Several studies have pointed to the difficulties of obtaining good data on train ridership. There are at least two challenges regarding these data. First, train operators consider such data confidential business information, especially in high resolution. Second, the data that actually are available vary in quality and coverage. This paper studies mobile phone data as an alternative measure to obtain data about train ridership.Handset counts were obtained from one telecom operator for selected mobile phone base stations and compared with timetable data and APC. The selected base stations are located so that it is likely that a large share of the mobile phone traffic is generated by train passengers. The number of units connected to a base station is found to correspond relatively well with the trains that pass close to the base stations. A ratio between the handset count and APC data appear as promising in utilising handset count to calculate train ridership, with ratios around one in the rush hours. We discuss preliminary results as well as methodological and technical challenges.To make sure that we do not violate privacy concerns, the data used in the study have been approved by personal privacy representatives.

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Due to the significant growth in the area of wireless communication in the last few years, Quality of Service (QoS) has become an important consideration for supporting variety of applications. Elaborate testing of newly developed Mobile Adhoc Network's routing protocols in real world scenarios is a key step for providing QoS to the users. In order to test the developed Adhoc Routing Protocols, an IEEE 802.11 based testbed has been developed in the paper. Some well-known Adhoc network protocols were implemented and tested in user space daemon in Linux. All the key parameters necessary for assessing an Adhoc Network Protocol have been analyzed. A user application was developed in Java NetBeans Integrated Development Environment (IDE) to ensure repeatability and to provide a mobility model to the users in an efficient way. Customized and special purpose nodes have been developed by integrating various hardware components, in order to improve the efficiency and robustness of the testbed. Some of the well-known protocols have been tested by exposing the configured nodes to an outdoor atmosphere to cater all the unforeseen environmental factors, which affect the performance of Adhoc Protocols. Different performance metrics like overhead, throughput, end to end delay, average jitter and packet loss were evaluated by varying mobility, number of hops, packet size and pause time.