Building an Non-Wired Network for Pueblos?

wsxian asks: "We recently received a large grant to install a wireless high speed Internet system for our entire Pueblo here in the State of NM. This would encompass about 150 homes and the range from a central point would be no more than 6 miles, but there are hills, valleys and trees so line of sight is not an option unless we decide to drop homes. I welcome any suggestions for technology to look at, what to avoid, security concerns- and most important for us what companies to avoid. If any of you have had real life experience with doing such a scaled project like this, please give your input!"

Comments

Re:No Non-Line-of-Sight

[VeriTea]

I design wirless networks for a living, so I'd like to add a few words...

Get a good set of topo maps for the entire area you want to cover. Don't let anybody fool you, real paper maps and a good distance calculator like "Topo Companion" are the best way to do wireless design. Next, go to the FCC and download their Antenna Registration Database. You will need the "EN" and "CO" and one other table. Join the tables (useing MS Access would be easiest) using the unique site id and then query out the sites that have coordinates within the boundaries of Pueblo (latitude > y1 and latitude x1 and longitue Now use your "Topo" companion to mark existing towers on the map. Look for ones that are on hills or mountains near the desired coverage area. Some simple trig will tell you if you have line-of-site (LOS). Add the average tree height to your ground elevation when doing calcuations, 802.11x is very low power and high frequency, so you can't afford any pathloss burning through vegetation.

Unlike the parent, I would strongly recommend 30 degree panels for this kind of system, since you are likely to encounter capacity issues, and even log-periodic 60 degree panels have enough overlap between sectors to guarentee a huge interference problem if you use more then one transmitter. Find the equipment you are going to use and use your gains and losses to calculate the ERP / EIRP from your transmit antennas at each site. Now go ahead and use the free-space pathloss equation to figure out the signal strenght at you target locations. If you have adequate signal to meet the needs of the subscriber equipment you plan on using then great (Note: if you plan on supplying subscriber equipment then you can guarentee a minimum quality. If not, your design will need to be especially robust to accomodate low-quality receivers). If not, keep tweeking the design until it will work. Develop a plan for directing the different channels away from each other. Make sure you calculate your expected interference from other sites using the same channel. If you several mountaintop sites this will be a killer.

Once you have it built on paper, the rest is fairly straightforward. Have fun!

Vivato outdoor wireless

[GlL]

Check out http://www.vivato.com/. I have been installing their products, and recently did a baseball stadium. The signal penetrated the concrete construction into the team offices behind the dugout. Good stuff.