CU-Boulder student develops wireless system in Nigeria to boost community radio

A University of Colorado graduate student has installed a wireless network to improve communication in the area by providing more frequent real-time information. The project allows those in the community to converse with one another through the radio station.

Scholars from CU's Alliance For Innovation, Learning and Society Institute got linked with the Nigerian nonprofit when its founder traveled to Boulder last summer for a conference.

Revi Sterling, the first student to earn a doctoral degree from the ATLAS institute, is now the director of the Information and Communication Technologies for Development program. CU last year approved the master's degree program in other words designed to train graduates to bridge the digital divide by using research to help advance people in developing nations.

The groundwork

She said now that AlJuhani has laid the groundwork, future master's students will be able to go to Nigeria for the real-life lab work, evaluating the network's impact and improving it.

Sterling has as well worked on a project to help educate Peruvian high-schoolers through distance programs. Along with engineers, she's set up a network that connects teachers to students in towns nearby where no high schools exist.

The system developed

AlJuhani said the system developed by his project allows people in rural communities to connect to the radio station on the custom-made exchange by using Wi-Fi phones, Voice Over IP, and a server and antenna system. It operates much in the same way as an existing data wireless system, except that the access point for all users is installed on and broadcast from the local radio station.