Chapter 20 – Can’t we just all get along!

I think it’s time to set the municipal alarm and wake the industry back up. Between Verizon and Sprint, I coiuldn’t figure out which one has the worst marketing department. I do know these companies keep supporting more reasons to push WiFi. The technical divisions of those companies finally deploy high-speed gun and the marketing departments promptly shoot themselves in the foot with it by either limiting users to 5GB per month or throttling to 256Kbps which is slower than EV-DO. I can’t even in good conscious beat up AT&T since everyone else, including Consumer Reports, is already doing that. I think it’s more of an admission that 4G is being overhyped and oversold. Apparently getting bandwidth to the tower is a lot harder than getting bandwidth from the tower to the user. It doesn’t matter how much horsepower the car has if you can’t get gas in the engine. I think I will keep my unlimited bandwidth EV-DO card a few more months until Clearwire shows up in our city with an investor in tow. Right now I’m not even sure that a 12-month contract has any value with them.

The original idea behind mesh was municipal deployments that were to return profits back to investors. Earthlink and MetroFi weren’t pouring money into city after city for charitable reasons although they used different revenue sources. Earthlink wanted the users to pay and MetroFi wanted, well, actually I don’t know who MetroFi was looking to pay the bills for them. Apparently neither did they although I’m sure the spreadsheets looked good to the investors. The only decent revenue they got was when Microsoft kicked in a bunch of money to be their partner. Unfortunately the RF engineers were left out of the meeting between investors and the IT department. Usually it’s because everyone assumes that the engineer will tell the truth, but we will get to xG technologies later.

Sadly, the municipal wireless industry as a whole has resigned itself to the government or the utility industry as being the only clients. I applaud the idea that government is trying to become more efficient as those two words in the same sentence are typically an oxymoron. Unfortunately, the idea of municipal wireless as another last-mile pipe to the internet is now the exception instead of the rule. It seems that no investor is willing to take on a municipal deployment as a straight investment. Even the WISPS that are successful hide in the nooks and crannies of remote areas where wired service can’t compete. These areas are slowing drying up in the U.S. as an area population increases, which means wired services eventually come into the area. I have seen reports where this is the only areas that can be made profitable for wireless. In other countries, wireless is highly preferable where not only is there little wired infrastructure in place, the theft of wire is an even bigger problem.

Most of the hardware manufacturers aren’t helping things by promoting the profitability of municipal wireless. The problem, and I completely understand it, is that municipal deployments don’t use enough hardware to justify a low cost. For example, if our 20 mile area had 32 APs per square mile (I’m jacking up the number simply for effect), then the total number of radios is 640. If those radios cost $100 per unit as I have proposed, the total sale is a pathetic $64,000 by mesh radio standards. Consider a 50% gross profit and the manufacture only made $32,000. To make this idea even close to palatable, the manufacturer needs to sell about 5 cities per month which isn’t going to happen, especially with the cost of sales. Jump the price of the APs to $1000, and the project cost just went to $640,000 with the manufacturer making about $320,000. Do six of these a year, and you have the start of a profitable operation. Take it to another level from $2,000-$12,000 and the numbers are staggering. This is why mesh radios cost so much and why there is no motivation for the mesh vendors to reduce the price of their products. As long as government is around to buy their equipment, these products are not going to get cheaper. In reality, I can’t blame these companies as I’m all about profit and if this provides them the highest profit potential, so be it. This just means there are market holes. This is also why my focus on profitability doesn’t include most of these products any longer.

Several companies have the capability to embrace this potential market quickly while the window is still open and can turn a very good profit if approached correctly. For example, SkyPilot ported their firmware to use lower cost CPE devices from Ubiquiti. The goal was the firmware licensing generated more revenue. That was a phenomenal idea and I was ready to jump on the bandwagon since their firmware is extremely solid. Unfortunately, they tied it to their legacy 12Mbps AP product that greatly limited total throughput and increased the cost 50-100% per square mile. 12Mbps just doesn’t work for me any longer with the advent of HD video and video streaming now the norm.

Mesh Dynamics went even further. Mesh could use the Bullet radios as APs for example. This prompted me to use them in a local bid situation. It was a great move except they haven’t moved further into the 802.11N products yet. At this point, it’s almost necessary to have an 802.11N product in this market for several reasons. Hopefully if Mesh Dynamics or SkyPilot don’t get there, maybe somebody else will step up.

Smart Grids are also coming along at just the right time for the market to see resurgence. A smart grid is a small piece of a large pie. If a city is spending $100-$300 per house for a wireless meter and the city has 20,000 homes, then $100K per square mile isn’t a big issue. Especially since the revenue per house is somewhere around $30-$100 per month. Utilities are looking at a 10 year ROI and $2,000,000 spread out over 20,000 homes for 10 years works out to less than $1 per month per household. Don’t think that the Smart Grid operators are going to let you watch the NFL package on your phone over WiFi. Security issues and absolutely no financial motivation to open that network up to public WiFi kills that idea before it starts. I think Burbank may have that option, but it’s going to take a lot of work to get many cities to open that up. Stuxnet also has a lot of people running scared right now in the SCADA industry unless you are a centrifuge in Iran. In that case, you are running like a cheap Rolex knockoff, way faster than you should.

So where does that leave those of us preaching that wireless technologies can compete with wireline services? Well, we had to first figure out how to get the Capex and operating expense down. Then we had to figure out how to get the performance up. As an engineer and business owner, I used “Tales from the Towers” to demonstrate both those solutions. However, those were technical and financial. The reality is still that either the city or the power companies own the vertical assets and you either work with them or you use a relay methodology off of individual clients.

So is it possible to get two systems, public and private, to exist in the same town? That’s going to be difficult at best, although not impossible. It’s better if the private and public industry work together but because of what happened in the early days of municipal mesh, that’s going to be like convincing the Democrats not to raise taxes. This is especially true if private industry tries to get the municipality to pay for some of the infrastructure. So let’s try and figure out how to make public and private work together.

Wireless frequencies are a fixed asset. With a 20MHz wide channel we only have 7-8 useable 20Mhz frequencies in 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz. That means for 360 degree coverage in 2.4GHz which usually only uses 3 channels, we need three 120 degree sector antennas. However, let’s say we want six 60 degree antennas instead to reduce the noise and increase gain and we don’t have a beam-forming option yet. This is the methodology that Motorola uses. That means 2 radios have to be on the same channel. If these antennas are on a pole, two APs on the same frequency are going to interfere with each other. This is where GPS synchronization pulls a Superman act and saves the day.

GPS synchronization gets the AP to talk to satellites, defines a timed reference point, and then unlike Congress, gets all the APs to work together for the common good. The common good in this case is to make sure that all radios transmit and receive at exactly the same time. The end result is that two radios that are within a few feet of each other on the same pole won’t be transmitting and receiving at different times. This allows frequency reuse without cutting the throughput. Theoretically, a pole could have 10 APs on the same channel, each with 36 degree sectors. Okay, I’m getting into beam-forming at that level but there is a difference.

Beam-forming is one processor/antenna defining several directional signals to create PTP connections with clients. GPS synchronization allows several APs, thus multiplying total throughput, on a pole and then use whatever antennas are needed for the application. If mixing sector antennas and directional antennas is appropriate, then GPS synchronization allows that without causing interference between the APs.

Where I’m going with this is it’s now possible to assign one channel to one party and a second channel to a different party and neither party really gets hurts by the redundancy. That would be as opposed to a MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) methodology which is where Motorola and Ubiquiti WISPs are heading now. GPS synchronization is a proprietary technology which means Ubi and Moto aren’t going to be working together. I don’t see either company going out of their way to make that happen, so plan accordingly.

Two more quick things before I have to get some real work done today. Let’s start with xG technology which is a fascinating study in how investors put money into technology that clearly violated accepted rules of wireless. It’s the wireless version of snake oil. The first clue is that they wouldn’t release technical data. In this case however, it was the engineers who now have violated the old wives tale that engineers never lie. The fantasy that was xMax has now gone the way of Santa Claus (you knew I had to get a holiday reference in there somewhere) and we now know it was never real, regardless of how many baloney patents were filed. The reality is that xMax is simply a narrow-band 900Mhz frequency hopping radio. Oh wait, that’s what it is today since the original concept never worked to begin with, or did it? It got investor money and market cap into the 1.5 billion dollar area. xG finally released a product which is a generation behind 802.11n protocol and several times slower. I’m just ticked at the engineers who have now damaged the profession. The stockholders will handle the legal stuff with the company. What’s really sad is the U.S. military bought this bogus product which provides more legitimacy and rewards the concept of bait and switch.

How about simply modifying a 900MHz 802.11N AP with a proprietary frequency hopping firmware for oh, I don’t know, for $200 per AP. Wait, that product exists. Yes, the hopping rate is different but that’s a simple firmware modification. Hmmm, $200 versus the cost of an xG base station. That would be as opposed to the original price point of the xMax base station of $350,000. Wow, I have heard of techonology getting cheaper but…. BTW, the cognitive feature could be handled simply with a second or even a third AP sniffing which drives the price to $400.

The last is the mobility component. Several vendors have mobility as part of their product line. BelAir, Tropos, etc… have fast handoff capability for moving vehicles. To accomplish this, they developed proprietary extensions to the 802.11 communications protocol. I’ve been working on Guerilla WiFi accomplishing the same thing. I’ve proposed using a Peplink Max Mobile router which has built-in WiFi. It allows up to 3 paths to create a VPN tunnel back to a central location. You have to use a Peplink router on the other end but it works pretty well. I’ve tested it with EV-DO and GE-MDS Mercury radios for my dual-paths. You can even add the internal 2.4GHz b/g WiFi card for 3 paths if it can find an AP to connect to.

However, the cost of this setup starts heading north of $10K per car. I wanted Guerilla WiFi to have the same capability at a much lower cost. I’ve come close with some caveats. Peplink makes the CarFi which works pretty well at slow speeds (sub 25) or when parked. It takes 3-5 pings to reconnect or about 5 seconds on average. Not bad but still slow. Using the same radio on both sides such as the Ubiquiti Bullet takes slightly longer. However, the solution is forthcoming which means Guerilla WiFi should have a 50ms handoff pretty soon. I’ll keep you updated after I get to test further. As it stands today, if police can forgo connectivity above 25mph, then a $10K per square mile system and a $600 cost in the car gives them 100% outdoor coverage with 1-60Mbps of bandwidth.

Check out the new sections on Muniwireless that focus on smart phones and tablets. We will cover some recent testing there.

Chapter 19 – Catch a Wave-Guide and You are Sitting on Top of the World

The Beach Boys are going to hate me for this but I’ve been waiting for years to use that line. I also wanted to title it, “Look Ma, no mesh” but I should have used that one several articles ago. It’s not that I have anything against mesh as there is an application for almost every technology. At this point in the industry and the economy, however, it’s time to get past a word very few non-technical people understand and the excessive associated cost of it. Anyway, this article is about wave-guide antennas so let’s get back to that.

Vivato was a wave-guide based antenna. I have had Securawave wave-guide antennas installed for about 7 years. I became a believer when I connected a car at 2 miles and my laptop inside a Jack-in-the-Box at 1 mile. The horizontal polarity was a huge advantage since most wireless APs were vertical polarity. Securawave is no longer in business so I’m hoarding the last few units I have to support units I have in the field. Not that solid aluminum blocks have a tendency to fail as I suspect they will last longer than the buildings they are mounted to (they just don’t make them like this anymore), but in case of physical damage. I don’t need dual-polarity and 2x2 MIMO yet in these areas because Qwest hasn’t figured out how to get more then 3Mbps over the so-called HD Internet services and I’m not ready to mortgage my house for their other service offerings. Of course it’s hard to dial the phone when your eyes are tearing up from laughter when they advertise their new 40Mbps service. 18 months ago they couldn’t even keep a 640Kbps DSL line running properly in the middle of Phoenix less than 1 mile from Sky Harbor Airport.

Historically, wave guide antennas were expensive to make which is probably why it didn’t have more popularity. Ubiquiti seems to be bringing it back with its new omni-directional dual-polarity antennas. We know that dual-polarity has better penetrating and range capability than single polarity. So the idea of extending that into an omni-directional antenna seems like a great idea. Since there isn’t any other 2x2 MIMO omni-directional dual-polarity antennas that I know about, this is really cool from a technical, design, and financial standpoint. It’s also how we are going to keep Guerilla WiFi cost-effective and make it better.

The new Ubiquiti omni-directional antenna isn’t a true wave-guide antenna. Since it needs both polarities, half the antenna is basically two 180 degree vertical polarity sector antennas back to back with dual 180 degree wave guide antennas. Since it’s not out yet, I haven’t tested the unit but the pre-spec guess is it’s around 12-13dbi. That means the effective LOS range with dual polarity is going to be about 30% farther than an omni with 15dBi of gain for a couple of reasons. However, real world performance is going to be significantly better since dual-polarity will definitely penetrate vegetation better, reduce noise off-polarity, and reduce fading. If the client is using a dual-polarity indoor radio, then not only will range be better, noise will be significantly reduced even further. I smell a huge performance improvement in the air for Guerilla WiFi.

Let’s go back to Chapter 1 of Tales where we designed a $10K per square mile system. In that design, we used a 15dBi omni-directional antenna with a single polarity omni-directional. This design was using a single stream 802.11 b/g/n design. With the new dual-polarity omni-directional antenna, we still use a single radio for our AP but we have doubled the throughput with a 2x2 MIMO stream. In addition, we have doubled the throughput of every hop and added an additional hop. Even at the 4rd hop we are still delivering up to 10Mbps. Keep in mind that at a 10-1 oversell rate, that means that you can sell twenty clients 5Mbps at the end of the chain. Although pricing hasn’t been released, I’m pretty sure this antenna with a Rocket M2 radio will still cost less than $300. Double the performance of the original Guerilla WiFi at no additional cost and it’s better than triple coupon day at my local grocery.

Think about that for a moment. If we only had one egress point for our network, our base network was limited to 3 hops with the same capacity at the end. This single antenna, which allows us to change from a single stream 802.11b/g/n radio to a 2x2 AP, doubles that throughput, thus extending our single AP model out even further and doubling bandwidth down the chain. Our egress point can also use multiple radios which can triple the throughput to 3 times that for $300-$600 more without even getting into out next topic, GPS Synchronization. So for less than $11K per square mile, the system now supports 180-300Mbps, depending on the clients. So if your town is 20 square mile and this whole system cost $250K to put in, then it’s a no-brainer simply for cameras, security, mobile access, and department efficiency. Of course, if it goes through federal funding, has government engineers add in the fact that it has to support mesh (pointless in this and most designs but adds significant costs), throws in ridiculous temperature requirements like -30C for Phoenix or 80 degrees centigrade when -75 degrees centigrade would work fine, and requires copious amounts of paperwork to tell 14 different government agencies that you are paying wages equal to union scale even though you pay your guys more than that, then it’s going to cost $1,000,000 (my English teachers just had heart attacks over that sentence). If you can sense my frustration with federal rules that require union contractor shops to do work that is clearly better suited to IT companies, then you are very astute. This is why projects involving the government cost so much and take so long.

If this is a for profit network, $250,000 to cover 20 square miles with this level of bandwidth is pretty impressive. It’s fairly easy and cheap to add 100Mbps backhaul to each square mile for a total of 2GBps for the entire system. Realistically, I would guess that you would get about 500Mbps before the price starts going up for full-duplex links. Keep in mind that we are back to the core idea of an inexpensive municipal deployment.

Using numbers from previous articles, let’s assume 800 potential clients per square mile. If we get 10% of that base at $30 per month, that’s $48,000 per month. With this type of system, only a very small percentage of clients are going to need truck rolls. Total revenue on this network is almost $600K per year. If users have to get client radios, then they start at $30 for 802.11n 1x1 Vertical Polarity CPE’s. For about $80, you can include a window mount and get 2x2 MIMO. In most environments, I would be surprised if truck rolls needed to be done on more than 10% of the clients. Even if you add in the cost of the client radios, this system should be cash flow positive at 800 clients and should pay for itself at 2400 clients within 12 months. This just covers residential and doesn’t even get into business revenue. The numbers are now speaking to me so it’s time to kick the venture capital market back into high gear.

Also consider this, the 16 AP per square mile strategy now covers a higher percentage of deployments, especially profit oriented ones. If you live in the middle of high-density city, then you would want more APs per square mile for density or you fall back on the super AP concept described in previous articles. Since WiFi is far more unpredictable that PTP RF modeling, there is nothing wrong with installing 16 AP’s and then site surveying to see if there are coverage gaps than hinder more revenue.

Cell phone companies don’t cover every square inch of every house on the planet. It’s not cost effective. They deploy with the best models they have and then decide if it’s profitable after field testing to fix poor signal areas. WiFi should be deployed the same way. Put up 16 AP’s, field test, check the areas with poor coverage, and then decide if it’s worth another $300 in equipment to cover that area. If an area has higher usage, add in a triple radio AP upgrade for a few hundred dollars more. If an area really just needs more signal gain, look at adding a beam-forming AP just for a specific direction. There are many options but all of them would be based on sound profitability principals. There is nothing wrong with walking away from 2 customers that might cost $3000 to add additional infrastructure to cover.

I have 2 “Peeves of week” I have to get off my chest. The second is 99.999% uptime. I was asked to design a system where I have to guarantee the CPE’s have 99.999% uptime. Since the wireless industry has new equipment out every few months, very little of what I would deploy today has enough history for me to put my reputation behind that request. I’m not talking about PTP full-duplex $10K and put links but $50-$400 CPE’s. First off, anything less than 802.11N is too old and too slow for this type of video application. Second, anything that’s 802.11N hasn’t been around long enough to know how it’s going to run 3 years from now. It’s kind of a catch-22 situation. That means using cameras with built-in recorders that are going to cost three times as much or more than using lower priced cameras with CPE’s. Unfortunately there is no product history out there than guarantees that. The reality is that all the radios I work with rarely, if ever, just simply go offline if installed correctly. That doesn’t mean that they aren’t going to down for planned firmware upgrades or other system changes. However, the 99.999% uptime request didn’t stipulate whether planned maintenance was included.

I’ve already mentioned my first pet peeve, municipal bids that ask for mesh when every AP connected has a directional antenna. To everyone who keeps adding this expensive request into these bids, it’s a waste of money taxpayers’ money and costs the city a lot more to support in the long run. When you add a directional antenna to an AP or CPE, it’s a PTP or PTMP design, regardless of what firmware is on there. There is no mesh because the radio can’t connect to anything it’s not pointed at. By adding the mesh requirement, you are either getting the most expensive product out there or White Box APs with custom open-source mesh firmware that is cheaper. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for mesh, but don’t eliminate other options like WDS. It’s not your money you are spending; it’s ours, the taxpayers. Let the industry and a wireless engineer decide what the best product for the design is. It shouldn’t be the salesperson that took you out to lunch last week and has shiny brochures. If mesh is appropriate and the best fit, let the companies bidding on the project put that down. If WDS will work just as well or a PTMP design is better, they will bid that. So can anyone guessed what crossed my desk again this week? I know I’m beating my head against the wall on this since arguing with government is like trying to tell a 3 year old that candy isn’t good for them.

So we have come full circle on Guerilla WiFi from $10K per square mile to $50K per square mile and now back to $10K per square mile with double the performance. If this doesn’t kick the industry back into high gear, I’m not sure what will. Next we will cover GPS sync and how that affects deployments strategies.

Chapter 18 - Demystifying Beam-Forming

Based on some of the emails I’m getting, the biggest complaint is not enough details and without them, it’s difficult to implement the idea. Fair enough, I’m definitely guilty of that. In my defense, please understand that I want to have a personal life. Not that I have one now, as most WISP’s can attest, but if I had to put down every single detail on every single project or idea, I would be writing from here to Kingdom come. Except for the 6 guys on the planet like me that think they ought to make a movie out of every article in EETimes (I think a lower noise figure on a 741 OP-Amp makes a compelling plot line), most of you would be cancelling your Ambien prescriptions. The reality is that the details only matter to technical people and those are called White Papers. I’ve written a couple but I can’t sit still long enough to finish dinner, let alone do a 20 page technical document. My wife says that if I had put as much time into my homework as I have these articles, I would have my Master Degree by now. Of course, if University of Phoenix gave me real life credit for standing in a man-lift hanging antennas 80 feet in the air, I could get my Doctorate without ever attending class.

Let’s get back to the really cool stuff like beam-forming. We covered 900MHz and both the positive and negative aspects. Let’s move on to the category of what’s old is now new again, beam-forming. Vivato pioneered the idea several years ago but the financial model, coupled with irresponsible pre-marketing, didn’t really work in the real world. However, they did get the FCC to change the rules which is going to be a very good thing moving forward. The difference is how the different implementations of beam-forming are implemented and the effect in the real world, technically and financially.

Long before Vivato, the Super Scanner antenna from Antenna specialist tried to get an antenna to function in both a directional and omni-directional mode with the turn of a knob. Some of the manufacturers such as Wavion and Netronics sort of copied this model by using a ring of vertical omni-directional antennas. They can get up to 12dBi of antenna gain off of 7-9dBi antennas. Currently these units are limited to 802.11b/g bands and vertical polarity.

The next kind of design was done by SkyPilot where they simply rotated connection to one of 8 integrated sector antennas at any one time. This gave them up to 44dBm of EIRP in the 4.9-6.0 GHz bands. Ruckus, Netgear (with Ruckus helping), Cisco, and others are now integrating the antennas on circuit boards but at a lower gain. There will be several antennas cut into the boards or some other internal antenna hardware to add vertical and/or dual-polarity to the board that provide directional coverage. These designs are achieving up to 10dBi in gain with the bigger advantage being the noise reduction from other directions. They use the model of picking the 2 best signal antennas to receive the signal simultaneously since doubling antenna capture area provides up to a 3dB increase.

Vivato is still the technical King here in this realm though, although they weren’t covering 360 degrees. Vivato achieved 24dBi of gain in a 100 degree pattern in 2.4GHz. The catch is they did it for $8,000-$15,000, which meant I could either buy a new van for my company or 2 APs. That sort of limited the market for the product to the point that they are no longer in business, which is also what happens when you don’t listen to your vendors trying to sell the equipment. However, that 24dBi of gain is a huge advantage for reaching underpowered smartphones. Since Ubiquiti has now announced that they are releasing a beam-forming product over the next 2-4 months, the question is, does that have value for a municipal design?

Getting back to today, Wavion’s newest product, the WBS-2400 is probably the closest to the Ubiquiti beam-forming radio. It’s also very similar to Altai A8-Ei product with multiple radios, sectored antennas, and one enclosure. Both products tighten up the beam and assign a single radio per antenna. Unfortunately, both these products are still b/g.

Going back to the formula that distance doubles for every 6dBi of gain, if a 2.4GHz beam-forming AP has 21dBi of gain, or what I’m guessing the new Ubiquiti units are going to be, that almost quadruples the range of most omni-directional AP’s. Throw in the fact that noise will be reduced by at least -20dB, and the s/n ratio goes berserk. The effective range increase, and this is only my best estimate in the worst scenarios, is probably a factor of 8-16 in open air environments. This means hitting a smartphone at 3000-4000 feet or more is possible.

Here is where it gets interesting though. Based on past experience, I’m guessing the Ubiquiti beam-forming AP will be less than $300. That is 10 times less than other beam-forming products, none of which support 802.11N 2x2 MIMO. Heck, it’s less than I paid for a baseball bat last season.

We were all trained to think in terms of APs needing to cover 360 degrees for municipal deployments. Every product out there is designed for that. The end result of this is when the density reaches a certain level, the self-interference is basically self-defeating. I’ve seen proposals that suggest 60 APs per square mile for example. Central management systems can dynamically adjust power output between APs to reduce the interference and can simultaneously adjust power output on a per packet basis to reduce the interference even further. However, all this costs which effectively drives the price up to $150,000 per square mile or more for this level of performance. However, what in the playbook says that every AP has to have omni-directional coverage?

Throughout this series, we’ve been driving towards a low-cost, high-capacity design that can be commercially deployed. The original idea was trying to develop an inexpensive Super AP. I’ve gone from $200 to $2000 and was working on an idea that would have driven the cost to a retail level of $4000. It supported 1Gbps per AP and 700+ simultaneous clients, but still it got away from my original idea which was to lower the bar on the per mile cost, which it didn’t accomplish. It basically comes down to the following, are you trying to compete with cable which can deliver up to 50Mbps or delivering Internet to people who have to suffer with dial-up, or worse, DSL delivered by Qwest in Arizona (okay, bad joke).

Beam-forming lets us start with a new playbook. The first thing you do in a playbook is define your assets (okay, I never played organized football so I’m making this part up.). Using the Ubiquiti beam-forming product (2.4GHz version), we know roughly that we will have about 21dBi of gain, 90 degree coverage zone, 16 degree beam pattern, GPS synchronization, and 2x2 dual-polarity 802.11N MIMO. Since we can now hit a phone at 2500 feet without much of a problem in open air, the design mentality changes. Even with 21dBm of gain, we still aren’t going to penetrate several buildings. However, we probably bought ourselves another house or two. By changing the angle of transmission, ala cell towers, and to be fair to Vivato’s deployment design in Spokane, tops of buildings aiming down, and all of a sudden we are hitting several houses down the street. Throw in 2x2 MIMO dual-polarity, and the connection distance goes way up.

Because of the price point, I’m guessing Ubiquiti’s product uses the same type of design as SkyPilot in terms of switching between multiple feed points on the antenna. The difference is that each feed generates a different angle of radiation versus being a completely separate physical antenna. Ruckus hits multiple feeds also with circuit board based antennas.

Although the tops of buildings aren’t ideal for sector antennas due to amount of AP’s that are going to get picked up, if you aim it towards the horizon, angle it down 60 degrees or more, you still get coverage down the street and pretty impressive building coverage. At that angle, you are reducing attenuation from outer wall penetration and even taking the route of shooting through the roof. This doesn’t work all that well in areas with trees, but if the buildings are made out of concrete, brick, or stucco, then this might be the best option. There are a lot of cities where the street lights are decorative and there is no way to install an AP down at ground level, so secondary options are a must. Beam-forming makes this design more useable by effectively reducing the beam pattern down way down.

This model might work in a different way also. Think in terms of 3 dimensions instead of 2. Larger buildings or apartments in downtown areas might be 10 floors or more. Placing these antennas on the side of one building several stories up and aiming into another building let’s you build a vertical WiFi Although attenuation has been a killer, 21dB of gain makes up for a lot of wall and window attenuation. In addition, dual polarity will improve penetration even further. If you pick up 30 customers in a building at $20 per month, 3-4 antennas pointing into the building get paid for in a couple of months. I would have also said it’s significantly cheaper than AP’s in the building until I saw another product that I’m testing (to be discussed later). However, when you add in the savings on pulling cable, it’s a no-brainer.

Irregular areas with streets curving all over the place are another option for this type of design. Intermixed homes and small business areas with mostly 1-2 story homes and 2-5 story buildings work well for this design. Outdoor coverage is universal with indoor coverage hitting around 80% or more with careful planning. Keep in mind I’m assuming everyone wants to give you free vertical assets to enhance the system.

Bringing us back to earth gives us most of the real-world deployments, street lights. This is where the GPS synchronization really kicks in and is now the direct comparison to Wavion or Ruckus. Placement of four of these radios on a pole to cover 360 degrees provides the absolute farthest range of any AP on the market. This is only possible with GPS synchronization to keep them from interfering with each other. It effectively provides twenty four 16 degree beams shooting out in 360 degree pattern. The cost of this super AP will be about $1500 which isn’t a lot less than Wavion or other beam-forming 360 degree APs. It does have significantly longer range through, by a factor of 9dBi and dual-polarity which is worth another 3dB in my field testing. With the IPad supporting 802.11n and the Beam-Forming antenna supporting dual-polarity, this would be a potent combination for off-loading some bandwidth.

If we duplicate this design with Altai or Ruckus, the cost is now over $10K per AP. There are other manufacturers such as Motorola that use sector antennas but then the antenna gain drops back to 12dBi or less and their beam patterns are 120 degrees. The best way to reduce noise is to decrease the beam pattern which it also doesn’t do. Effectively we get a 9dBi increase and 20+dB of noise reduction for a cumulative 29dBm improvement in s/n ratio. Regardless of what wireless philosophy you follow, that’s huge.

Here is one of my philosophies though, “If you spend too much, all you have lost is a little money. If you spend too little, you could lose everything.” Guerilla WiFi is based on the concept of being the most cost-effective way to deploy and what I feel is the only way to make municipal wireless a self-sustaining profitable model. That doesn’t mean it’s the best way in every situation. I’m describing equipment that isn’t even out on the market yet and isn’t field tested. Wavion, Ruckus, Altai, Bel-Air, Motorola, FireTide, Cisco, Enterasys, and a host of other vendors are proven products that have been deployed and tested. I do think these vendors are making it difficult to meet the financial needs of a profitable municipality model which is where Guerilla WiFi comes in, but the products are solid. This models works for me and others who are willing to spend the time to work through early firmware issues and fine-tune the models during deployment. It’s kind of like the difference between Linux and Windows. Since Ubiquiti uses a common firmware platform across all of their outdoor products and has made great strides towards stability and features, I expect the new products to use the same firmware base which means , the firmware. However, there is still a long way to go towards a turn-key municipal deployment without a lot of engineering intervention. Based on the cost/performance ratio, I believe it’s worth it. But realistically I spend a lot of time testing and adjusting. Most customers are going to expect a more turn-key solution. However, if it’s your money, then this solution provides the best chance of financial success.

With this AP design, $1500 per AP is getting pretty pricey. However, it will also combine with our next article, the 360 degree dual-polarity 2x2 MIMO AP for under what I’m guessing is going to be $300. I’ll try not to wait 3 weeks to make this happen.

One other note that I want to mention is that Mike Ford is no longer at Ubiquiti. Mike was a central figure that seemed to have his hands in everything from testing to customer support. Over the last 3 years, he has become a friend that always went the extra mile to make sure I had the resources I needed for my clients. He was also instrumental in some of my decisions on my deployments. Although I don’t know his future plans, I am very sorry to see him go.

Chapter 17 - Who needs White Space?

It’s time to step up our game. There is no problem generating massive bandwidth from an AP location. We have proven that fact. What we haven’t figured out yet is how to leap tall trees in a single bound or walk through brick walls. If you are willing to add in another 20Mhz of super-powerful, wall-penetrating, obstruction busting, tree smashing signal, then we have solved the problem.

You are thinking I’m going to jump on the White Space bandwagon. I’m sure I will someday but there’s a lot of work that has to happen before that option is available. However, the infrastructure we have designed is pretty flexible and inexpensive. When White Space becomes feasible and cheap (my favorite word), we can add it. In the meantime, we have two other options. I think I will save the best for last though.

White Space is touted for 2 reasons, extended range and building penetration. It also has one big disadvantage. In major cities, there may not be a lot of channels available according to Spectrum Bridge, for White Space to operate. In addition, limited power output from clients is still going to limit high-bandwidth range back to the AP. I also see the 6MHz channels being an issue with bonding being the same problem as trying to run 40MHz outdoors.

Before we jump into this though, let me make note that Ubiquiti just released a stack of new products that are game changers in WiFi, indoor and outdoor, Video Surveillance, and cellular service. These technologies cover everything from Beam-Forming to GPS sync to dual-polarity omni’s. I’ve had to hold back due to NDA’s but we will now start covering how these technologies can be integrated into our Guerilla WiFi design to take the systems to a whole new level. Most of these products are several weeks away from shipping so we have time to develop our system. I do a have a pair of the 900MHz M series 802.11N 2x2 MIMO AP’s in my hands and that is the topic of this article.

Option one is 900MHz. Yes, it’s crowded, noisy, and seriously overused. So is a Japanese subway but people still use it because it’s the best option. Until now though, the best WISPs systems limited users to about 3Mbps under ideal conditions with APs limited to about 7Mbps. There really wasn’t a lot of development in that frequency band due to the interference and reduced band size as compared to all the other unlicensed options.

900MHz has close to the broadcast properties as White Space except for the vastly higher interference. In a municipal system with 16 AP’s per square mile, AP’s are within 600’ so range of everybody. Unfortunately, 2.4GHz can’t penetrate obstructions very well. Brick or Stucco buildings that will suck the life out of 2.4GHz are merely a few dB of loss to a 900MHz signal. At that range, trees effectively disappear. Junior’s frequency hopping baby monitor and the SCADA transmitter hanging on your water meter is now more of a problem than obstructions. In 900Mhz, with 802.11N 2x2 MIMO now being applied, bandwidth isn’t the issue any longer. The biggest problem is interference.

Everything has a threshold though and you just have to find it. With parents, it’s how low your grades can go before you become the prisoner of the bedroom Alcatraz and your friends start filing missing person’s reports. With RF, it’s the difference between the signal and the noise and how efficiently we use the bandwidth. Now toss in a very narrow band, 26MHz, and the total bandwidth throughput from any AP is going to be limited. Oh, yea, did I mention that we only have to go 600 feet?

802.11N isn’t just for 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz. It just hadn’t been applied before in the 900MHz band. Ubiquiti just released several new 900MHz products with 802.11N 2x2 MIMO protocol. Using a 5MHz channel will allow up to 4 APs to operate on one pole, which each one providing up to 20Mbps. However, using buildings and some shielding, might allow up to 4 channels of 10-20MHz in more remote areas to allow up to 300Mbps. I’m sort of guessing here but when I get one of the base station sector antennas in, I will do some testing to determine what would be needed for isolation.

Keep in mind through all of this that we are still dealing with an AP/sector antenna combination that cost less than $500. If budget is an issue and the city thinks that a several 4’ antennas on a pole aren’t their idea of aesthetically pleasing, then look at using 4 of the Nanostation M900 Loco’s. They are very small, and although rated at a 60 degree beam pattern, they can easily cover 90 degrees with a small drop off in antenna gain. In fact, the beam pattern for these radios is way over 90 degrees at 7.5dBi of gain.

The only problem here is that you need one of these radios in or on the house since there is no portable device that can support 900MHz. That starts getting expensive at $200 for the radio and another $50-$150 for an indoor WiFi device for wireless coverage. However, the problem of building penetration is completely solved.

If I haven’t mentioned it before, we only have to go 600’ from an AP location if we have 16 poles per square mile. Realistically though, if we have 16 APs per square mile, I would probably only use a maximum of 4 AP locations with the 900MHz radios for budget reasons. That means we might have to go 1300’. Of course, we are using a proprietary polling scheme and a dual-polarity signal to go that far. If the noise floor starts at -65, the signal level needs to be at -55 or better. At 1300’, even with obstructions, our signal level should easily exceed that.

Trilliant and other Smart Grid companies are releasing MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) 900MHz radios that are up to 1W for residential installations. If you think that a few towers can cause interference, try fighting tens of thousands of radios dropped into the middle of your coverage zones. Motorola 900MHz WISPS from here to Canada are getting hammered and there isn’t a lot they could do about it. There are going to be cities where running 900MHz WiFi may not be feasible. Don’t panic yet, we will take our 2.4GHz game up a notch also.

There are two advantages to the Ubiquiti 900MHz radios to fight interference. One is the dual-polarity MIMO design. In the city though, most radios are using antennas with such low gain, polarity isn’t going to make a lot of difference. However, the M900 product line came out simultaneously with the ability to frequency hop. That means you have 4, 5MHz channels to jump around with at 300ms rates to avoid noise try and punch a signal through. If the Smart Grid density is too high, then even that isn’t going to matter but right now it’s the best option available.

The second advantage is AirMax. AirMax will simply ignore other packets in the band and also eliminate the hidden node problem. Although interference is interference, AirMax AP’s won’t slow down acknowledging other APs in the band.

Ahh, but what works for city folk works even better for country folk. The dreaded trees of death for 2.4GHz and 5.8GHz are merely pin pricks to 900MHz. Toss in the dual-polarity 2x2 MIMO design and now signal will punch through the forests like Ray Lewis through an NFL helmet. Expand out the channel to 10 or even 20MHz, and throughput for a single AP could go as high as 80Mbps.

On the muni-wireless issue, we can assume that designating 4 AP sites per square mile will add about $1000 or about $4000 per square mile. It also adds 320Mbps of total capacity per square mile. Add in the CPE Capex of $200 per client, assume 25 clients need this radio to avoid a truck roll, and you have an additional $5000. If you truck roll, add another $3750 in the Capex column for those of you keeping track.

Based on those numbers with a $30 per month fee and a free install, it will take 17 months to recoup the Capex. Of course, we want to charge $100-$200 for an install to offset some of those costs. In areas where municipal staff thinks antennas are cool and interference is minimal, we could even use four 900MHz dual-polarity sector antennas with 13dBi of gain. That will provide over 6 times the coverage area which might reduce the AP locations from 4 to 2 but it will more than double the cost per AP, which is a wash. There will be scenarios where either option will be more appropriate.

Our second option is the new beam-forming radios. I’ll cover that in more detail in the future. Since the 2.4GHz versions of these units won’t be out for another 4 months or so, there is no hurry. However, they add another 4-6dBi of gain over a sector antenna and 8-9dB of antenna gain over any other beam-forming AP other than Vivato. Add in dual-polarity, which my field testing shows to be worth up to 3dBi more useable gain, and a 16 degree beam pattern to reduce noise (I’m extrapolating from the 5.8GHz beam-forming unit that was announced. The final specs may vary.) and that that’s enough gain to penetrate an extra wall or almost quadruple the coverage distance to a client. I’ll go into the difference between between all the beam-forming units on the market in our next article.

Now we have even more tools to play with for Guerilla WiFi. Theoretically, it wouldn’t be hard to build a 1Gbps AP to work across multiple frequencies with beam-forming and GPs for less than $4000. Taking this concept even further, it also wouldn’t be hard to create a load-balanced, business quality, multi-frequency design that could bond these frequencies together for very high-capacity throughput. There are other variations of this for backhaul, redundancy, and uptime. It’s possible, with a little networking work, to create a mission critical design capable of delivering tens or hundreds of MB’s to a CPE for less than $400 on the CPE side. This type of system could easily deliver 99.999% uptime using unlicensed frequencies, even with scheduled maintenance. And don’t get me started on 900MHz mobile options. The hits just keep on coming.

Chapter 16 - Video Surveillance; More Video Than You Ever Wanted To Know

This isn’t a how-to article on video surveillance since even my neighbor, the non-technical guy, installed his own system. Most of us have an understanding of how an IP based video surveillance network works. What we want to cover is why all this phenomenal bandwidth we are creating takes video surveillance to another level and why that may or may not be a good thing.
Video surveillance cameras used to use terms like CIF (352x288 pixel resolution) and 4CIF (702x576). Computers used resolutions like VGA (640x480) and SVGA (1024x768). The common denominator in all these is the 4x3 screen ratio. Movie makers marched to their own drums with 16:9 ratios until the standard today is the 1080 level (1920x1080).
With the integration of computers and movies, it was obvious that compression methodology needed to be applied due to the limits of CD-ROMs and bandwidth. Various JPEG and MPEG compressions were developed until MPEG-2 became the most universally used compression method for DVD. However, bandwidth and storage limitations along with increased processor power drove compression through MPEG-4 (still one of the most popular) and others to the current standard of H.264.
So how does this relate to wireless? In the past and all around the country, cameras over wireless were either a very low resolution (CIF), high-compression (blocky or blurry), or had a low frame-rate (5-10 frames per second or fps). A lot of systems with remote locations, like SCADA locations, didn’t even try to move video over the wireless system. Instead they stuck an analog recorder locally with digital output, and then only monitored 1 or 2 of the cameras at a time remotely, regardless of how many were on site, due to bandwidth limitations. Keeping in mind all the bandwidth we have proven we can deliver over wireless systems from the past few articles, the question becomes, what can we now do in the real world? 3 years ago, we deployed a video analytic system with 48 cameras across 100 square miles in North Las Vegas and Boulder City, Nevada using a Puretech PureActiv system and SkyPilot 4.9GHz mesh system, so it’s not a new concept. These cameras deliver CIF resolution at about 12fps due to storage limitations. Since multi-megapixel cameras are the next hottest thing and since I’m involved in one of these projects right, I can tell you where we are going next.
Start with the idea that multi-megapixel IP cameras are now on the market and are cost-effective. For example, a 1080i outdoor camera from Axis like the 3334 or 1755 cost around $1500 or less. There are many other products out there that are even less expensive but I would test them to make sure they can deliver the frame rates you expect under similar conditions. We found that in a couple of the less expensive cameras, they could deliver no more than 12fps even though they were rated at 30fps in that particular resolution mode.
The biggest issue is, how do you use all that video quality? For live displays, we are probably going to have to limit live viewing to CIF resolutions to get 16 cameras on a single display. With 50 cameras, you might need 5 displays, for reduced size images and one for a full size image might be one way to set it up. This kind of negates having HD video. You can use whatever variation you want from this, even if you want a whole wall of monitors. No matter what you do with a few cameras, there will be point where there are too many screens for anyone to look at simultaneously or the real-time images are too small to have value. In reality, there is no realistic way to cost effectively display and watch 50 high-resolution cameras. So where is the value?
In addition to broadcasting a 1920x1080 video stream or higher, the newer cameras can also capture video at up to 5Megapixels. That makes for some fairly impressive images and opens up all sorts of possibilities if you can get it back to a central location for processing. That’s where our big wireless pipes start having value. Imagine the camera shooting snapshot every 20 seconds to augment the high-quality video stream for forensic evidence at trial and dumping these images on a central server.
Currently most people use this much resolution for forensic use. Usually an accident is going to look the same in HD as well as CIF on video. In fact, the higher frame rate has more value than the resolution. However, the higher image quality might tell us who was driving in case there was question of that or reveal a detail such as a braking point based on a car nosing down that the lower resolution may not. In reality, most of the mega-pixel cameras can deliver both high-frame rates and HD quality.
I’m finishing our first deployment right now where all the cameras are HD quality on the fixed and 4CIF or better on the PTZ cameras (HD PTZ cameras weren’t available from Axis when we started the project). With the cameras set to 1920x1080, 20fps, 30% compression, using H.264, we are seeing about 7-8Mbps.
There are two areas where the higher resolution system has much more of an advantage. The first is in the use of forensic evidence at trial. If the subject actually has features that are discernible, then there is a higher chance of prosecution. With CIF cameras, that means either very short ranges or very small viewing areas.
The second and more important use is in the field of Video Analytics. Video Analytics uses a computer to analyze a video stream and look for specific types of activity. It basically turns video surveillance from a forensic device into a pro-active tool. Video analytics have been used in airports and depots to look for loiterers or abandoned luggage. More expensive analytic systems obviously have more features such as license plate recognition and facial recognition. Some video analytic systems can tell the emotional level of the subject or look for abhorrent behavior.
The limitation on analytics has always been resolution, processing power, and algorithms. Lower resolution can’t make out enough details for facial recognition or license plates at any distance and higher bandwidth over wireless (remember, this is a wireless series, not a wired series)has always been a challenge. At the same time, as the resolution increases, the processing power needs increase. For example, it take 4 times as much processing power to handle a 4CIF resolution video stream as it does a CIF vide stream. Expand that up to 1080HD resolution and now an older Dual-Xenon server that could handle 8 CIF streams 3 years ago can’t even handle one HD stream.
Fortunately, between Intel and the gaming industry, the answer is just right before us. Newer Intel processors using the I7 core have some pretty massive power. Jump into the Xenon version of that processor series and its running 6 cores with 6 virtual cores. Double up the Xenon processor and you have more than sufficient horsepower to do any type high-level video analytics.
Since video analytic processing isn’t any different than game processing in terms of the type of hardware needed, the gaming industry has pretty much handed us the answer. High power video cards or GPU’s (Graphic Processing Units as they are generally referred to), can be stacked to multiply the processing power. In fact, it’s possible to use 4 GPU’s in the same computer that’s capable of cracking weak AES encryption in minutes or hours. Maximum PC built a 3 card version of this exact computer. Obviously you want a different hard drive storage combination, but if the software supports the GPUs, here’s the answer.
Improved analytic engines also have the ability to do object recognition. Imagine an Amber Alert that can have every camera in the city scanning for a specific, make, model, and color of a vehicle in real-time in addition to license plates to try to find a child. All of this advanced capability requires 3 things, lots CIF cameras at very short distances for clarity, fewer cameras with very high-definition, and lots of bandwidth to get this data back to a central location. If it’s wireless, that historically has been even more difficult.
The traffic surveillance system design we used in the Town of Sahuarita was based on three things:
1)Budget
2)Capability, currently and in the future
3)System Expansion
7-8 Mbps per camera meant that there needed to be a lot of capacity. Originally the design involved 4 APs with sector antennas covering 360 degrees and up to 400Mbps or more (I told you we would get back the wireless part of the equation eventually). Although the capacity was sufficient when it was originally installed, the RF environment changed while we were finishing the system. I covered the interference issues with the local WISP in an earlier article and after my experience with Atlanta, I decided to change this design over also. With an equipment change of less than $2000, we expanded the capacity out to 800Mbps and simultaneously reduced noise figures from -75 to -92dB or better. Most lights are now PTP links to either City Hall or between each other. Since the use of highly directional antennas on the main building means my beam patterns are now 6 degrees or less, frequency reuse isn’t an issue. I haven’t used the building as my antenna isolation shield yet but that’s coming next as we add more traffic lights.
Uneven terrain also meant AP hopping wasn’t an option. Since budget was an issue and we already had some of the infrastructure in place already, we stayed with the Ubiquiti equipment. Technically this is now a combination PTP/PTMP design. I didn’t use WDS since I needed security features that won’t work with WDS on the Ubiquiti products. And because the Rockets and Nanostations cost less than $100, the highest cost would be a pole with a Rocket M5 with an MTI dual-polarity 5.8GHz flat panel antenna for about $350. However, as the deployment went in, we made some changes and are now using Powerbridges in place of the Rocket/MTI antenna combinations as they have become available. The end result of this design is that every light has an MCS(15) 2x2 MIMO link either directly back to City Hall or in a hop path between lights using the Rockets, Nanostations, and Nanostation Locos. The total cost of all the radio and antenna equipment for 13 traffic lights and 800Mbps of total capacity at City Hall will be less than $10,000 including the 2.4GHz WiFi system that went in simultaneously.
The capability of the system, although it’s still being installed, will provide some excellent prosecutorial evidence when needed. In the case of accidents, the combination of the resolution of the cameras along with the PTZ cameras that are paired with them will allow traffic and public safety the information they need to respond appropriately. In the case of a hit-and-run, the runner is going to have a much harder time getting away with high-resolution images of the vehicle and the plate, when available. If the driver leaves the vehicle, the planned video analytic software with virtual tracking with the PTZ’s are going to keep the driver, now the runner, in camera view much longer for police and give a better picture for recognition.
One other side note is that many of these cameras have audio capability. We already apply analytics to gun-shot detection and window breakage applications. Throw in some audio clues for a crash to support a video analytic rule of two objects trying to occupy the same area at the same time (crash), and false alerts drop.
There is no real growth limit to the system. On the bandwidth side, each traffic light has the capacity to hop several lights if necessary or add additional cameras. On the image side, as computer processing power continues to increase, the resolution and bandwidth is already in place to take advantage of it. This means more sophisticated surveillance tools for traffic, law enforcement, and wireless bandwidth for mobile vehicles. Video analytics are the best way to use the increased resolution an image quality that increased bandwidth capacity can provide.

Chapter 15 - Thinking is cheaper than doing

I said we would figure out how to compete with cable and it’s time to put up or shut up. I’m not writing the entire business plan here and I’m going to leave some key pieces out to protect some of what I’m working on, but the basic concept is here and it’s solid. We will put it all together later but let’s just think it through first and add some more tools.

Early on while developing this idea, I realized that while anybody could create a system that delivered bandwidth, the retail price of bandwidth was going to probably go down, making a Capex recovery more difficult. I have realized now that I looked at it the wrong way and that there would never be enough bandwidth, regardless of the cost. I also felt that there weren’t enough apps out there to drive the need for more bandwidth so that was the first part of the equation that had to be solved. This problem started fixing itself with the advent of smart phones, YouTube, video conferencing, VoIP, etc… and bandwidth needs started increasing very quickly. More recently I have to personally thank Google for their new search engine and Direct TV with the NFL package. Just keep em’ coming boys.

Small businesses need better options than T-1 circuits. They are slow and expensive. DSL circuits are slightly faster down and almost slower up. Of course, if they could keep them working or keep the performance at the purchased rate, that would be even better (can you tell I had another Saturday morning wasted calling Qwest tech support for a circuit bouncing like a superball) . Cable is also starting to expand again. However, in any area that only has one local loop provider, let’s just say you aren’t getting any coupons in the mail.

If you really want to see the opposite of capitalism in action in this area, just visit Mexico and try to start a wireless internet business. You have to hand your business plan over to Telmex, all the details and technologies, and hope they approve you opening up a company to compete with them. Yea, like that’s going to happen. It costs $1200-$2500 for a simple T-1 circuit down there. Imagine Cricket having to ask Verizon if they can open up a competing cell phone company. Mexico will always be playing catch up technically to the rest of the world until they allow open competition for small businesses. For those who want to tell me that Telmex is providing low-cost DSL service, try to make a VoIP International call over the service and amazingly, the quality is really bad. Wonder if that has anything to do with Telmex charging exhorbitant rates for international calling. If any country needed wireless options to compete with Telmex, Mexico does.

It’s also evident that the chokehold held by local loop provides wasn’t going to change without a huge investment in fiber or cable. I still believe that fiber is the best technical way to deliver massive bandwidth. It is by far the best long term solution based on what I see in the future for wireless, but it’s not the most cost-effective unless you happen to be digging up the street for some reason and laying new conduit. The power companies had the best chance to break that monopoly but the Bandwidth over Powerlines idea was simply a bad idea. They had a better solution on the table and still do, but I don’t see any of them playing that card. They could have easily delivered 30Mbps to the home for a lot less money than BoP but but I haven’t seen anyone deploy that idea, nor do I expect them to.

Investment in fiber is difficult to make for residential because of the long term ROI. That’s why most companies have abandoned it. The population density in the U.S along with the lack of new home construction and infrastructure mean that almost the only group willing to throw money at FTTH is the federal government since hey, it’s not their money and they need more votes. Whether it’s the most efficient use of our tax money is irrelevant. In the meantime, wireless costs have come way down while capacity has increased. Of course, cable companies haven’t been sitting on their hands and their capacity has increased simultaneously. DSL, well let’s just say that the DSL companies are still evaluating expanding into the Realty and Moving and Storage businesses. I really like the new marketing plan in Phoenix calling DSL “Heavy Duty or HD Internet. I almost crashed my car I when I saw that billboard I was laughing so hard. I was thinking HD stood for Howdy Doody Internet after several more crashes of my service again this week.

Being the wireless technical gurus that we all are, we just simply say throw up AP’s everywhere which is what municipal wireless and mesh systems tried to do. This would cover about half the calls I have gotten from people interested in these types of projects. One minute of explanation concerning getting access rights and insurance along with pesky little details like ROI, and the conversation ends. As I pointed out in the last article, as cheap as wireless is to deploy compared to fiber, it’s just as difficult to recoup the ROI because it’s difficult to deliver a triple-play solution which has the highest revenue. It’s also logistically difficult, expensive, and a very long term project to deploy hundreds of vertical assets around a city, assuming you can even get access to them. Nowadays interference, as pointed out in Chapter 13, is also a way of life.

If you have read all the articles, the blueprint is already there for alternative municipal deployments or my favorite phrase, Guerilla Wireless. The devil is in the details and implementation. We needed an inexpensive source of Internet which we found for as little as $1 per Mb. We need a backhaul infrastructure that can support up to 2Gbps or more. That’s off the shelf today with all the licensed and unlicensed equipment out there and throughput ranging up to 4Gbps or more. Our last mile equipment on the client side is less than $100. We also know that we can build systems capable of delivering last mile up to 30Mbps or more to residential or business systems with AP’s costing as little as $100.

Part of the formula in calculating ROI in an area depends on whether you are using PTMP, open WiFi, or a hybrid model to provide service. It’s also important to decide if you are going to compete on price alone or on service levels. Going head to head with comparative pricing has been the battle that wireless hasn’t been able to fight. We can fight that now. However, you are going to have to make sure that your system is rock solid. In addition, if you can get $40 dollars or more, regardless of the deliverable bandwidth, your numbers start to look better. With all the people who are dropping cable TV and going to Internet TV only, if you can deliver the bandwidth, you can compete and be profitable. Keep the TV thing in mind as you calculate other revenue streams also. Also keep in mind the billing structure for your local power company. These are hints to maximize your revenue per bandwidth.

Now you are probably thinking that I’ve left out an important piece such as vertical assets. Again, I point out that I gave the blueprint for how to install systems in many environments. What I haven’t covered is how to get local assets, get the support of the community behind you, and do it for little or no monthly costs. You aren’t getting around the Capex part but if you can get a lot of your vertical assets and contribute to the community on many levels, that’s a huge advantage. WiFi is a game of inches (thank you Vince Lombardi) that has to be played at that level. It also has to be played at the political level. However, put the right players in the game to handle these, coupled with a solid technical team and the numbers work. Your team has to be fast, ambitious, and willing to take risks.

Let’s add a few more tools into our toolbox first. The biggest tool is using single building supporting a 4 square mile area for less than $3000 in equipment. We know that large brick buildings block 2.4GHz and above pretty well (assume from the back of the antenna, not the front). Instead of putting antennas on the tops of buildings, let’s look at putting the radios on the side of the buildings. I can see property managers cringing already because they don’t want their buildings looking like NASA. However, our equipment is fairly small. For example, a Ubiquiti Nanostation 2M is about 11 inches tall and 3 inches wide. This AP supports up to 100Mbps+ of real world throughput with a 20MHz wide channel using 802.11N. It’s basically the size of a brick. Paint it red (assuming red brick), hang it 30-100+ feet in the air and nobody would even see it. Throw three of them on a wall and there is 300+Mbps shooting one direction. It’s easy to hit a laptop with these at 1000 feet LOS. This fits pretty much every school out there and since most of the high schools already rent their light poles for cellular phones, it’s not much of a stretch to get the building.

Now throw in the 5GHz versions of the same radio on the same wall using four 20MHz channels in 5.8GHz, and you have 700MHz of bandwidth shooting in one direction. The brick wall eliminates interference from behind the behind or on the sides. Expand this out to 4 walls and 2.8Gbps of bandwidth is now available all over the surrounding area of the building. Assuming the building is 60’ and the houses around the area are 30’ with few trees above 40’, outdoor 5.8GHz CPE’s could easily connect back up to 2-5 miles away with less than $150 in equipment. So for $3000 in radio equipment, you are delivering a massive amount of bandwidth from a central location.

If a student could get direct access to school computer assets at a high bandwidth rates, think about what other services the schools could offer. How does the idea of “Education Everywhere” sound? This was one of my earlier ideas to bring better assets to students and more control to their online experience. Also think in terms of low cost access, breaking the digital divide, and political capital. This idea has many legs.

Don’t stop at schools though. Any brick building with 30’ of height or more is a potential vertical asset. In some cases, you can make a deal to provide internet for a fee inside the building to tenants. In other cases, you might have to give something away for free but you still get the asset. Compared to hundreds or thousands of dollars that cellular or data companies pay for vertical assets, this isn’t a bad idea. You just have to scale the cost to the potential market. In this game, you don’t get the advantage of amortizing losing areas across the big picture.

I leave the details of physically running cabling (through the wall or conduit outside the wall) and bolting against the wall to each individual installer. For example, if there is metal flashing on the roof, it might be easier to use a strap over the roof and paint the radio the same color as the flashing. If you are in the middle of the wall, it might be easier to drill through and bolt in from the back while running the cable through the same hole. There are a hundred ways to make it aesthetically pleasing, but there is no denying the performance capability. If you are really ambitious, you can build a metal box around each one of the radios to reduce noise and tighten up the beam patterns. Of course the installation, switches, and trying to figure out where to get 3Gbps of back end bandwidth is still an issue. I would estimate a full deployment like this around $10K in Arizona.

Take this down to a smaller scale also. One of the complaints for residential deployment is that there may not be vertical assets in every area. Wrong. There are vertical assets in every area. Tell me that there isn’t at least 1 person every square mile that would trade free internet for roof rights to their house. My guess is that there is 10 times that. Because the coverage zone is short, ½ mile every direction, it’s extremely cheap (less than $1000 installed) and quick to install this type of system. If you sell to 10 people per square mile, your monthly vertical asset cost is 1/10^th the monthly revenue or $50. Even if you don’t trust the people in the house to pay the electrical bill, it’s not that expensive to add a meter. Who needs lights when every house on the planet is a potential vertical asset?

On the house, think chimney with some type of metallic shield if you want the signal isolation. Four AP’s with 400Mbps of bandwidth up there cost less than $300 for 360 degrees of short range coverage. If it’s a smaller area, even a single omni-directional antenna can deliver 40 Mbps. If there area is covered with trees, chimneys aren’t high enough, or the Home Owner’s association is run by Ghengis Kahn, then use your imagination. In areas where you aren’t sure that your AP site is going to be stable, use 1x1 802.11N radios with omni-directional antennas on the surrounding client areas so that if you have to move the AP, you don’t have to reposition a bunch of client radios.

Plan for your system to be dynamic and budget for that. Wireline companies generally don’t have that issue. However, the ability to be dynamic and spontaneous is also the advantage to WiFi. As long as you plan on that type of environment instead of being surprised, then this model become significantly more successful.

All of these ideas and techniques are to provide the tools to make WiFi competitive. However, these are still just the technical ideas without getting into the financial details. I wouldn’t propose them if I didn’t know they could be financially successful. If your focus is 100% technical, this doesn’t work. You will absolutely need someone with business and marketing experience to make this happen. I keep learning about new ideas that can generate more revenue daily if the infrastructure is in place, so don’t limit yourself to simply being a bandwidth providers. Associations and strategic partnerships are just as important to the creation of a growing system.

With the economy in a slump, there is always a place for someone to come in and do something cheaper, better, and more efficiently. Southwest isn’t the leader in the industry because they made the best martinis in First Class. They used their people more efficiently and delivered what the client wants. WiFi has the same option as demonstrated by Triad Wireless and other companies. Let’s get it moving people.

Chapter 14 - Money Talks

I have gotten calls from many people that want to start a WISP company, whether using a mesh/muni model or a PTMP system. Although I believe there is no better time than now, that doesn’t mean it’s easy but I hope to prove that it’s financially feasible everywhere. Competing against satellite or cellular services like EVDO, WiMax, or even LTE is a no-brainer in areas that have no wireline services. I’ll cover the new Sprint/Clearwire LTE service just announced for Phoenix in another article. I can build small, profitable financial models all day that can provide superior services even at subscriber/bandwidth models of 10-1. There are also other services like VoIP that can be provided but for the beginning of this analysis, we are going to focus on Internet services only. However, let’s take this into the professional corporate/investor level and see what happens.

Breaking this down into 3 areas and 2 types of design models to cover areas. These areas are a gross oversimplification because each area has different RF models that also have to be considered based on how RF friendly they are. However, for the sake of argument, let’s use these numbers:

1. 
   
   Rural – 20 or less potential subscribers per square mile
2. 
   
   Suburb – 600 potential subscribers per square mile (2700 people per square mile in Phoenix)
3. 
   
   City – 3,000 plus potential subscribers per square mile (Boston 12000 people per square mile)

The 2 basic types of models are PTMP and WiFi. So, let’s look at how each of these models can be deployed profitably. We covered inexpensive WiFi systems early on and I still stand by that model, but let’s analyze it a little more critically and see where it fits in the big picture. More important than anything, is it possible to build a system that has the financial strength to be a growing and profitable company versus Joe Technical’s weekend hobby?

As many WISPs have successfully demonstrated, clearly it’s possible to be profitable if you market in some rural areas. Assuming a starting company of 4 people, the revenue generated has to be around $40,000 per month to be profitable at the low end. I’m just summarizing some of the spreadsheets that I have used so you will have to take my word on the cost structure. With an average monthly rate of $30 per month per client, we calculate that it will take 1333 clients to make that type of revenue each month. By all accounts, that’s a pretty impressive size to jump right into. Keep in mind this doesn’t include your original Capex and how much investment you need to get to 1333 clients. It’s not going to be cheap.

If you are a hot-spot provider, you get revenue from hourly, daily, and weekly rates. Those markets are also shrinking in the U.S. for the most part but some new ideas for phone users are coming forth. In this discussion, we are going to focus on the monthly subscribers. There are also other revenue sources such as installation revenue, business rates that are higher than personal subscriber rates, and other normal ISP types of services. Additional services might require additional staff with more expertise, thus raising the associated monthly costs.

Rural markets are easy. Set up a PTMP system on whatever inexpensive vertical assets you can get access to. If there is not a lot of vegetation, these systems can handle36 square miles easily per tower and up to 300+ users per tower. This assumes you don’t already have competition in the area and there is no interference. You just need 7 towers with 200 users on each tower cover your monthly expenses and be profitable. If there are any of these areas left in the U.S., let me know but I’m not going to hold my breath.

However, there are some rural markets that are underserved simply because of distance, vegetation, and costs of deployment. They may not have 1300 clients, but find a few of them with a couple hundred clients per area and the plan still works. Some of these areas were just not reasonable to do with 2.4GHz or 5.8GHz. They may have been a good 900MHz radio option but limits in equipment, the band, and interference mean that most of the 900MHz products either only delivered 1.5Mbps or the cost of deployment was too high. Newer 802.11N 2x2 MIMO equipment that is hitting the market now should allow for an improvement in throughput in these areas with client bandwidth similar to anything available in the 2.4 and 5.8GHz bands and cost far less. Depending on the design, it should be reasonably easy to promise 10Mbps to a client on the wireless link depending on back end bandwidth. 900Mhz isn’t an ideal band due to limited spectrum width and interference in city or even suburban deployments. However, it extends out the range of clients in dense vegetation areas. In most rural deployments without too much interference, I would expect bandwidth off a centralized tower to max out around 160Mbps with the right setup in 900MHz.

Let’s move into the suburbs now. Most suburbs are served by cable, DSL, or a combination of both. To be honest, DSL is simply not living up to the hype of the marketing division. In Phoenix, Qwest advertises speeds up to 20Mbps when they are lucky to hit 3Mbps, even within 1 mile of Sky Harbor Airport in the middle of the city. Move 300 feet and not only can they barely deliver 640Kbps, they can’t keep it running more than a month or two before it to crashes again. In my case, after I complained for the umpteenth time, they told me with one more complaint they would pull out of our business complex leaving me with no wireline high-speed bandwidth. I had to move my office just to get 3Mbps after several years of subpar service. Even if you are satisfied with your DSL service, it only takes one bad technician adding one more client in your area to cause it slow down or crash again. If this is the main provider of service in your area, I say let the best technology win. I will take WiFi based wireless over any area where DSL is the only technology available. That alone means that major cities still have opportunities.

Cable is another matter. Cable companies are promising huge amounts of bandwidth today and for the most part are very technically stable. In Phoenix, I have a 20Mbps circuit. However, I get around 11Mbps on Speedtest or Speakeasy most of the time. Other times I have seen it down to 1Mbps. Even though you may pay for a specific level of bandwidth, there is no SLA that you will be delivered that level as opposed to a business level SLA agreement. The reality is that the bandwidth advertised is the burst speed or web browsing speed. If you download or try to move large files such as video or a file transfer, that speed will be reduced significantly. However, other than fiber to my house which I doubt I will see in my lifetime, it’s the usually the fastest option.

In either case, this isn’t a market where 1Mbps is going to fly. Even Grandma and Grandpa are watching NetFlix. Google TV is no longer an urban legend either. Throw in every game machine out there downloading movies and unless you are willing to run with the big dogs, this is not a battle ground you want to enter. I’m talking about a wireless service where you plan in advance on delivering 5Mbps average to everyone with peaks up to 50Mbps or more and no more than an 8-1 bandwidth to user ration. 802.11 b/g/a won’t fly here. You have to be ready to invest in bringing a large bandwidth pipe in and the subsequent costs of deploying 1333 users. I have numbers on both PTMP and Muni-WiFi models but to simplify this model and since the area is generic, let’s assume a 50-50 model.

Since we are estimating 600 households per square mile (houses and multi-dwelling unit) and assuming we get 20% of that market, we need about 10 square miles to meet our $40,000 revenue total. That also means we need about 4 towers or building assets to ensure we have LOS to all the locations. Estimating a cost of $25K for the backhaul (assuming the entire system is wireless) gives you 2Gbps. However, it might make more sense for a local fiber, MPLS, or even cable backhaul although using a company for your backhaul that you plan on competing against may not be the best idea. Unless you consider bringing an anti-trust lawsuit against multiple telcom providers while they drive you out of business a fun time, you probably want to find other local carriers. In the end, we have determined that the tower installations will cost about $125,000.

Since half the clients are WiFi, we are still going to have to install 16 APs or more per square mile. I’m going to use that number along with some numbers on designs I’m working on now to come up with $30,000K and 360Mbps per square mile. Each AP will deliver up to 100Mbps to start with and if you go back to previous articles, can deliver several hundred Mbps if needed. Since we have the vertical assets, backhaul to the street lights is taken care of. The problem here is that it still costs us $300,000K and is the largest part of the Capex. Additional revenue sources have to be found here to justify this but we will discuss this later.

Our numbers assume that half of the clients will require truck rolls. That will cost $195,000 to deploy. Considering that each technician can do about 4 installations a day, it will take 160 man days to install enough clients. Since there is only about 20 workdays per month, it will take 8 crews to get up to this number within a month. Most of us would have to outsource this unless you have several friends with days off who also happen to work as installers for Direct TV. The revenue on installations will range from $0 to $200 depending on the market. Assume $100 and the net cost of deployment is going to run about $60K.

The other 650 clients can be installed any time since they are WiFi based. Either they can connect directly or some type of CPE device can be made available. Let’s call that a no Capex cost since $50 will come pretty close to the actual cost.

To summarize, the Capex for this model costs $530,000 to deploy. Even if we net $10K per month which is reasonable, this isn’t going to fly financially with a 4.5-year ROI. This is also a maximum bandwidth system than can compete directly with Cable/DSL/LTE or anything else out there for the near future. Scaling it out further doesn’t improve the ROI but it sure increases the revenue stream. So, how can we make it more cost effective? There are two ways, reduce the cost or find more revenue.

Start with the idea that we only need 100Mbps per square mile in the beginning. This reduces tower costs down to $15K per square mile for a backhaul system that will support 720Mbps instead of 2Gbps. We just saved $75K. It also drops the per mile costs of the WiFi system to about $20K per square mile. That’s another $100K on the savings side.

There isn’t much that can be done on the truck rolls other than to consider the option of doing the installations in house. That saves about $50 per installation but it may take 3-6 months to get up to 650 installations. That’s also more reasonable in most models that I have developed. What I didn’t take into account is the advertising necessary for this speed of penetration but there are several cost-effective ways to do this. I’m leaving this number alone for that reason.

The cost is now down to $360K. The ROI is down to 3 years but is still not that reasonable except for this, cable companies are not reducing their rates. In fact, they keep going up along with the bandwidth. One of the reasons is that they are being squeezed on the TV side by content providers demanding more revenue per users. At the same time, it’s much more difficult to raise TV cable rates due to competition from satellite providers and local ordinances. People are also dropping land lines faster than a Bugatti Veyron because of cellular phones. As much as I complain about cruddy DSL service, the reality is that it has also taken many of the Internet clients from cable due to low cost, which helps to drive the prices down. You do get what you pay for however. Hey DSL companies, here is an idea. Instead of trying to bring fiber to the home which you clearly can’t cost justify, how about just bringing it down the street so my little modem doesn’t have to connect 3 miles away across some 20 year old wires. If anybody needed a wireless option, the DSL companies do and they have boxes on almost every street. Having those assets for a wireless design would be my wildest dreams but for some reason, they can’t get off the wired mentality.

There are other revenue sources for this that I have covered in previous articles. Think through some ideas with cell phones, hot spots, multi-dwelling buildings, backhaul, VoIP, other ISP and business services, and the ROI actually starts dropping to about 2 years or less. If you have an existing company that already has sales people, project managers, and office staff in place, then the costs of getting to this point is pretty reasonable. Peg that at about $50K. Starting this project from scratch probably means about $150K. That adds 6-18 months on the ROI. Scaling the system and deploying more slowly puts out the ROI but reduces the Capex as the system starts paying for itself in about a year. There are many ways to play with the numbers but the bottom line is this, it’s now possible to compete with wireline services in any market. I’m also basing my numbers on what equipment can be bought today. I am pretty sure tomorrow may bring many more surprises that will change the financial and technology foundation of WiFi and that tomorrow is far closer than we think.

Chapter 13 - Interference isnt a Hockey Penalty

Unlicensed frequencies mean that interference is a way of life in most major cities. The question is what to do when all the frequencies you plan on using or even radios that are in operation start having errors. I just came from an installation like that. In addition, then I was asked to design an expansion to the system. One of the clues was that interference is a problem is when things work for a couple weeks and packet errors in the log jump from nothing to tens of thousands.

By default, most of us set up our networks with 20MHz wide channels. That’s the default for 2.4GHz WiFi and usually the default for most 5.8GHz deployments. However, what happens when we do a site survey and 500 APs show up on the list? If the design is already deployed, your options are limited. You basically have three:

1. 
   
   Find the least interfered channel. I usually don’t hold much hope out for that.
2. 
   
   Increase power at the possible expense of reduced modulation rates – which should also be titled “How to make new friends”
3. 
   
   Reduce channel width down to 10 or even 5 MHz – not an option with WiFi hotspots
4. Play FCC Russian Roulette and and use channels you aren’t supposed to be on with way more power than are legally allowed in those bands anyway. It seems that for those of people violating FCC rules, they must figure if you are going to break one rule, might as well break two. I have even seen systems set up by consultants and utilized by police departments on these frequencies. If the FCC ever drove through towns with sniffers they way Google did with cameras, the fines alone would solve the National Debt.

If you control both sides of the radio equipment equation, a combination of these together might squeeze out better performance and minimize the interference with a little patience. Sometimes you just have to take the best option out of bad choices. For example, is it better to have a 20MHz wide channel with a few errors or a 10MHz wide channel with no errors? That same argument applies with a 20MHz wide channel with more power which might reduce modulation versus a 10MHz wide channel with lower power and higher modulation. Keep in mind that you are now running your design on the edge so that any new interference will probably degrade your system even further. On the other hand, you might be disrupting someone else enough that they move to another band.

Designing the system from the beginning provides more options than having to fix an existing system. Let’s get something out right now. If tomorrow you decided to deploy a PTMP system with wide angle sector antennas in an unlicensed frequency band in a major city, you are not going to be the first one in those bands. This means expect interference and plan for it. Use the first three ideas and let someone else who should be working at McDonalds instead of consulting in the wireless industry, use option 4. If you get bored, site survey the band and give the FCC a little heads up on what you found in the 5.0-5.6GHz bands.

The strategy you develop from here is going to depend on the type of application. If the application is WISP services where you are trying to cover a general area, good luck. I’m not saying it can’t be done, it’s just going to be about as easy as washing a cat in the tub. Throwing up 90 degree or more sector antennas or even worse, omni-directional antennas is simply inviting problems. Not only are you going to tick off everyone around you, they are going to return the favor out of pure self-preservation.

Let’s start with the idea that deploying anything with 802.11a/b/g today is also simply a waste of bandwidth. Go right for 802.11n and try to go for 2x2 MIMO. However, keep in mind that as hard as the standards body tried, 802.11n simply doesn’t work well with legacy devices. It’s not that they won’t function, it’s just the legacy devices slow down 802.11n radios and simultaneously 802.11n will interfere with 802.11a/b/g radios. Throw in some manufacturer proprietary settings and things get even more interesting. Other than the basic ideas above, is there a way to work in a high-interference environment?

Start by thinking of your English 101 class in college. Charlemagne said, “let my armies be the rocks and the trees and the birds in the sky”. Let’s change that to “let my shields be the trees and the buildings”. Even though RF engineers in 2.4GHz frequencies and above look at vegetation and buildings as the enemy, they can also be allies in a design. Instead of fighting RF interference in the open air 10 floors or more above the city, take the battle to the ground where the buildings and trees block interference. Taking an RF survey 300’ in the air is a whole lot different than taking one standing on a corner block surrounded by trees and buildings.

So now you must be thinking that we are back to metropolitan WiFi. Actually no. WiFi assumes 2.4GHz and even at ground level is probably pretty congested. However, there is an FCC rule called the 3-1 rule pushed through by Vivato with the FCC. We pretty much know the current omnidirectional rule for WiFi, 30dBm radios with 6dBi omni-antennas. However, the 3-1 rule means that in a PTP link we can increase the antenna gain by 3dB if we reduce the power output by 1dB. If we are going PTP at ground level in 2.4GHz where we know interference is going to be an issue, some really directional equipment might work pretty well. It shouldn’t be too hard to get a 52dBm signal to go 2 blocks with directional antennas 15’ off the ground. This can be achieved with a 30dBm antenna and a power output of 22dBm. Obviously I’m joking but the point I’m trying to make is that highly directional antennas at ground level in any band will be very effective, even in high-noise environments. Drop the channel width down to 5MHz with a 2x2 MIMO 802.11N radio and your interference issues will probably become a memory. Some poor schmuck in the middle of this link might get hammered however, especially if he is using a legacy device. Let your conscience be your guide here.

5.8GHz works even better in this environment if the trees aren’t in the way. Testing has shown that 2.4GHz 2x2 MIMO dual-polarity will punch through trees but 5.8GHz works about as well as a political candidate does once he gets elected. It might work or it might not. Either way it’s not reliable. The buildings will also kill 5.8GHz signals from above, leaving the ground wide open. There aren’t a lot of indoor APs using 5GHz bands yet but with up to 53dBm of signal output, interference will be a memory. In reality, you really don’t need or actually want 50+dBm of signal to go 2 blocks unless you are shooting through dense rainforest but the concept of using highly directional antennas at ground levels might solve some problems.

Taking that further, if you are using a proprietary polling scheme like Motorola or Ubiquiti or frequency hopping, the noise those APs will generate will be massive. Using this technique in a financially feasible manner, assuming you don’t have the government’s open pocketbook backing you, requires either a mesh type radio with directional antennas or a generic radio that can be either an AP or a CPE device, depending on settings. There are also many variations of this that can work quite well also.

I am finding that almost every environment that I’m going into is challenging me to come up with new variations of designs to be successful either technically or financially. The old hub and spoke model is much more difficult to deploy in a city today when there are thousands of radios already deployed with many of them not following the FCC rules in either frequency or power output. Rising or high internet costs coupled with lower equipment costs are now opening up new competitive markets for wireless that require new financial models that actually work.

This design is specifically oriented towards a fixed location model in a high interference environment with talk buildings. Dynamic location designs have to be done differently because you don’t have fixed CPE locations. We covered this in some of the previous articles. Omnidirectional antenna use in a municipal environment just doesn’t fly any more. In lower population density environments, things are different. In the middle of a major city however, use the environment to your advantage.

On a side note, it’s been pointed out to me that I should probably proofread my posts a little further. I notice a few “minor” typos that I miss in my haste to get these done. Unfortunately this isn’t my day job and my wife who clearly proofed the first few, just doesn’t have time to keep me from looking like I never took a technical writing class before. She also hates the first person style in a technical document and gave me the Rollie Eye every time she took out a “you” and “we”. So, I’m down to proofing myself and I’m hoping that content is more important than grammar. Proofing these takes twice as long as writing them. So, if you the reader are willing to let the grammatical errors slide by, I’ll try and get them out a little quicker.

"Rory Conaway" - Triad Wireless