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Hi All

I just got a new wireless project and the thing is:

Every ship(very big ones, full of metal crates, etc) that arrives at the pier must exchange data with an application.
The server resides in a house at the pier and every ship must have a laptop or similar to connect to the server and use the application.
My question is:

What kind of antennas (inside the ship and at the pier) should be used? What is the best 802.11 technology is best for the solution?
Ps: The max number of ships in the pier is 2...

Thanks a lot for the help guys, cause i'm new with wireless and any help would be appreciated!

I'm guessing that it would be very difficult to assure a high quality connection with a very focused signal (high gain antenna like a yagi). Therefore, I would consider a Sector antenna on the pier, with something like a 90-180 degree horizontal radius - depending on how the boats come into the pier.

http://www.ydi.com/products/antenna24/hp180-14.php
http://www.ydi.com/products/antenna24/lp14.php

Don't forget your downtilt angel calculations:

http://www.ydi.com/calculation/antenna-downtilt.php

On the boats, I would consider a high gain omni antenna made to withstand the elements.

http://www.ydi.com/products/antenna24/a2410.php

Make sure the antennas are polarized the same on each side and mounted correctly.

Devinator

Yes. Phased array antennas should do the trick.

Vivato offers this solution.

http://www.vivato.net/download/Marine%20Deploy.pdf

You should get them cheaper with YDI.

compughter

Vivato's solution is definitely not a fit for this situation. Their "WLAN Switch" has multiple APs in a single box, and since there can be no more than 2 clients at any time (2 ships), there's no need for so many APs.

Oops thanks Devinator. This is why we need forum experts like you (Devinator) to keep us straight.

Is the Vivato solution good for a marina with many boats in the dock? What about the propagation of the radio waves in and around the metal and water?

Thanks
compughter

I think where there were many boats coming and going at different ranges from the pier and each boat needed a reasonable amount of continuous throughput, the vivato would work ok. Vivato's solution doesn't have any special features to help with multipath, such as MIMO. In a case where multipath is really bad, you would want to be looking for a MIMO-based outdoor solution with appropriate antennas.

Devinator

That sounds like a winner. Will this MIMO wireless RF solution be an updated technology as well as the WiMax (802.16) in the next CWNA book? I know the standards are still being worked with most of these advances with wireless.

Planet3 is probably working overtime with an effort to revise the others and did see your update on the CWAP book release. Lot's of good work involved, yet well worth the investment for us ever learning proponents of wireless.


Thanks again,
compughter