Wireless Technology Part 1

There is a lot of talk and interest in wireless technology and how it relates to security. The security industry, for the most part, has embraced it. So in this post and those that follow I hope to provide some basic information that will aid you in the selection of a wireless solution and also help you determine if it is the right solution for your application.

This is part 1 of a 3 part series on this topic.

Part 1 - Basics to Wireless
Part 2 - Mobile Wireless
Part 3 - Tactical and Emergency Wireless

There are three main types of wireless WiFi, Point-to-Point and Mesh. First we will look at the most popular, WiFi.

WiFi is best described as a 2.4GHz ambient wireless cloud that conforms to the 802.11 standard. This is typically used for applications involving mobile computing, sometimes referred to as “hot spots". A device called an Access Point is used to transmit this ambient wireless cloud that can be seen by almost all laptops as well as some smart phones and PDAs. Although this is typically used for mobile computing it has been used in some security applications. The only real benefit is that it is easy to set up. However, because WiFi is so widely used it poses substantial security risk as well as the signal quality and bandwidth throughput is difficult to maintain because it is very subjectable to interference.

The next form of wireless is Point-to-Point. This can be seen in four main frequency ranges, 900MHz, 2.4GHz, 4.9GHz and 5.8GHz. (I will provide more information on the difference of these frequencies in another post) Point-to-Point wireless is ideal in applications involving long distances, greater than 5 miles (unless using 900MHz, which can not transmit that great of a distance). Usually this type of wireless is used to form a back haul, that is to provide a main link from one device back to the main network. Point-to-Point wireless works well in an open environment with good Radio Line of Sight (R-LoS). Strong links can be formed with good throughput. The down side to this type of wireless network is that if one of the radios goes down, the entire link is dead. Redundancy needs to be built into the network.

Wireless Mesh Network (WMN) also known as Multipoint-to-Multipoint wireless network also works in the same main frequencies as the Point-to-Point Wireless. WMN is becoming a favored technology in security applications for several reasons, security, reliability through redundancy, throughput and ease of use. WMN can be very secure allowing for multiple levels of encryption. Most wireless devices such as laptops and PDAs are unable to detect these networks which provides an additional level of security. WMN also have built in redundancy. If the WMN is properly designed there will be redundancy, if a radio fails another radio in the network will pick up the link and continue to transmit the data, providing virtually no single point of failure. Like with Point-to-Point wireless, WMN also provides a lot of throughout, as much as 70Mbps in some applications. And of course, it is easy to use. Again with proper design the WMN can be deployed in rapid and tactical applications.

Conclusion – wireless technology has made many advances in the past several years. We are only going to see it used more in more in security applications. It is important to have your wireless network properly designed in order to get the most out of it.