Thursday, August 18, 2011

XO contributor proposal


Here is the very first post of this. Many more are still to come.
Here is the proposal for the OLPC contributor's program!
 
1. Project Title & Shipment Detail

Name of Project: Voice communication on XOs.

Number of Laptops You Request to Borrow: 4
Loan Length—How Many Months: 12 month

2. Team Participants

Name(s) & Contact Info: (include all email addresses & phone numbers)
            Tilila El Moujahid
            tililaelmoujahid@gmail.com

School: San Francisco State University

Past Experience/Qualifications: Graduate Student in Computer Science
and Business


3. Objectives

Project Objectives:

The Graduate Computer Science program at San Francisco State
University requires the completion of a thesis. The topic to be
investigated regards the deployment of VoIP using wireless networks in
resource constrained environments (unreliable networks, low
performance computers, etc...). The XO has been chosen as a major
hardware for investigation and testing as it is mainly designed to
suit such environments. The main objective is to determine the various
factors that affect VoIP performance and to research the ways in which
enhancements can be made. The ultimate goal will be to come up with a
VoIP software, deployed on the XO, that could provide major
improvements on various performance issues.


4. Plan of Action

   The curriculum at San Francisco State University allocates a
period of time of two semesters for the completion of a thesis. The
first semester (fall 2011) will be dedicated to research
(investigating the issue, the market, designing the solution...), and
the second semester (Spring 2012) will be used to implementing the
solution testing and writing down the thesis. The results will be
shared wit hthe OLPC and Sugar communities under an open license.


5. Needs

Why is this project needed?

VoIP over wireless networks is a topic that has been getting a lot of
interest from the computer science community over the past decades.
However work still needs to be done in investigating the possibilities
of this technology in resources constrained environments.

In the greater OLPC/Sugar community?

There is currently a need amidst the OLPC community to research VoIP
using the XO and to bring improvement to the existing software.
Several software have been developed but still a lot of work needs to
be done in this area.

http://olpcnews.com/forum/index.php?topic=1038.msg10008;topicseen

Outside the community?

VoIP using wireless technologies is viewed by many as a possible way
to achieve voice communication in isolated regions with low network
coverage. Hence, researching how it can be achieved using limited
resources can contribute to the efforts in finding solutions to that
issue.


Why can't this project be done in emulation using non-XO machines?

Real communication between various XOs (1.0 and 1.5) will need to be
tested and monitored to determine hardware behavior (kernel latency,
microphone sensitivity, etc).


Why are you requesting the number of machines you are asking for?
Will you consider (1) salvaged/rebuilt or (2) damaged XO Laptops?

The request includes:

2 XOs 1.5 and 2 XOs 1.0.
To test various combinations of communication between these laptops.
Prefer new, but will consider used machines.


6. Sharing Deliverables


Project URL—where you'll Blog specific ongoing progress:

This is where the progress will be posted on the project will be posted.
http://my-xo-blog.blogspot.com/

For now I just posted the content of this proposal.


How will you convey tentative ideas & results back to the OLPC/Sugar
community, prior to completion?

Using the various mailing lists for different OLPC projects and the
wikis at laptop.org and sugarlabs.org.


How will the final fruits of your labor be distributed to children or
community members worldwide?

Eventually the application to be developed will be made available for
download under a open license.


Will your work have any possible application or use outside our community?

If yes, how will these people be reached?

Have you investigated working with nearby XO Lending Libraries or
Project Groups?

7. Quality/Mentoring

Would your Project benefit from Support, Documentation and/or Testing people?

Teachers' input into Usability?

The project will be supervised by Dr. Sameer Verma (founder, OLPC SF)
and Dr. Barry Levine (Armenia Sugar
translation project).

How will you promote your work?

Via the blog.

Can we help you with an experienced mentor from the OLPC/Sugar
community? (WEB-PUBLISHED)

Not right now. I should be ok with the resources available via
olpcsf.org
and other mailing lists.

8. Timeline (Start to Finish

Please include a proposed timeline for your Project life-cycle:

Sep-Oct 2011: Research the VoIP market, various technologies, etc...
Nov 2011: Design of the solution and procedures to follow

Dec 2011- Feb 2012: Implementation

Mar-April 2012: testing

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