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This project explores the practical value and importance of publicly accessible, very-high speed broadband access points (reaching or exceeding 10 Gbps symmetric) in comparison to today's private, home broadband coverage and lower-speed public access points which are asymmetric and slower by 2 to 4 orders of magnitude.

To start, explore the user's view on the private and business values of such a service. Second, design and realize a prototype access point (e.g. in cooperation with FunkFeuer, Vienna's community network) including the supporting software. For example, implement a Web-based map tool that visualizes whether a user should perform a Web download using their (slower) home connection or rather spend the time traveling to the Broadband Well and back, and perform the download there much more quickly.

Other use case scenarios may include using Internet services other than the Web, to be determined by the concept phase of your thesis. Depending on the specific use cases that should be supported, different technical and conceptual (e.g. legal) challenges arise and must be addressed by the thesis project.

This project is available as a Bachelor's thesis. The COSY research group provides a very-high speed broadband access point (10 Gbps symmetric) on our premises; please note that this access point is only accessible for research (e.g. testing) purposes.

Radio channel capacity is a key resource to operate wireless networks. Mobile operators spend a lot of money (typically in the range above 1 bn EUR) to obtain spectrum licenses, which give them exclusive rights to use particular frequency bands. In reality, these frequencies are utilitzed to the full extend only in densely populated areas. In other regions (e.g. rural areas) operators do not need their entire licensed spectrum. Instead of static licenses, the proposed topic focuses on load based licensing schemes: Your task is to create a simple simulation of a dynamic "licensing process" which takes into account the current network load. It is expected to implement a simple assignment algorithm, e.g. a license broker in Matlab. The model should be agent based and object orientated.

Recordings of network traffic play an important role in studying the network behavior of nodes, applications, and users. Unfortunately, these traces also contain quasi-personally identifiable information (PII) which makes sharing or publishing traces problematic. Develop a tool or extend existing ones (libpcap, Wireshark) to anonymize traces to various degrees. For this, identify types of PII found in traces, and evaluate methods to pseudonymize or otherwise scrub the records.

Note: This project is a great start into the world of Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS)!

Transmissions over radio may suffer interference both from out-of-band and in-band transmissions. Your task is to choose modulation schemes and develop models for interference for them, both within the same modulation scheme and across schemes. Target metrics focus on the demodulated signal and thus the disturbance that interferences cause in the demodulator: effects on the spectral content, noise floor, transmitter/receiver synchronization, etc. You evaluate your models both in theory and in practice, i.e. mathematically and through an implementation in GNU Radio.