Beyond the ordinary

As an Undergraduate Research Intern on the ARA (Advanced Rural Access) project, I contributed to the development and evaluation of next-generation wireless broadband infrastructure aimed at improving connectivity in rural areas. This NSF-funded initiative focuses on designing scalable and reliable network solutions for underserved regions.

A key component of my work involved the design and implementation of a reservation system within the ARA platform. This system was built to allow ARA fest participant to be able to register, pay their ticket online and get register for the conference. The design emphasized modularity, scalability, and maintainability to support multiple users and evolving system requirements.

In addition to software development, I conducted performance testing of wireless broadband systems using the ARA MIMO API, which provides programmatic access to configure and evaluate multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless experiments. By leveraging this API and its documentation, I was able to interact directly with the testbed, execute experiments, and collect performance data under real-world conditions.

Using network diagnostics and data acquisition tools, I evaluated key performance metrics such as Quality of Service (QoS), throughput, and latency. This work helped validate system performance and contributed to understanding how advanced wireless technologies behave in rural deployment scenarios.

Role

•  Design and implementation of a reservation system within the ARA platform using mainly PHP 

• Applied software engineering principles to ensure modular, scalable, and maintainable system architecture

• Conducted field and system-level testing of wireless broadband performance

• Collected, analyzed, and interpreted network performance data (QoS, throughput, latency)

Skills

• Software system design with a focus on modularity and scalability

• Network performance analysis and diagnostics

• Data collection and interpretation for real-world engineering systems

• Understanding of wireless communication systems and QoS metrics

• Experience working on NSF-funded research and large-scale engineering projects

• Technical communication and collaboration in a research environment

Resources used

• ARA Platform and Wireless Testbed Infrastructure

• ARA MIMO API Documentation– for configuring and executing wireless experiments: https://arawireless.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ara_api_reference/ara_mimo.html

• PHP , My SQL