Perhaps the most noted issue with the pretrial
technical iteration of the PMD was the stability
of the network connectivity between the
PMD and the server. Upon analysis of the log
files obtained from each PMD, we found that
on some occasions multiple simultaneous
requests where being made by a single PMD.
The limited number of GPRS uplink slots supported
on the PMDs caused network conflicts
resulting in poor network management and service
delivery. In an attempt to address these serious
issues, the revised PMD solution uses a
queuing system whereby server requests from
several multithreaded processes are placed on
a single queue and served by a dedicated process
at a fixed interval. In testing the revised
network protocol, we found that these changes
resolved the stability issues