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Cambridge's Streetlamp-Powered Wireless Network

Posted by Zonk on from the streetlamps-for-science dept.

Serpentegena writes "A joint research project by scientists at Harvard University and BBn Technologies may have spawned a new breed of Metronet. The wireless network, code-named CitySense, which will consist of 100 streetlamp-mounted nodes by 2011, will draw power off the Cambridge, Mass. public grid and be used at first for weather and pollution monitoring. The intention is to also allow 'academic researchers worldwide [...] to submit their own research programs to run on the network.' Sounds remarkably similar to the beginning of the ARPANET, except the network hosts will be running Linux."

23 of 75 comments (clear)

  1. Whoa! by alienmole · · Score: 4, Funny

    100 nodes by 2011? That's like, 25 whole nodes every year between now and then! How are they going to manage such a massive feat of engineering?

    1. Re:Whoa! by nxtr · · Score: 2, Funny

      >>How are they going to manage such a massive feat of engineering?
      Let's just say some engineers will have light bulbs going off in their heads.

    2. Re:Whoa! by Plutonite · · Score: 2, Funny

      Was gonna crack the ole Beowulf cluster joke, then realized it would take them till the year 2460 or something to build it. I honestly don't understand how such small number can be of analytical utility. It would be great if someone could volunteer to RTFA and inform us.

    3. Re:Whoa! by coleblak · · Score: 2, Funny

      Whoa, whoa, whoa. You want us to read an article? I thought slashdot was all about spouting off opinions without reading anything?

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  2. Programs? by QBasicer · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why would there needed to be programs run on the network, if all the nodes are is data collecting points? Wouldn't it be easier to just store the data and replicate it for later analysis?

    --
    x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
    1. Re:Programs? by moderatorrater · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Wouldn't data collection itself require a program? Since it's got a processor, might as well lend the extra cycles to something ;)

  3. This will be a total failure by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I hear these network nodes will have flashing LEDs which will drive the local police forces apeshit.

    Expect many lawsuits and unjust imprisonment.

  4. Sounds like my invention... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    I just mount solar panels underneath the street lamps and then use the generated power to run the lamps! Ingenious!

  5. It's been done. by HaeMaker · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Anyone from SF bay area, Denver or Washington DC remember Ricochet? http://www.ricochet.net/

    1. Re:It's been done. by Loconut1389 · · Score: 5, Informative

      56K modem speed (for their second generation network) was quite impressive in its day- considering most people were still connecting to the internet at 19.2 at the time. The first generation network was still impressive. Sure 14.4 and 56K sound slow nowadays, for the buck it really was amazing. I remember the first time I sat down at a barnes and noble with my laptop and got on IRC and I was just flat out blown away. I knew lots of people who had it and it seemed they were poised to do quite well. For some reason the died off before WiFi really was accessible, and I never understood quite why. They seemed to have little problem negotiating WAP placement deals. Anyway- that proprietary wireless network predated 802.11 (I think) and was the only way to go for wireless. Its not like they jumped on when wifi was already around and said 'hey try our slow network instead'.

    2. Re:It's been done. by Myself · · Score: 5, Informative

      EVDO can't support the subscriber density that Ricochet can/could. Get a dozen active users per square mile and EVDO gets pretty sluggish. Ditto with EDGE/HSDPA.

      Wireless data is driven by the principle of geographic frequency reuse. If you can make short-distance transmissions, you can use less power, which means there can be someone else using the same channel just a short distance away. If you're far from your tower and need a lot of power, you tie up the channel for a wider area, meaning that fewer subscribers can be satisfied per unit of spectrum.

      With a microcellular network like Ricochet, there are several poletops per square mile, and the same channel might be in use several times within a square mile. With cellular towers, a single sector usually serves several square miles, so a lower user density saturates the spectrum. Ricochet never achieved user density to come anywhere close to capacity, whereas many urban EVDO sites run maxed out for hours a day.

      Metricom's Ricochet was ahead of its time, and not marketed effectively. They built a very dense, capable network, anticipating the internet growth that didn't materialize until many years later. They didn't have the financial resources of a giant cellular company to weather the lull, and their recurring costs killed them. Their assets were sold at auction, and have since changed hands several times. YDI/Proxim currently maintains Ricochet networks in the cities where they inherited contractual obligations, but the rest of the markets sit abandoned.

      Ricochet's still relevant in areas where cable and DSL aren't available, because while not speedy by today's standards, it wipes the floor with dialup and is more than adequate for most uses. The deployment cost is dirt-cheap, and the modems can be had for a song. That's part of the problem though, because you can't sell a customer a $100 modem if they can get it for $5 on eBay.

      The modems are also useful for peer-to-peer networking over distances that wifi can't touch. They do a mile in open space, and half a mile pretty reliably in an urban environment. The 900MHz band is wide open, and penetrates buildings much better than 2.4GHz. If you get 'em above the terrain, they'll do five or ten miles on the stock antennae. There's some user-driven research on the Ricochet Wiki if you're interested.

    3. Re:It's been done. by sunspot55 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I used to work at Metricom and I can say that your 56k speed was VERY conservative. I believe they advertised 128k and we would routinely get 192k in the lab. It was faster than ISDN, which was your main option for high speed internet at home at the time (DSL was just starting to be released). Oftentimes the serial speed was limited by the RS232 data speed (I think the RS232 port speeds defaulted to 56k often). Both USB and RS232 were options on the Gen 2 modem and I recommended using the USB to anyone I knew who used the modems. They even worked USB with Linux as far back as 1999; Metricom was an early adopter and user of Linux and the modem enumerated via USB via some standard serial making it easy (well, Linux easy) to get the driver working. This was at a time when USB on Linux was pretty painful too. I must say I did enjoy working there; the technology was pretty exciting to work on.

  6. Even better! by jddj · · Score: 2, Funny

    They're using a unique new design for the access points

  7. Been done before... by ZeldorBlat · · Score: 2, Interesting

    How is this any different than any other municipal wireless project? I suppose it's different because it isn't intended to actually provide public wireless internet access (in the short-term, anyway).

    Oakland County, MI is currently implementing a wireless network across over 900 sq. miles. Granted the free service is pretty slow (128 kbps), but the for-fee service being offered is competitive with cable offerings in the area.

  8. But by MichaelSmith · · Score: 4, Funny

    The extra power from sunlight which you have ignored will feed back through the system and accelerate out of control. Every street light will become a white hot whirlpool of circulating energy until the city of Cambridge is burnt to a crisp.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  9. Read that as "steam"... by daeg · · Score: 3, Funny

    I read the headline as "Cambridge's Steam-Powered Wireless Network". It was far more interesting with a wrong title. Maybe they should change the focus of their research.

  10. Re:It's a scalable implementation. by moderatorrater · · Score: 3, Funny

    I once saw a video of a severely schizophrenic man. Your post reminds me a lot of him.

  11. Metronet? by Dachannien · · Score: 4, Funny

    Metronet, huh? Is that like an Internet for really well-groomed straight guys?

  12. !wireless network, but a wireless sensor network by Tetravus · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The author of the article doesn't emphasize that the interesting thing about this network (besides it being associated with Haaaavard and therefore news-worthy to certain people) is that it's a distributed sensor network. It doesn't just pass data between nodes, each node is capable of creating and sharing data with the rest of the network. In fact, that's the only thing that's interesting about this at all. I mean, did Google force Mountain View to install new wireless node poles when they put in their WiFi or did they just piggyback on existing infrastructure? And, as someone else has mentioned, Ricochet networks did the whole city-wide data network thing in the late 90's.

    So, if you've been looking for a place to test out your predictive models of chemical dispersion under real-world conditions, it sounds like Cambridge is the place to go.

  13. Re:It's a scalable implementation. by WhatAmIDoingHere · · Score: 3, Funny

    God, I really hope this is some character you're playing. Your writings sound a lot like the Time Cube guy. Random insanity and gibberish.

    --
    Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
  14. Similar Thing Here by Comatose51 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Google Wifi is deployed here in Mountain View and they're also posted on street lamps. Is it just me or does this plan just not sound very impressive. Google's system is quite interesting. Every now and then there's a very massive and obvious wifi AP up high on a pole. The rest of them would be hidden inside the street lamps and all they do is relay traffic back to the other ones. This saves them from having to actually wire every lamp post.

    --
    EvilCON - Made Famous by /.
  15. Name dropping by Rethcir · · Score: 2, Funny

    Hey make sure don't forget to mention linux

  16. Re:!wireless network, but a wireless sensor networ by Myself · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, Ricochet poletops can be used to infer certain environmental conditions too, specifically the propagation of 900MHz and 2.4GHz signals. You can do this indirectly, by watching packet headers and tracking the paths that packets take between radios (longer hops if conditions are good), which has been done in at least one area for some time now. It's fascinating data; I hope to have pretty animated graphs of it some time soon. You could also do it directly, by interrogating each radio's node table periodically, to see the SNR and RSSI to each other radio it knows about.

    Prior to Ricochet, Metricom built Utilinet, designed to replace leased-line telephone circuits for control of utility switch and pump stations. Utilinet nodes could read their own power supply's input voltage, as well as temperature and a few other parameters. If anyone ever did cool stuff with this data, I'd like to hear from them.