HPWREN Backbone Expands to Red Mountain and Mount Soledad

Three HPWREN antennas were recently mounted on the California Department of Forestry tower atop Red Mountain.

While one eight-foot dish points toward Mount Soledad, another 4-footer points toward the Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve. The new connectivity extends the 45 Mbps HPWREN backbone.

Additionally, a three-foot antenna for a 2.4GHz link points toward Palomar Mountain. This antenna will be used for HPWREN's collaborations with Native American Learning Centers (e.g., Pala and Rincon).

Given line of sight considerations, an additional relay site at a UCSD location on Mount Soledad became necessary, with one eight-foot antenna pointing toward Red Mountain, and a 6 foot antenna completing the link to the UCSD campus. Additional connectivity from Mount Soledad to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography will be used, in anticipation of earthquake sensors that are expected to be connected soon.

To accomodate a large number of sensors within the Santa Margarita Ecological Reserve (SMER), as well as video and high resolution imagery, the Red Mountain connection to SMER is capable of 45Mbps. Pablo Bryant and Bud Hale mount the SMER antenna to the Red Mountain tower.

The NSF-funded network includes additional backbone nodes at UCSD and a number of "hard to reach" areas in San Diego county. Future work the HPWREN team hopes to undertake includes a link from Red Mountain to Toro Peak, which would connect earthquake sensors in the Anza Borrego Desert. The team is also considering a link from Toro Peak to Mount Laguna, which would assure network redundancy.

Additional photographs regarding Red Mountain are available at https://cdn.hpwren.ucsd.edu/images/sites.html#Red.

Additional photographs regarding Mount Soledad are available at https://cdn.hpwren.ucsd.edu/images/sites.html#Soledad.

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