April 22nd, 2008 — Electronics, Software
In the future Ill have a cell phone that will be capable of doing all following.
- Receive AM, FM and all other sorts of radio
- Connect to GSM, CDMA, and any other network technology
- Receive and decode satellite video
- Receive and decode terrestrial TV transmission
- Be my wifi and wimax transceiver
This is all that I can think of now. The point is that your cellphone will become a universal communication device that can handle any communication technology. If some new technology developed, all you need is to upgrade the software, just like we upgrade linux or windows. This is what software defined radio has in store for us.
In SDR the emphasis is on creating a universal hardware for receiving signals, and then do all the processing on a software platform which So if tomorrow a new communication protocol is invented, all you need to do is, upgrade your software.
More than the end user, the immediate benefits of SDR is to a service provider, like your cell phone service provider. He incurrs a huge cost in upgrading all his equipments when a better technology is released. But with this system, he can use a universal transmission system which can be upgraded to handle any technology just by upgrading the software. This will save the serivce provider a lot of money, and also will result in better customer experience.
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December 9th, 2007 — Experiences, MobMe, Mobile, Wifi Mesh Networking
The event got over today, but the fun continues.
The first thing I learned is that India can be the heaven of Free and Open Source Software. There are too many developers wanting to contribute. And they will if someone shows them how to get started. Then again Evangelisation…
Javascript is going to become the language that dominates light weight application development. XML is here to stay, and is going to be seen in various usage scenarios. I decided to brush up my scripting knowledge.
Got inspired by the mozilla talks and decided to do a do a mozilla application for FastAlerts and Mobshare. This will help the users navigate the user interface better. Also it will help increase the usage.
Wireless Mesh Networks are evolving into a much more reliable and secure technology. In India the adoption rate is very low for community networks (are indians afraid of sharing). Bangalore will soon see its first mesh setup and I am going to be a part of the team.
Many FOSS developers are now focusing on embedded and mobile development. It gives them more freedom and satisfaction. Mobiles are a better playground cos its largely unexplored and it offers much technology freedom than a normal computer. Openmoko, Openembedded, Android, Qtopia etc are going to dominate this.
The future will see more of software than of hardware. GNURadio project aims to make all communication infrastructure to consist of a standard hardware and different software for different applications. Its like you have a device and you can load various softwares to make it act like an FM radio, tv receiver, GSM phone etc. I didnt understand more…. I wish I had taken that Ham License while in college.
And on the final day met up with Rasmus Lerdorf, the guy who created PHP. I had a strange feeling when I met him, felt like I was talking to some film star. He maintains the php.net website and all its subdomains with around 1200 CVS users actively contributing to the project.
Then had chance to see and use the 100$ laptop. Amazing stuff, cleverly designed for kids. Only kids can use it cos its too small for a normal person to use. Also had a discussion about FOSS and education. FOSS fits into my Technology Evangelisation strategy. To tell you the truth, Im technology neutral.
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August 24th, 2007 — GSM/CDMA
According to Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM Standard), the size of each SMS is limited to 160-characters in order to avoid overloading in the standard forward-and-response operation of the SMS server. Larger content of SMS can be sent but they will be segmented over multiple messages, which lead to extra charges among the mobile phone users.
Therefore Euzer Technologies Sdn Bhd has invented a novel and powerful SMS compression formula which we have filed patent at Intellectual Property Corporation of Malaysia (MyIPO) at 15th June 2007. With the 50% compression ratio that can be achieved by ZMS, mobile consumers can send up to 280 characters in a single SMS.
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August 23rd, 2007 — GSM/CDMA
In an earlier post we saw how GSM networks are jammed when the SMS traffic increases. Now some smart kids can use this loop hole to attack GSM networks and cause service outage in targeted areas. This is very much similar to DOS (Denial of service) attacks in computer networks.
Even though such a possibility exists, no one can bring down the entire service down. But its very much possible to bring down certain areas of a network, lets say an area covered by a tower.
The first step is collecting mobile numbers of subscribers in that area. Attacker can use many innovative schemes to collect mobile numbers. Some methods are described here.
Once you have enough numbers in a particular region or under a tower you can start sending SMS messages to all those numbers simultaneously. An SMPP gateway is needed for this. Many companies are providing gateways.
With the help of some spoofing techniques and zombie servers an attack can be launched quite easily. Zombie servers can bypass almost all operator spam detection mechanisms. In india, bulk sms is a huge market and I dont think there are any spam detection mechanisms implemented.
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August 18th, 2007 — GSM/CDMA
SMS traffic is doubling in every two years. Operators used to see this as a new revenue source. Many companies started offering services around SMS. But this explosive growth of SMS has started to created problems, mainly a degradation of the voice services.
Every operators are facing service problems during holidays and festival seasons just because of the large volume of SMS messages that are being sent. During New year almost every network will be jammed from 11:45 to 12:15. Every subsriber will be busy. This is not because everyone is calling up each other, but because the SMS traffic is blocking the voice services.
GSM networks use control channels and voice channels for handling calls and SMS messages. The control channel is used to handle SMS messages and also to setup calls. Once the call setup is finished the call proceeds using the voice channel.
Control channels have far lesser bandwidth than voice channels.
When lots of messages are pushed into the network the control channels will become busy and no control channel will be available for call setup. So all the voice services fail.
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