Monitoring and Analyzing Wi-Fi Availability and Performance on a University Campus Using Recycled Cell Phones to Aid Students in Selecting Study Areas

Abstract

Wi-Fi availability on university campuses has become increasingly important since services such as email and assignment submission portals for students require them to have internet access on and off campus. This is the case at the University of the West Indies - Cave Hill Campus (UWICHC) where students are required to conduct several online activities including submitting assignments, checking grades and registering for classes online. A survey of opinions of 115 UWICHC students indicated that 96% of the respondents use Wi-Fi to access student services offered by the campus. Ninety-four (94%) also indicated they would like to have access to Wi-Fi information on active hotspots and signal strength in various study areas. In this paper, we present a green system that uses recycled cell phones to collect information about the Wi-Fi status in study areas. The information includes Wi-Fi signal strength, connection speed, download speed and internet availability and is shown to students and staff using a web application. The web/mobile application also displays information on access points in various study areas on a geographical map of the campus. Additionally, the application analyzes the data collected and gives students and IT staff peak times when students encounter difficulty such as poor connectivity or no connection to the internet suggesting that an access point is damaged or needs to be reset. Such information is also beneficial to the IT Department and can increase their response time at the low costs gained from using recycled cell phones sensors.