The ECE Department has been fortunate to be approved by Google to receive DROID phones in order to facilitate a better learning environment for a few senior level ECE classes.

Thanks to the efforts of professors Michael Devetsikiotis and Mihail Sichitiu, Google’s AndroidEDU program will be donating a number of DROID phones to the department.  The Android phones serve as an ideal platform for introducing students to the challenges and benefits of wireless networking without the typical steep learning curve imposed by other devices.

One of the courses benefiting from this donation is ECE 470 – Computer Networks.  The course objective is to provide the students with a hands-on experience in network configuration, operation and troubleshooting. The objective of the project is to quantify the network implications (bandwidth, delay) in terms of the social graph of the participating users. With the addition of DROID phones, the intention is to complete the loop — relating the application performance requirements to network engineering methods which can achieve the desired performance.

Starting in Fall 2010, the phones will be supplied to two wireless courses where a number of projects have already been introduced relating to networking applications on Android devices. For example, the classes developed a synchronizing service that can synchronize any type of data from any type of application (i.e., one change in the data of one device will propagate to other devices). Similarly, the classes have implemented a simple walkie-talkie program, and a small tennis-like program requiring at least two participants.

The reason for requesting the DROID phones was due to the limited number of other devices that were available to students.  This severely limited how many students actually had the opportunity to use the other devices. With this donation, the department will be enabled to both expand the number of students benefiting as well as the types of projects being offered to the students.  Example projects include: disseminating vehicular traffic notifications, finding partners for networked games on the local network, indoor localization (including auto-calibration), creating mobility models for android users, including recommendations for better routes, and local building map downloads and routing (room finding).