:: Joe Davis

Mobile and Pervasive Computing, Auburn University, Summer 2008

The  Research  Experience  for  Undergraduates  (REU)  in  Pervasive and   Mobile  Computing  is a National Science Foundation  (NSF) funded research program to be held at Auburn University. The interns are initiated to research under the guidance  of mentors who are faculty members in the Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering. The interns  collaborate with their mentors and are expected to contribute to the advance of  pervasive  and mobile computing.  Major  objectives  are to promote interests in pervasive and mobile computing and develop the research skills of the students.

I am currently working with Dr. Saad Biaz, Ph.D. candidate Shaoen Wu, and fellow REU intern Allen Ott on a study of IEEE 802.11g wireless networks. Our study will focus on a very important aspect of wireless networks -- channel dynamics. We will be holding experiments in three environments: controlled indoor, controlled outdoor, and a general field test. In the controlled tests, the distance and transmission rates will be varied. We will use Auburn University's public wireless campus network in our general field test. The field test will provide with insight into a kind of network that is used everyday by normal users. In order to better understand the channel dynamics of the network, we will be analyzing the network in each of these environments on a frame by frame basis. Our goal is provide much needed research and insight into 802.11g wireless networks from a low-level, frame by frame, perspective. I will be responsible for analyzing the results of the controlled outdoor experiments and the field test. You can view the first version of my paper below. All of our results and analysis have not been included since the REU has now come to a close. I hope to finish the paper in the near future. When it is finished, I will try to have it published at a national conference for wireless networking.

Our work:

• Link Level Anaylsis of Channel Dynamics on IEEE 802.11g Networks in Multiple Environments

• paper by Joe Davis and Shaoen Wu
• presentation by Joe Davis and Allen Ott
• poster by Joe Davis and Allen Ott

• REU Assignments

• Friday Seminar by Joe Davis

Senior Design Project, Auburn University, Spring 2008

"Blades of Glory"

I worked on a multi-disciplinary team of engineering students to design, build, and compete with an autonomous, robotic lawnmower. The team included students from electrical, computer, wireless hardware, and wireless software disciplines. Dr. Mark Nelms of the Electrical and Computer Engineering department was our faculty sponsor and we received much needed mechanical help from Calvin Cutshaw. Our mower was equipped with GPS, a webcam for vision, and a LIDAR for detecting obstacles. The mower's brain was a Jetway motherboard with a VIA chipset. We used Windows XP as our operating system and wrote the control code using Java and some C++. Most of my work on the project was integrating the various array of sensors into the motherboard using serial and usb communication. I also developed a wireless monitoring application that was used for real-time telemetry and included a wireless kill switch. The application ran on a basestation laptop and communicated with the motherboard over a 900MHz RF transceiver. Our team placed second in the basic competition and was awarded a $1500 prize.

COMP 3710 - Wireless Software Engineering, Auburn University, Spring 2007

"TigerTrails"

This project was completed with Jaeho Jeon as our final project for COMP 3710 with Dr. Umphress. TigerTrails is a campus map and route mapping application for Java enabled cell phones. Users can view locations of buildings on a campus map and find the shortest walking path between buildings.