WiSE - A Wireless System Engineering Tool

8. PC Implementation

Many potential users of WiSE use PC's exclusively, so we have undertaken an implementation of the WiSE system for PC's running Microsoft Windows. This implementation is incomplete and not robust; it is hard to convey in polite terms just how difficult it is to write programs in this environment. The C++ programs are easily ported; almost nothing needs to be changed except for an occasional construct that PC C++ compilers can't cope with. Parts of the user interface have been rewritten in Visual Basic, which is quite convenient for some aspects of the task, and yields a polished looking interface. The main problems still to be resolved center on how to handle the cooperative multitasking that is all that Windows provides, and how to cope with the fragility of the Windows environment. The slightest provocation, or even none at all, can cause a crash that requires rebooting the entire machine. Thus far all we really have is a rough prototype.

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to L. J. Greenstein for many valuable comments. Special thanks to R. S. Roman for invaluable help with propagation measurements and to Tom Duff for polygon rendering code. We thank our colleagues in GBCS for providing us with building descriptions and propagation data at 6 GHz, and colleagues in NWSBU for many helpful discussions on microcell wireless and PC software.

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