The triumph of intelligent multipoint-to-multipoint wireless mesh architecture

The world's longest wireless network based on mesh technology has been deployed in Thailand. The network, built by an American company Firetide, covers a distance of 372 km. It has been conceived as a kind of a gift from Thailand’s Royal Irrigation Department to the 84 year old King of Thailand, Bhumibol Adulyadej. The network is to provide images of the floodplains of the river Chao Phraya. Due to his age, the king is no longer able to oversee the monitored areas in person. The implementation of such a gift turned out to be technically challenging.

The total cost of the world's longest wireless mesh network is about 2 million USD. However, this sum of money is not large considering the fact that during the last monsoon season the network gave the chance to save hundreds of people from flooding. The Thai network belongs to the group of early warning systems for floods.

The images from the cameras are available on the Internet at this address.

Google Maps application provides information on the location of each camera.

 

 

The entire network has been built based on mesh technology. The main advantages of this type of network architecture include auto-configuration and full redundancy in the case of a node/link failure. The latter feature is guaranteed by an automatic change of the route of data packets, which is particularly important in so large and responsible systems.
The main components of the network are 64 Firetide HotPort 7020 wireless mesh nodes and 27 Panasonic PTZ WV-SW395E cameras. The distances between nodes range from 20 to 45 km. The total throughput of the network is as much as 240 Mbps, with node-to-node latency below 1 ms.

High throughput is achieved by the use of Firetide HotPort 7020 mesh nodes, compliant with 802.11n standard and implementing MIMO multi-antenna technology, with 40 MHz wide channels. The routing of the frames is based on proprietary AutoMesh mechanism, based on the 802.11s standard for wireless mesh networks approved in the last year. [source: firetide.com]

Last year's approval of the 802.11s standard can accelerate the popularization of wireless mesh technology. Until now, mesh networks were mostly implemented as experimental projects, not having much in common with the commercial market. Today, in addition to the large-scale undertaking in Thailand, some more "ordinary" projects are carried out, such as the city video surveillance system in Altanta, with 110 cameras. Time will tell whether mesh technology will be more popular on European markets.