The Guardian reports a new public transport system in Portsmouth, UK, is literally on the information superhighway.
The city of 186,000 people is actually on an island, Portsea, and separated from the mainland by a narrow creek. Just three bridges serve a road network further swollen by tens of thousands of passengers heading for the ferry terminals en route to France and the Isle of Wight.
“We used to have a rush hour,” says John Domblides, the city’s chief traffic controller. “We don’t any more. We just have seven lanes on and seven lanes off the island. You simply can’t get any more traffic into the city during the day.”
To encourage more people to ditch their cars, the city invested in a wireless mesh network: a web of wireless antennae, situated at bus stops, which supply the city streets with a huge amount of air-bound internet bandwidth.
The city’s 308 buses have been equipped with their own “ruggedised” PC, running a version of Windows. Each bus is able to monitor its precise position with GPS and upload information about its accurate arrival time using a mesh mobile radio data modem. The government’s Transport Direct website will shortly be extended to mobile phones, digital TV and roadside kiosks - in Portsmouth bus stops.
The network has cost 4.2m, about half the council’s transport budget for two years - but it is already saving it money. The scheme moves urban traffic control data from fixed-line networks to the mesh network, saving the council more than 70,000 a year in telephony charges.
Similar real-time passenger information schemes operate in London and Leicester, but the method of delivery is different because Portsmouth is built around mesh networking. Meshnetwork’s MEA/QDMA technology is used in Portsmouth, England, as well as Cocoa Beach, Florida and their home base in Maitland, Florida. MeshNetworks Adaptive Transmission Protocol tightly binds to the underlying radio platform.
Viasys implemented the MeshNetwork system in Medford, Oregon. Officials said the initial deployment will cost about $700,000, much of it covered by a $500,000 grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The city is phasing out its cellular-based CDPD network and has coverage limitations with GPRS. City officials said they’re actively seeking additional homeland security funding to expand the system throughout the county, which covers more than 2,800 square miles and has a population of 187,000.
Motorola bought MeshNetworks last year and added the technology to its wireless data solutions portfolio. Buffalo, MN has gone live with Motorola Mesh Network solution, offering high-speed mobile broadband access to police and other city employees. As a result, Buffalo police patrol cars are now mesh-enabled, transforming them into mobile broadband offices.
Police officers now have instant high-speed access to mission critical data, video and multimedia communications providing them with greater situational awareness as they arrive on the scene of an incident. Additionally, 40 public works vehicles, along with other community agencies, are using the network. Public works crews can now access job site information while in the field, thereby eliminating trips back to headquarters and accelerating service response times.
MeshNetworks equipment doesn’t work with standard Wi-Fi, but instead uses QDMA (Quadrature Division Multiple Access) to get a full one-mile range. Motorola’s Mesh Networks technology was originally developed for the military battlefield and is self-forming and self-healing. Motorola says the technology is capable of delivering seamless broadband connections to vehicles moving at highways speeds.
For the past decade, Buffalo (located 40 miles north of Minneapolis) relied on a text-only network for its mobile data communications. The city is using the mesh network to power public safety mission-critical applications, including in-field reporting, and access to the state’s criminal database from the officer’s patrol car.
Motorola will integrate components of MeshNetworks, including the MeshNetworks Positioning System and MeshConnex software suites, into future data products such as those in the recently allocated 4.9GHz FCC licensed band allocated to the public safety infrastructure. Each node is licensed to operate with a maximum Effective Radiated Power (ERP) of up 16W at 4.9 GHz. Currently, the Motorola-Mesh Networks products utilize the 2.4GHz band.
Motorola’s unique Multi-Hopping capabilities turn each mesh-enabled radio into its own router/repeater. This allows users to hop through other users to reach network access points. Motorola’s Mesh Network products also offer fast and accurate tracking capabilities without the use of GPS satellites.
Inexpensive wireless clouds can start new businesses. Zipcar members pool cars, booking them by the hour. The company charges an annual fee plus $8.50 ( 4.60) an hour, covering petrol, insurance road tax and features such as satellite radio. Zipcars accommodates 25,000 members sharing just 5,000 cars in three US cities. The company can read the milometer and even disable the ignition remotely using the GPRS connection. Zipcars is plugged in to the electronic highway. FlexCar works much the same way.
But Las Vegas, which was going to use technology from MeshNetworks, has dumped it in favor of mesh equipment from Tropos. The MeshNetworks equipment will remain in place for use by the Las Vegas Traffic Engineering Department, along with Metro Police and Fire Services, however.
There are, after all, many flavors of mesh. And all of them are incompatible.
The Motorola/Mesh Networking system requires a proprietary client (it relays traffic through the client). Vendors like Tropos, Belair, Firetide, Strix and others use mesh for the backhaul. That enables ordinary WiFi clients to be used.
Of course there’s nothing wrong with the “client as relay” model. It probably works best when utilized in swarms of closely-spaced, low-power radios. “SWAT teams” can establish mobile, “ad hoc” networks. But they must all use the same vendor. That may be one reason why Motorola likes it.
The Champaign-Urbana Community Wireless Network (CUWiN) has built a 32 new node outdoor testbed using Soekris single-board computers with 802.11b radios, outdoor enclosures, 64MB CompactFlash, and 8dBi antennas.
CUWiN mesh networks are reportedly self-configuring and self-healing — so adding new wireless nodes is hassle-free, and the system automatically adapts to the loss of an existing node. It is available on a “self-install” CD.
Don Park points out that MIT is working with the South End Technology Center to setup a Roofnet in the Boston’s Tent City housing complex. Tent city consists of 220 residential units spread across many four story buildings and a 12-story high-rise.
The idea is to spread 30-40 Roofnet nodes throughout the residences to improve coverage and throughput. Residents without wireless cards could also use the Roofnet nodes as local Ethernet bridges. They re planning to use a modified Netgear WGT634u (with integrated USB flash storage), for each Roofnet node, which costs less than $100.
Oregon’s non-profit PersonalTelco Project, is experimenting with MIT’s Roofnet approach in a neighborhood-wide Mississippi Neighborhood Cloud they are building in North Portland.
Meanwhile, Airspan’s AS.MAX products will be deployed in a Tokyo-wide WiMAX network that will deliver high speed IP connectivity, and support Voice, Video and broadband data services. Yozan is rolling out 600 Airspan AS.MAX base stations to provide WiMax connectivity inside the central zone of Tokyo. It will combine an integrated WiFi hotspot with a WiMax backbone. It won’t be free, though.
St. Cloud, Florida offers a “free” cloud using some 300 Tropos 5210 mesh nodes and a Motorola Canopy Pre WiMax backhaul. The $2.5 million system is being funded through an economic development fund within the city. The ongoing operational costs beginning in year 2 run about $340,000 annually. How does the city pay for “free” WiFi? It is anticipated that after the first year of operations the city will save 6 FTE’s (Full time employees) rising in years 4 to 10.
A start-up company, Skyhook Wireless, is using Wi-Fi networks to provide location-based services (LBS). When you’re walking or driving, your laptop or PDA can get the ID number of several Wi-Fi access points stored in Skyhook Wireless database, even if the signal is not strong enough to provide a connection. With these IDs, the company will plot a map of where you are.
MIMO-based hotspots, like SoHo’s AeroGuard (right) may deliver extended range.
In another year or two, mobile WiMax (802.16e) should provide cellular-like coverage using licensed frequencies while mobilized VoIP may also be used in the 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz unlicensed bands.
The 4.9 GHz public service frequencies and the 700 MHz band may be utilized, too.
Other academic mesh research projects include:
- Microsoft Research; building indoor testbeds and evaluating multi-hop routing metrics. Their Mesh Connectivity Layer software for Windows XP is available on their site.
- Emulab; An open research testbed at Utah with 27 802.11-based PCs and motes.
- Orbit Lab; Another indoor testbed at Rutgers with 64 802.11 nodes (expanding to 400)
- TAPs; The TAPs project at Rice is building new radio hardware and a similar multi-hop wireless testbed.
- WisperNet; Another multi-hop wireless testbed starting up at CMU
Meanwhile, WiFi “switch” competitors are getting into the Metro game. These vendors do not provide mesh networking to link nodes, but claim better WiFi roaming and centralized management when different access points are wired up. WiFi switch vendors include Cisco’s Airespace, Aruba, Trapeze Networks, AirFlow, Bandspeed, Extreme Networks, Legra Systems, Symbol, and Juniper. Vendor interoperability is a sticking point with WiFi switches. Airespace, Aruba and Trapeze have announced plans for “open” architecture.
DailyWireless has more on Cop Car Cams, Free Mesh Clouds, Firetide mesh, Sputnik, Iowa’s Free Hotspots, Mesh standardization, Taipei’s Mesh Cloud, Scaling City-wide Mesh, Mesh Projects & Gear, MetroFi Goes Long, Mesh: Baton Rouge Et Al Citywide Mesh, Mesh Goes Downtown, Aiirnet & Telerama, Strix and Air Magnet, San Jose Free Cloud, Meshing at Intel, Meshed Roofnets, Mesh ISP, City Mesh and Intel’s 802.11s for Home Mesh.
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