NewsBriefs
Korea Uses Wireless Mesh for Coastal Sensor Network
By KA Staff
Dec 20, 2006, 17:50

Koreans are safer from dangerous weather conditions now that the Korea Meteorological Administration (KMA) has installed wireless mesh networks to monitor islands off the country’s southern coast. The mesh networks connect remote weather forecasting equipment and video cameras to the KMA's network. 

The mesh networks are a good solution for connecting outdoor weather sensors to the main network because they can be used over large areas of land and water, according to Korea Telecom, which installed them. Traditional network cabling would be difficult, time-consuming, and expensive to install in these outlying islands and coastal areas.

The network connects equipment on Jeju and Woo islands that monitors climate trends for scientific research and maintains early warnings for Korean islanders. It can also be extended for other applications such as video monitoring of forest fires and providing low-cost mobile VoIP services to remote areas and offshore locations.

The system consists of small devices called mesh nodes that automatically link to each other to form the wireless network. The mesh nodes, made by Firetide, have Ethernet ports that allow any wired networking device, including video cameras and weather sensors, to operate wirelessly over the mesh.