A Serval Project Progress Report

It is time to reflect on the past six months of Serval, and where we intend to head in the next six months.

Six months ago we did not have a developer software offering, or even a single Android application that contained all the components for Serval. Today we do.

On-site in South Africa after testing the Serval MeshMS store-and-forward SMS Service, delivering files and SMS messages up to 11,000km without infrastructure, or a continuously connected mesh.

Six months ago we did not have MeshMS (Mesh SMS service), interactive mapping,  Rhizome file distribution or store-and-forward SMS working.  Today, we do, and have even sent photos and SMS messages more then 10,000km between Australia and South Africa using mobile phones as the only infrastructure (more on this in a blog post and video in the next few days).  See this blog entry for an infographic and video showing the sending and receiving of this first inter-continental mesh SMS message.

Demonstration of the Serval Rhizome Mesh-Based Infrastructure-Free File Distribution System, which is also the basis of the store-and-forward MeshMS/SMS service.

Six months ago we had a number of legal issues to work through with regard to giving Flinders University an appropriate holding in the Serval Project's commercial arm, and the Shuttleworth Foundation had not yet come on board.  Today, we have just about finalised the details for these arrangements, with the final execution to occur in the coming weeks.  It will be fantastic to get this settled.

TEDxAdelaide Presentation November 2011. (Video coming soon) “The democratisation of online music is one example where the internet has eroded the monopoly power of music labels returning some portion of that power to the general public, without bankrupting those enterprises.” Paul will explore what is essentially a Napster equivalent that will compete with the mobile telecommunication giants. He believes that the advent of powerful, programmable, portable digital devices (e.g. smartphones) are a key factor in this eventual democratisation of mobile telecommunications.

Six months ago we were not greatly recognised internationally for our work on mesh communications.  Today, we are increasingly recognised as the leaders internationally in this space, which is a tremendous honour and also acts to spur us along to deliver on all the potential that mesh networking offers.  Recognition has included support by the Shuttleworth Foundation (South Africa), reaching the finals of the World Embedded Software Competition for University students (South Korea), strong engagement by and with the IEEE 802.11 standards process (USA and international), presenting at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas and TEDx Adelaide (Australia), and also reaching the finals of the Ashoka Foundation World Changer's Citizen Media competition (international) from a field of more than 400 entrants.  We are also seeing university and other partnership opportunities in Australia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, and Asia begin to take shape.  Now all we need is to be able to clone ourselves a few times over so that we can engage fully with the various opportunities!

Our plans for the next six months are to fill out the feature set that we have generated (voice, SMS, MMS, interactive mapping, file and software distribution), and add in the missing pieces, primarily the security and authenticity components that we have planned from the outset.  This will take us to mid-2012 when we hope to focus on maturing all of this into a general public release, as compared to the early-access developer software we have released to date.

Adelaide Festival of Ideas, 2011, JIM BETTISON ORATION: KICKING THE INFRASTRUCTURE HABIT: [listen to MP3]  "Modern communications systems use extensive and expensive infrastructure to deliver services we could only dream of a few decades ago. This works for those who enjoy peace and sufficient wealth, but fails to reach the last billion people in poorer countries, as well as those in remote, emergency or disaster situations. Now modern mobile phones have the potential to communicate directly, to form networks without reliance on any infrastructure. The Serval Project based at Flinders University is turning this dream into a reality. It is working to make communications available to everyone, anywhere, any time especially to those who need it most."

We are also looking seriously about getting advanced mesh support built into one or more models of mobile phone to offer energy efficiency and/or range improvements over the basic service.

Simultaneously, we are beginning to explore appropriate trials of the technology that if they go ahead will gain us valuable feedback, and refine the software to maximise it's utility for the general community, including in South Africa (assisting in the distribution of educational material without cost or dependence on cellular or school IT infrastructure), North America and Australia.

So all in all, the next six months should keep us fairly busy.

Serval is going to Atlanta

Well, Romana (co-founder of Serval Project) is.  And that is because she will be representing the Serval Project's interests at the IEEE 802 plenary meeting there in just a couple of weeks (November 2011).

Romana will be putting forward use cases that reveal deficiencies in the current 802.11 family of WiFi standards for mesh and ad-hoc communications.

If all goes well, we may have the opportunity to input into a process of looking to address these issues, which is tremendously exciting for us.

It could mean much longer range mesh hops using ordinary mobile phones, by using the cellular radio to implement some kind of WiFi in the ISM 915MHz band.

It could also spell the end of frustrating incompatibilities in the 802.11 ad-hoc WiFi standard, including the bizarre lack of specification of ad-hoc in 802.11n, preventing standards conforming devices from using the higher speeds and other benefits that 802.11n brings.

Either or both of these have the potential to make citizen generated infrastructure-free communications systems mainstream, thus our excitement.

So Atlanta will be the official first turning of clod in a process that could extend up to four years, and represents a huge personal investment on the part of Romana, as well as a substantial financial investment on the part of the Serval Project, and thus the Shuttleworth Foundation whose support makes this possible.

We would invite any other open efforts that have concerns with aspects or omissions of the IEEE 802.11 WiFi standards to get in touch with us, so that we can do our best to represent the needs of more than just ourselves.

Kicking The Infrastructure Habit

Last weekend I delivered the inaugural Jim Bettison Memorial Oration at the biannual Adelaide Festival of Ideas. This was a great honour, and my presentation was well received by the audience, as was evidenced by the poignancy of their questions.

Here is the abstract of my oration:

Modern communications systems use extensive and expensive infrastructure to deliver services we could only dream of a few decades ago. This works for those who enjoy peace and sufficient wealth, but fails to reach the last billion people in poorer countries, as well as those in remote, emergency or disaster situations. Now modern mobile phones have the potential to communicate directly, to form networks without reliance on any infrastructure. The Serval Project based at Flinders University is turning this dream into a reality. It is working to make communications available to everyone, anywhere, any time especially to those who need it most.

You can listen to the oration by downloading the MP3 from the Radio Adelaide website.

You can also listen to an ABC Bush Telegraph interview about the oration that I recorded a few days prior to the oration.

Day 1 of Shuttleworth Foundation Fellowship

So today I have commenced a telecommunications fellowship with the Shuttleworth Foundation, which will be undertaken here at Flinders University where with the University's generous support we have based the Serval Project.

This is an amazing support for our work on the Serval Project, as not only does it free up my salary so that we can employ a project manager, but it also provides access to a very helpful operational budget, and a great team of dedicated open-technologists working on a variety of projects.  Check out their list of past and current fellows to get a feel for what they are supporting.

This support builds on that already provided by The Awesome Foundation, Flinders University and NLnet, as well as that of many students, volunteers and my family, which has enabled us to reach this point.

The particular mandate of my work under the fellowship is to:

0. 
   

- Build on existing trials, which include remote, in-motion, underground and
indoor tests by linking with partner organisations to deploy the
technology in an escalating series of situations;– Increasing the breadth of applications for the technology, and the usability
of the technology in disaster, by governments, and in remote locations;
and– Improving the maximum range between handsets beyond what is
possible using WiFi, but without altering the hardware in existing mobile telephones (the “Focus Area Objectives”). 


What this means is that we will be pursuing a simultaneous software improvement and testing program that will, hopefully, get us to the point of a quality public release within a year.


The greatest challenge comes from the range extension, which we know is possible using the baseband radio in mobile phones. However, it is extremely difficult to get the programming information to enable modification of the firmware loaded into the radio's baseband processor. 


We will be exploring multiple angles to achieve this, ranging from engaging with the IEEE 802.11 standardisation process, to seeking to open channels with cell phone chipset manufacturers, through to, building custom cell phones that contain friendlier baseband or other radio chipsets that we can more easily reprogram, and where legal and appropriate, reverse-engineering the information we require.


The potential gains over using WiFi to build the mesh (perhaps 300m between phones indoors and 10km or more between phones outdoors in open country) are so great that we must engage with this process, regardless of the difficulty.