Rob Ricci

Yesterday we took a group of folks from industry, government and the press on a tour of some of the #PowderWireless infrastructure.

This is one of five cell-like towers we own on the #UofU campus. (This one is on Wasatch Drive near the roundabout, for those familiar with the area.) These (plus one more on a building) are placed so that they cover one of our campus bus routes; the buses have end-user-type devices on them that can connect to these towers.

The cabinet at the bottom hosts a collection of software-defined radios that #wireless #research folks use to build their own customized #5G networks - or, because they are #SDR, really, anything, including #spectrum monitors, #LoRA networks, channel sounding, etc.

There is some compute available right there roadside, plus these are connected by fiber to some big datacenters nearby including #Emulab and #CloudLab.

https://powderwireless.net/dense

Powder - Dense Deployment

Website for Powder

Jan 27, 2023 at 5:46pmWeb
Show threadAlan SillJan 27, 2023
@ricci Interesting! What steps do you find you have to undertake typically to ruggedize these?
Show threadRob RicciJan 27, 2023
@AlanSill Excellent question. :) We pay a company called Pixus to ruggedize the compute and SDRs; this basically means encasing them in a huge watertight heatsink. (The devices themselves are Intel NUCs and NI USRPs) This is not cheap, and is very slow (I think we've been waiting on ruggedizing some for over 6 months now due to supply chain problems). But its better than trying to get AC for the cabinets.