Specifications

1. Introduction
1.1 Motivation: Advanced Acoustic Concepts (AAC) has several projects that require a
communications link between remote sites. The distances and data rates vary from project to
project, but they desire a solution that can handle many of their needs by using standards based
off the shelf equipment that can easily be deployed. To be quickly and cost affordable to deploy
a wireless system was determined to be necessary. This also affords the possibility to support
mobile and nomadic units that can be connected very easily with out the need for highly trained
technicians. AAC is experienced at using COTS (consumer off the shelf) components to meet
the needs of military subsystems. The benefits of using COTS components are that the
economics and availability are very good related to custom hardware. The cost and time of
development is also kept to a minimum. The goal of this project was to identify equipment that
is commercially available that would meet the telemetry needs of AAC, and then do lab testing
and a field test to do a proof of concept on both the product and the standard that it is based
upon.
The ideal telemetry system to meet all of the needs of AAC would provide a data rate of 50Mbps
at a range of 50 miles. No system that was investigated was able to simultaneously meet both
requirements. 20 Mbps at a range of 20 miles was chosen to be an appropriate goal with the
current state of consumer products.
To complete this task the first step is to identify appropriate standards and to see what the
capabilities of current systems are. The next step is to design a test bed that would allow for
testing of the equipment. The testing then has to be carried out and the results analyzed.
2. System Selection
In order to gather information on what products were commercially available research was done
both through the Internet and through meeting with vendors at the 2004 CTIA wireless
conference. At this conference several vendors were contacted and their product lines were
3