[MLB-WIRELESS] Wireless Testing Results

[Gerrod Bland]

FYI people ...

Last night I conducted some wireless testing with some very positive
results.  The tests were done from two overpasses on the Eastern freeway
to ensure the line of sight was as great as possible.  Point A (footbridge
in-between Springvale & Blackburn Rds) and Point B (Blackburn Rd overpass)
are 1.2km apart. Point A had a cheap "home made" 8dBi omni mounted on a
microphone stand ... Point B was rotated through a number of different
antennas, with measurements recorded for each.

Results:

Point A Antenna         Point B Antenna         Connection 	Throughput
Latency
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
homemade 8dBi omni      none                    none 		N/A 		N/A
homemade 8dBi omni      ex-galaxy directional   11Mb 		480KBps    	<10ms
homemade 8dBi omni      superpass 8dBi omni     5.5Mb 	190KBps   	~10ms
homemade 8dBi omni      homemade 8dBi omni      5.5Mb 	180KBps   	~10ms


As you can see the homemade antennas work out to be excellent value
($45ea, half the price of the Superpass alternatives) and whilst they're
aren't quite up to the standard of the superpass, they're definitely in
the same league.  The ex-galaxy antenna still has the original horn on it
which means the gain isn't great... and isn't much better than the omnis,
but we should be able to get the omni -> omni setup up to 11Mb with a
little bit of playing around. (Unfortunately we don't have any SNR
readings as the client software was playing up)

All in all I'm pretty damn happy with the results, which means I shouldn't
have much (if any) difficulty getting an 11Mb connection the to nodes in
my area.


Gerrod


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