The development and eStadium testbeds for research and development of wireless services for large-scale sports venues

We provide an overview of two closely related testbeds, a development testbed located in the CWSA wireless lab and the unique eStadium testbed located in Purdue's Ross-Ade Football Stadium. In the development testbed we have studied such high-bandwidth, delay-sensitive applications as on-demand streaming of video clips to a large number of wireless clients. This includes optimizing video streaming performance in wireless settings and characterizing the relationship between wireless LAN channel conditions and user-perceived quality. The lessons learned in this development testbed have been scaled up into the fully operational eStadium testbed in Purdue's Ross-Ade Stadium. This large-scale "Living Lab" enables measurements of football fans' use of and experiences with wireless devices to access infotainment content during Purdue football games. These measurements, some of which are summarized in this paper, have led to further research issues that are being addressed in the development lab. These include selective broadcast and multicasting of video clips to enable services to a very large number of wireless clients.