ICR Students Help Urbana Go Wireless

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The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CWN) has been awarded a $200,000 grant from the Open Society Institute, funded by the Soros Foundation, to develop wireless technology to be used around the globe, with a focus on developing nations. Urbana-Champaign will become the testing ground for this technology.

Sascha Meinrath, a PhD. student in the Institute of Communications Research, was a co-author of the grant along with David Young, a programmer from OJC Technologies in Urbana. Meinrath, Young, and others have been developing cutting edge wireless technology in Urbana for over three years.

The Community Wireless Network is building a high-speed communications network that promises to support publishing and city-wide Internet radio broadcast by citizens, a community-owned local telephone service, and bandwidth sharing. The network uses off-the-shelf wireless hardware to spread a "web" of network connectivity across a community.