M-BOARD IN AN AD-HOC NETWORK ENVIRONMENT Sharon Panth + Shri M. & N. Virani Science College, Yogidham Campus, Rajkot, Gujarat 360005, India sharon.panth20@gmail.com Mahesh Jivani * Department of Electronics, Saurashtra University, Saurashtra University Campus, Rajkot, Gujarat 360005, India mnjivani@gmail.com Abstract Notice Board is very essential part of any organization. This paper presents the design and implementation of M-Board (Mobile Notice Board) for Ad-hoc Network Environment that can be established and made available for an educational or industry environment. The cost-free communication among the mobile phone clients and server takes place with the help of Bluetooth wireless technology. M-Board is particularly developed as an informative application environment to provide the basic information like daily events or timetable to the users. The design is based on the amalgamation of Java ME with other technologies like Java SE, Java EE, PHP and MySQL. The system is designed to provide simple, easy-to-use, cost-free solution in a ubiquitous environment. The system design is easily implemented and extensible allowing the number of clients in Personal Area Network (PAN) for information exchange with the hotspot-server. Keywords: M-Board, Ad-hoc, Ubiquitous, Bluetooth, mobile, Java ME, PAN 1. Introduction In the present era of Information age, there has been tremendous increase in demand for instant access to information. The easy access of mobile devices, their global presence and their adaptation to wireless ad-hoc networks have made revolutionary changes in the field of Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) [Ramanathan and Redi (2002)]. They also facilitate cost free connectivity to an ad-hoc network using the popular wireless technology, Bluetooth [Frodigh et al. (2000)]. Mobile phone application development area awaits a great number of applications fulfilling diverse needs to facilitate the user. To program such ad-hoc environment for grabbing the opportunity of connectivity facilitated by the mobile devices to the ad-hoc network is a need of the time. Sun Microsystems, now Oracle, provides a great platform for the development of mobile and server applications to build an interactive ad-hoc network system [Zhang et al. (2006)]. The connectivity options provided includes the best available technology which is unlicensed and operates on 2.4 GHz globally operating frequency, Bluetooth. It provides the link to connect the nearby devices by a range up to 300 meter at the speed of 1 Mbps and more. Its availability in almost all kind of pervasive mobile devices provides simple, secured communication option where users utilize the fixed network services in a PAN (Personal Area Network) an ad- hoc network created using Bluetooth, while retaining the freedom of mobility. The strong hold of Bluetooth is that it provides data and voice transmission efficiently in ad-hoc environment which is very much advantageous in ad-hoc network to allow the mobile devices to participate in the communication process as and when required. This is very much useful for building a kiosk type application which can be accomplished by building networks of access ports. The ad-hoc network will then act as a fixed network extension, through which an interactive network service can be offered. Thus, it provides the information required by the user at any pace, any time within the network system. The proposed system included the Bluetooth access hotspot - server which is designed to be installed for any public or private area, and it will send out the content application to nearby mobile devices, free for the user over Bluetooth, once the device gets connected, device will be a part of ad-hoc network and the user will be able to interact with ad-hoc network using received content application. This hotspot will be managed centrally, for uploading content to be distributed by the hotspot, and to view statistics of the connected users on the proposed ad-hoc network. The M-Board Ad-hoc Environment was developed based on the following system architecture. Sharon Panth et.al / Indian Journal of Computer Science and Engineering (IJCSE) ISSN : 0976-5166 Vol. 4 No.2 Apr-May 2013 122