The Next Node on the Net? Your Car!
A new radio system developed in Australia is transforming the vehicles on the street into nodes on a network. The technology, designed by scientists at the University of Southern Australia's Institute for Telecommunications Research, is an application called "Dedicated Short Range Communications" (DSRC). Using a combination of GPS and Wi-Fi, cars can communicate their location data to a central office, but it also enables them to communicate with each other.
The system was developed by Cohda Wireless, a company formed by several of university's scientists in 2004. Cohda claims their system "dramatically outperforms all radios available in the world today." They've designed the system to work in harsh radio environments - like cities, for example - where signals can easily be lost among the buildings and tunnels. With Cohda's technology, vehicles can maintain links not just in urban canyons, but also at speeds in excess of 200 mph - although we hope no drivers around us ever put that to the test.
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