Ubiquitous Text Transfer Using sound a Zero-Infrastructure Alternative for Simple Text Communication

Abstract

Even in these days where data networks has increased much in terms of speed, bandwidth and penetration, the need for a low power, low bandwidth, ubiquitous networks is more pronounced than ever before. As the devices get smaller, their power supply is also limited, in according to the definition of “dust”, “skin” and “clay” in the ubiquitous computing paradigm. The possibility of these devices to be present in real world depends a lot on the key capability they must possess, which is to be network enabled, ubiquitously. This paper looks at the possibility of using the ever present signal “sound” as a ubiquitous medium of communication. We are currently experimenting on various possibilities and protocols that can make use of sound for text transmission between two electronic devices and this paper looks at some attempts in this direction. The initial phase of the experiment was conducted using a very large spectrum and encoding the entire ASCII text over audible sound spectrum. This gave a very large spectrum spread requirement which a very narrow frequency gap. The experimental results showed good improvement when the frequency gap was increased.