Disqus
Flinders University researcher Dr Paul Gardner-Stephen has recently unveiled a new mobile system that improves communications in disasters like the recent floods in the eastern States of Australia. The so called Serval Project was created to run on “off-the-shelf” mobile phones and allow them to relay calls for one phone to another without the presence of mobile phone towers in the immediate vicinity. Afterwards, when user enters the area covered by cell towers, mobile phone seamlessly re-connects to the network.
It is said that this kind of technology has broad potential in situations such as the recent and on-going flooding in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria where mobile phone towers were swamped and knocked out of action.
Moreover, there’s the potential for improving mobile coverage in many rural and remote locations where a signal is available only from limited locations. In that sense, Dr Gardner-Stephen — who BTW is a Flinders University’s Rural, Remote & Humanitarian Telecommunications Fellow — has previously demonstrated the Serval Project to support mobile phone calls without a mobile network in the Flinders Ranges in South Australia where the nearest mobile phone tower was more than 100km away…
[Via: Flinders University]
About The Author
Dusan Belic
Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.
