with other devices. The objective of this project is to design applications that can achieve both file exchanges as well as realtime streaming in a scalable and efficient manner.
Phased Array Controller - The geo-location features and on-board orientation (tilt, pitch, etc.) information from sensors on smart phones can be used to control the main beam of a phased array. The information gathered from the GPS and embedded sensors will be used to calculate the phase and amplitude distribution across an array to target a specific geostationary satellite.
Wi-Fi Bridge - Smart phones can be employed to extend the reach of the Internet by acting as temporary bridges between disconnected Wi-Fi devices. This project takes advantage of the multimodal features of Wi-Fi cards to turn a smart phone into a wireless relay.
Listserv
To join the AM-DROIDERS LISTSERV mailing list, send an email to listserv@listserv.tamu.edu with the following command as a single line in the body of the message:
subscribe AM-DROIDERS Firstname Lastname
where Firstname and Lastname is your real name.
Potential Tutorials
Development Wiki
Use the Android Wiki to post development ideas and example code.