Pacom’s Fluidmesh 1100, 2200 wireless links

12 Jan 2010
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Fluidmesh wireless links, distributed in Australia by Pacific Communications, offer integrators and end users smart and flexible solutions to some of the toughest data transmission applications.

ONE of the great challenges for security integrators and for end users securing large sites and multiple centralised locations across public and open spaces is managing comms paths. While in some instances it’s possible to piggyback on existing cabled infrastructure, where such infrastructure doesn’t exist, the cost of trenching and side boring makes quality wireless an extremely appealing option.

 

It’s here that Fluidmesh Networks comes in. The company is a collaboration between MIT in the U.S. and Italy’s Mila Politecnico and the company’s technical grounding makes the Fluidmesh product very solid indeed.

 

At the heart of Fluidmesh is a wireless transmission protocol that’s been built to handle video and critical applications. As part of this focus, Fluidmesh devices automatically detect the arrival of video packets, identifies their type (MPEG-4, MPEG-2, H.264, I-Frame, P-Frame) and transport protocol and then adjusts the wireless transmission to best support each one.

“The EasyMesh platform lets integrators and users configure wireless solutions as Layer 2 using a single subnet for the whole system or as a Layer 3 network for more complicated solutions”


According to Fluidmesh, the company’s technology supports multicast transmission, which reduces camera bandwidth and load on IP devices like IP cameras, encoders, access control systems and switches attached to a Fluidmesh port. The EasyMesh platform lets integrators and users configure wireless solutions as Layer 2 using a single subnet for the whole system or as a Layer 3 network for more complicated solutions.

 

Then there’s another neat Fluidmesh innovation – the melding of EasyMesh with FMQuadro – a web-based interface that allows users to manage and even configure the system with no external software. Excellent, too, FMQuadro gives full network status in graphical form and in real time. There are online warnings of problems like low signal, high link error rate and network congestion. There’s also an embedded spectrum analyser that allows scanning of supported network bands for the optimal channel in a given location.

 

Fluidmesh 1100

 

Supporting Fluidmesh applications are a range of devices, starting with the Fluidmesh 1100 single radio wireless unit is a quadri-band wireless Ethernet product designed to handle video surveillance and security applications. This little Fluidmesh 1100’s compact size makes it ideal for low visual impact installations particularly in urban areas.

The 1100 has an integrated panel antenna for easy installation and the ability to transmit line-of-sight signals for about 2.5km. An on-board low power PoE injectors ensures easy installation. A neat feature of Fluidmesh 1100 is FluidThrottle, which allows users to limit cost by paying only for the amount of bandwidth that’s required. If more throughput is required it can be achieved with software plugins. Other features of the Fluidmesh 1100 include FluidMax and EasyMesh.

 

Fluidmesh 2200 Duo

 

The 2200 Duo dual radio wireless unit is designed specifically for security and video surveillance applications, the great strength of of 2200 Duo is that it’s able to transmit the video streams coming from the cameras attached to it and dynamically route packets coming from other Fluidmesh units via the optical path.

 

The Duo 2200 features a pair of quadric-band radios with N-Female connectors that can operate at 2.4GHz, 4.9GHz and modulate up to 108Mbps. You can use the dual-band capability to double bandwidth for full duplex links. Duo 2200 incorporates EasyMesh and FMQuadro, and secures signals with AES-128 encryption support. The Duo 2200 housing is IP68/NEMA6P – that’s a submersible outdoor enclosure.

 

Fluidmesh 2200 Endo

 

The Fluidmesh 2200 Endo is another dual-radio wireless product that designed to be embedded in custom made outdoor enclosures for special applications. The 2200 incorporates the same hardware and software as the Duo 2200 but in a more compact unit. This includes a pair of quadri-band radios, EayMesh and FMQuadro.

 

There’s also FluidMAX – which can be used to build point-to-point, point-to-multipoint and Mesh architectures. Fluidmesh also supports the WiMax point-to-multipoint architecture and its wireless units can operate with a centralised or distributed medium access control protocol with the appropriate network design.

 

“A neat feature of Fluidmesh 1100 is FluidThrottle, which allows users to limit cost by paying only for the amount of bandwidth that’s required. If more throughput is required it can be achieved with software plugins”