WeFiLab: A Web-Based WiFi LaboratoryPlatform for Wireless Networking Education

Presented by: Nishan Shetty

Web-based WiFi Laboratory (WeFiLab)

WeFiLab mainly focuses on providing students hand-on

experience of doing experiments on real devices through

webpage anytime anywhere.

It uses the structure of two-level operations, which

facilities increasing the scale of wireless devices and

allows WeFiLab to be extended to more complicated

operations.

For science and engineering students, laboratory plays

acrucial role in their undergraduate degree courses

because the laboratory activities provide the hands-on

problem solving skills and necessary experience for

adopting their knowledge in real-life.

Traditional laboratories Shortcomings

◦ Qualified staffs◦ Budget◦ only accessible during opening hours

Two approaches for online laboratories◦ Virtual laboratories

◦ Remote laboratories

Virtual laboratories◦ Virtual laboratories are based on software to simulate

experiments environment.

◦ No real damages.

◦ missing of reality.

Remote laboratories◦ Remote laboratories experiments are conducted and

controlled remotely through Internet, using real components

or devices

◦ Too complicated for network beginners as students may

need to write programs/scripts to conduct experiments.

◦ Java, Flash, or ActiveX are frequently used tools for User

Interfaces (UIs)

WeFiLab

Control and manage various wireless devices for conducting

experiments via Internet.

No need of writing scripts/programs.

Plug-in free web based GUI framework.

Ø Simulation software.

Ø Emualab.

Ø Encouraging students to be fully involved into the

experiments on real wireless devices.

Ø Hides the details of the complex configurations on

wireless devices from users through the two-level

operation structure.

Ø Allows the administrator to add new wireless devices

whenever needed to support more students.

It depends on the number of wireless devices and

what kind of experiments students are doing.

Students’ diversity

Lock restriction

Schedule scheme◦ Reservation scheme (scheduled)◦ FCFS scheme (nonscheduled)

Basic experiments

Advanced Experiments

2 or more wireless routers to form the wireless nodes

array.

Wireless routers are connected to the server through a

switch on Ethernet.

Ported with a comprehensive OpenWRT embedded

Linux OS.

Wireless device adopts Broadcom’s BCM5354,

which is a 802.11b/g Router Systemon-Chip, as the

core of the wireless node

WeFiLab adopts Ajax to build the user-friendly GUI

for enabling sufficient interactivity students and the

systems

MySQL

WeFiLab was used as a complement of assignments

for two courses in City University of Hong Kong.

146 undergraduate computer science students are

involved into the experiment about 802.11 Frame.

OBTL scheme.

Intended learning outcomes (ILO)

Teaching/learning activities (TLA)

Assessment tasks (AT)

This experiment mainly focused on the infrastructure

mode of IEEE 802.11 WLAN.

Overview

Experiment Details

Results and Analysis

WeFiLab on Smartphones

Interference

Relationships of Roles

More Technologies

Education and Research

It aims to provide undergraduate students for hand-on

experience of doing wireless network experiments on

real devices.

With the web-based GUI, it enables students to do

experiment on webpage via Internet anytime

anywhere.

Two-level operations to coordinate the

communication between clients and wireless devices.

“WeFiLab: A Web-Based WiFi Laboratory Platform for Wireless Networking Education “, https://www.ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpls/abs_all.jsp?arnumber=6171155

Emulab, https://users.emulab.net/trac/emulab/wiki/wireless

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wireless_network

REFERENCES

Thank you