Desirable mobile networking method for formulating an efficient mobile conferencing application

Abstract

This paper proposes a method for defining the best networking method of a mobile conferencing system in a given situation. We developed a mobile conferencing system which works for both types of mobile networking structures (infrastructure and ad hoc networking) and which is implemented using two dominant mobile technologies (Wi-Fi and Bluetooth). We performed some experiments for verifying which mobile networking method is desirable for formulating an efficient mobile conferencing application in two meaningful combinations of implementation technologies and networking structures; they are Wi-Fi technology with infrastructure networking and Bluetooth technology with ad hoc networking. These experiments lead us to learn that Bluetooth can be a good alternative for the Wi-Fi if the average packet size of the application is less than 8192 bytes. Moreover, Bluetooth is more advantageous in security, because Bluetooth requires an authentication process for connecting to a network. During our experiments, we experienced that the interference of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth degrades much the performance. Through this study, we could also conclude that the major criteria for formulating an efficient mobile conferencing application are the user convenience, the attendees of a conference are already gathered in one particular place or not, and the existence of AP(Access Point)s, in addition to the amount of packets. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2004.