Local CDF Firefighters Participate in HPWREN Mobile Rapid Response Demonstration

Despite wet and foggy conditions, HPWREN researchers and local California Department of Forestry (CDF) firefighters recently demonstrated a rapid response mobile wireless access point via a relay using tripod-mounted antennas.

The connectivity originated from the HPWREN 45 Mbps backbone node at Mount Woodson, where an antenna was mounted atop a rock pointing toward Iron Mountain, the relay point, which communicated via an additional tripod-mounted antenna with Dos Picos Park, a pre-determined incident base for CDF firefighters.

All equipment involved with the demonstration was "off-the-shelf", and specifics regarding the setups at Mount Woodson, Iron Mountain, and Dos Picos are as follows:

Mount Woodson setup A radio controller, connected via a 170'cable to the tripod-mounted yagi antenna, was used at Mount Woodson. The setup also included a 1 Watt amplifier for the radio signal.

Iron Mountain relay setup:
A radio controller, equipped with two radio cards, was used on Iron Mountain. The radio cards were connected via coaxial cables and 1 Watt amplifiers to the yagi antennas: one pointing toward Mount Woodson, the other pointing to a location in the Dos Picos park. Power regulators were used to supply the radio and amplifiers with appropriate power levels.

Dos Picos access point setup: The Dos Picos setup emulated a staging or incident facility, with a laptop using a PCMCIA radio card and connected to a tripod-mounted yagi antenna - without other equipment or power sources needed. An amplifier was omitted from the laptop so that equipment requirements for the field location were kept to a minimum.

-KMB