Integrated ICT Solutions for Rural and Remote Access
The Office in a Box Project is about the efficient transport of combined IP telephony (VoIP) and data applications over long delay or lossy wireless links.
The aim of the project is to make wireless communications simpler and more cost efficient. The resulting benefits apply to business or home end users who cannot be served by a fixed infrastructure. For example, end users may be corporate branch offices, small businesses or rural properties, i.e. people who use satellite or long range wireless communications such as WiMax.
What will this research achieve?
It will increase the overall efficiency for voice and data communications by cross-use of information derived from sending both types of traffic. While ensuring that voice packets have the required transmission quality (QoS), the data traffic will be transmitted according to the dynamically changing transmission conditions which include currently available bandwidth, delay and jitter. Separately, VoIP will provide optimum voice quality for a minimised data rate, particularly when multiplexing a number of calls. Similarly, data transmission will be minimised in volume by lossless compression and in delay by using a TCP performance enhancing proxy. Overall, the result of our research will provide an efficient communication system for satellite or wireless communications.
What are the key features?
We have patented the proposed technology and implemented a prototype implementation which has been tested in the field with potential customers. Our prototype system provides all IT and communication needs for a small office with satellite or wireless connectivity, so that end users can have:
- All the ICT requirements provided by a single easily deployable box with remote management capability.
- The benefits of specialised non-standard equipment, protocols and applications, while using standard IP phones and laptops with standard configuration (as if they were using fixed connectivity like ADSL).
- Optimised technology which takes advantage of a combination of VoIP and data, with both applications being optimised for wireless and satellite links.
Commercialisation
The project has resulted in a NICTA spin-off 7-ip, which offers a range of remote router products and gateways for satellite communications. For more information, please visit www.7-ip.com.
Project documents
Data Acceleration and Reduction Technology, Tech. Rep. DART
Research team
Roksana Boreli, Thava Iyer, Christoph Dwertmann, Golam Sarwar
Contact +61 2 8374 5507