Unstrung has the story on Superbowl wireless. Ford Field in downtown Detroit, will be blanketed during the world’s biggest one-day sporting event.
“We’ve got a broadband Internet circuit brought into the stadium on fiber, and then we’re converting it over and working with Motorola to deploy an 802.11 wireless network throughout the stadium, so everyone in the media can get out onto the Net and file their stories on game day,” explains Dave Port the NFL’s vice president for IT.The NFL has worked with Sprint Nextel and with Motorola to essentially turn Ford Field into one gigantic WiFi hotspot.
Not only members of the working press will benefit: League business partners, stadium staff, Detroit businesses, and the fans will all be able to take advantage of the broadband infrastructure that Port and his colleagues are installing.
Stadium users will be able to connect wirelessly via 24 Motorola dual-radio, tri-mode WiAP-200 access points. Linked together via Ethernet switches, the APs send traffic over a Comcast fiber network.
Also connected wirelessly are the ticket scanners at the stadium gates, which actually lie outside Ford Field itself because, for the Super Bowl, the NFL extends the access perimeter a couple of hundred feet beyond the walls of the facility.
Network engineers had to deal with multiple overlapping RF networks: Nextel walkie-talkies used by many NFL staff; coaches’ headsets on the sidelines; onfield officials; merchants’ point-of-sale terminals.
After an extensive walking tour of the facility, they drew an RF-overlay map, tracing the different coverage areas. Mindful of the radio environment, they installed a total of 48 APs, including the venues beyond Ford Field.
Members of the Michigan National Guard at Ford Field will be equipped with very small computers with sensing devices that connect to a wireless network. If they find suspicious material, the mobile computers will relay a message, including location, through the network to a web portal.The perimeter network is one of the few elements of the wireless infrastructure that won’t remain behind after gameday.
More than 10,000 security personnel, including private security, will be in place for the game. The Michigan State Police, FBI, Secret Service and U.S. Customs will also contribute personnel and resources.
The Department of Homeland Security has not designated the Super Bowl as a “National Special Security Event,” which would trigger the use of radiation detectors, biological sensors and other tight security measures. In the post-9/11 era, such security generally is reserved for events such as a presidential inauguration.
Nevertheless, security forces and surveillance cameras will be everywhere in downtown Detroit. Fans entering the game will be checked by explosives-sniffing dogs, patted down by security personnel and scanned by a metal detector.
The names of 16,000 stadium workers, food vendors, limo drivers and others associated with the event have been run through its databases to root out criminals. Coast Guard gun boats can be seen patrolling the Detroit river that separates the United States from Canada and fighter jets will enforce a 50km no fly zone around Ford Field during the game.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) research vessel G.K. Gilbert, augmented security for last years Super Bowl, in Jacksonville, FL. 3-D holography will let security officials analyze shadows, angles, depths and details that conventional imaging doesn’t reveal.
Mark A. Hammond, Deputy Director, Wayne County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, believes this technology “should be considered a ‘must have’ for every agency and company with protection responsibilities.” Interactive map kiosks (right) are available for the public around town.
Super Bowl XL marks the first public security use of LifeVision3D from privately held Intrepid Defense & Security Systems, Birmingham, Michigan. CEO James Fischbach says his system “doesn’t require funny eyeglasses or ‘virtual reality’ goggles. What it produces is true, live-action 3-D.”
Mark A. Hammond, Deputy Director, Wayne County Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, believes this technology “should be considered a ‘must have’ for every agency and company with protection responsibilities.” Interactive map kiosks (right) are available for the public around town.As for the fans, they’ll have plenty of cell coverage and access to streaming audio and video in their seats, not to mention at the 20 or so venues in Detroit hosting events associated with the game. Sprint Nextel has also enhanced its EVDO-based “Power Vision” network for mobile broadband data, both in the stadium and throughout the city.
That will help at the end of the game, when fans in the stands with browser-equipped mobile phones will be able to go to the league’s Superbowl.com portal site and vote on the Super Bowl MVP.The Detroit Free Press features video clips of Mike Wendland walking Radio Row where nearly 100 radio and TV stations are broadcasting. Detroit Radio, television stations and newspapers also have webcams including interactive rivercams, live weathercams and traffic cams. City Freq and Radio Reference have all the scanner frequencies.
ABC is covering the event, with a complement of HD gear that’s more sophisticated than any in broadcast history. Expected to attract more than 130 million viewers in the US and a billion worldwide, the showcase production will feature a few brand-new tricks performed by the ABC broadcasters.
ABC Sports and ESPN will provide more than 100 hours of NFL domestic TV. Ten production trucks (29 vehicles in all), packed to the gills with HD gear will cover the event using 36 cameras to cover the game, all of them HD this year. ABC will produce the game completely in 720-line progressive-scan HD, use HD graphics and derive a standard-definition feed to support the analog NTSC service. The lead company of the project is NEP Sharpshooters from Pittsburgh.
A unique aspect of this year’s production will be the two wireless HD cameras on the sidelines (above), which is no small feat due to the wide bandwidth required for high definition wireless transmission.
As usual, two remote-controlled cameras will be on the goalposts, and additionally there will be two robotic cameras on the goal lines and a Skycam suspended above the stadium with cables attached to four points of the compass. That camera will be controlled by one operator who’s designated as the pilot and another who is the actual camera operator.
In its first experimental use will be Sony ’s 3x Super SloMo camera , a unit that captures video at 180 frames per second. To put this large number of cameras in context, a typical Monday Night Football broadcast uses 25 cameras. There were even more cameras used in last year’s effort, where Fox fielded 54 cameras, although not all of those were high-definition.
Advertisements will sell this year for a record $5 million per minute.During the game, ABC will be using Apple’s Final Cut Pro to put together HD packages on the fly, along with five Avid Symphony nonlinear editing systems which will be used for editing packages for the pre-game show. As it usually does, ABC will use for its instant replay systems a disk-based replay system from Belgian company EVS, and will deploy Chyron Duet character generators and Autodesk Inferno for its on-air graphics.
Mobile ESPN, a new virtual wireless service, will launch for the Superbowl. While competitors target prepaid or youth markets with low-cost plans, ESPN’s cheapest plan starts at $65 a month. It includes lots of sports video and data content included with the lowest tier of service.
All press conferences during Super Bowl week will air live on NFL Network and NFL Wireless. Customers who subscribe to Sprint’s exclusive NFL Mobile service or to Sprint TV Live (Channel 9 in Sprint TV) will be able to see them all.
Sprint’s NFL Mobile ($5.99 a month ), has programming designed specifically for wireless with an all-NFL-all-the-time television channel — NFL Network; exclusive video- and audio-on-demand highlights from NFL Films; and up-to-the-minute team/player scores, stats and injury reports. Customers can also sign up for textalerts.sprint.com on their wireless phone.
And this year’s Super Bowl ads will be anywhere you want them to be: on TV during the game, on the Web, on your iPod and on your cell phone.
The NFL will put the Super Bowl XL ads on its NFL Network, video-on-demand, NFL.com and NFL Mobile programs on Sprint. The ads will be available for a week after Sunday’s game.
The cost to make game ads averages $2.5 million per 30 seconds. “It’s a better way to amortize the cost of Super Bowl ads,” says Seth Palansky, NFL spokesman. “The goal is more places to get your ad seen.”
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[...] CBS will also add two different high-speed cameras and an upgraded suspension system from Cablecam, a Los Angeles-based developer of rigging systems. Last year’s Super Bowl used wireless HD transmitters for the handhelds. [...]
Left by dailywireless.org » Superbowl Unwired on January 26th, 2007