A common misconception from the early days of SkyPilot is that our products’ high link budget is only applicable to long-range communications. At the time, we had customers spanning mountain tops across state boundaries, so it was understandable that users didn’t see how the equipment would apply to denser deployments like municipal Wi-Fi or smart metering networks. But the core technology of scheduling communications with high-gain directional antennas on both sides of the link has several benefits beyond long range, specifically in the areas of interference avoidance and capacity.
Regarding interference, transmitting with a directional antenna reduces the interference caused to other devices. Receiving with a directional antenna reduces the amount of interference received from other devices. Both of these compound and allow for many simultaneous devices in an extremely dense area such as municipal and utility smart grid networks. It is common to have two pairs of nodes communicating simultaneously just a few blocks apart.
Capacity is also increased since multiple communications can take place simultaneously within the same network. For instance, while a gateway is communicating to one first hop node, other first hop nodes in the same network can communicate to second hop nodes. In this way, the gateway is always active and overall system capacity is increased, which is important for very dense networks with many users in a small area.
And since both long range communications and dense node clustering are enabled by the same underlying technology, these characteristics can coexist in a single network. Many of our customers’ networks contain a wide range of node densities and it is common to see long range links connecting dense pockets of users in downtown areas or apartment complexes, along with individual paths to office buildings or power substations – all in a single network. Since our protocol dynamically schedules communications and controls the pointing of directional antennas, it applies equally well to many levels of network density.
Tags: mesh, municipal wifi, Protocol, smart meter