Backbone Installation Begins for UC San Diego's High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network

Though brisk temperatures and harsh winds stalled the backbone installation for a few days, significant progress is being made this week with the NSF-funded High Performance Wireless Research and Education Network (HPWREN). The HPWREN team is creating, demonstrating, and evaluating a non-commercial, prototype, high-performance, wide-area, wireless network in San Diego county. Specifically, HPWREN includes a 45Mbps full duplex wireless backbone, using 5.8GHz radios, while the access lines will commonly use inexpensive and off-the-shelf 2.4GHz 802.11 spread spectrum radios.

Two antennas have now been mounted at Stephenson Peak, one pointing toward SDSU's Mount Laguna Observatory (MLO) and another toward Cuyamaca Mountains; the heliax cables will soon be attached as well. Meanwhile, installation of the MLO antenna has also been completed.

The NSF-funded network includes additional backbone nodes at UCSD and a number of "hard to reach" areas in San Diego county. The next installation locations for the high speed backbone will include Cuyamaca Mountains, Mount Woodson, and SDSC.

For additional photographs regarding the HPWREN backbone nodes, please refer to https://cdn.hpwren.ucsd.edu/images/techno.html#Backbone.

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