College of Science

School of Computing and Design

Projects

The faculty and students of the School of Computing and Design research new technology and create new uses for existing technology. Here are some of the projects currently underway.

CPUC Broadband Measurement Lab

CPUC Broadband Measurement Lab primarily focuses on the development of a software program called 'CalSpeed' to measure the performance and coverage of mobile wireless broadband data services in California. CalSpeed is used to conduct vendor independent measurements of wireless broadband throughout the state of California and records the results of measurements into a database system. CalSpeed has been used to measure the coverage of four major service providers in California through field testing using Android phones across 2000 locations. This tool is available to the general public so that users in California can conduct independent testing on their wireless networks and upload their results to a central database. The CalSpeed suite of software includes:

  • A viewer function to display carriers’ broadband information to the public.
  • iOS CalSpeed app to measure wireless performance on iOS devices.
  • CalSpeed software to measure wireline performance on both Windows and Mac OS computers.
  • CalSPEED Home to conduct residential network performance tests using Odroid boxes.
  • Android CalSpeed app to measure wireless performance on Android devices.
  • Python post processing scripts to organize the data collected through field tests.

Along with the development of all of these software tools we also have done extensive data analysis of the data collected through the testing field trips across CA.

Performance modeling of delay tolerant networks (DTN)

Professor Sathya Narayanan and student Edgar Calcanas developed an analytical model to study the performance, in particular end-to-end delay, of delay/disruption tolerant networks. They also developed a simulation study using the ONE (Opportunistic Network Environment) simulator to collect delay statistics on DTN to verify the accuracy of our analytical model.

Research results were presented in CSU wide Student Research Competition at CSU Fresno on May 7th, 2011.

Online learning for Natividad

Dr. Bude Su led a five-person team of MIST students and alumni to develop a set of online learning modules for the Natividad Medical Center in Salinas.

Natividad Medical Center is planning to implement an electronic patient charting solution to replace its current paper charting. Natividad is a county-owned, safety-net hospital that primarily serves the underserved population of Monterey County. Most of their limited resources are put into patient care. Given these limited resources, it is nearly impossible for Natividad administration to carve out at least 24 hours over a couple of month period to train about 700 nurses and physician assistants in the use of the new system.

To solve this problem, Dr. Su at CSUMB and her students, with the help from a few graduates, developed a set of online learning modules. In addition to developing the online learning system, the development team assisted with training and implementation.

Employees at Natividad can access the learning modules anytime and anywhere. This project reduces the off-work-training from 3 days to a half day, and therefore, decreases Natividad’s training cost up to 70%.