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Unit 12: Space-based Wireless WANs

13. ………………....… is a service for the localization and tracking of stolen vehicles. Notes
14. The ………………....… network can be divided into the radio frequency (RF) part and the
data transfer and processing part.
15. The auxiliary stations do not use the meteor burst phenomenon but work in a
………………....… mode.

16. ………………....…trails are formed by very small meteors, typically the size of a grain of
sand.

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Case Study Nevada Research Uses Falling Stars for Data Transmission

ven in today’s world of sophisticated communication technology, there are still some
remote locations that are not serviced by a communication system. In most cases,
Ethis situation does not present a problem. For those responsible for data collection
from these distant sites, however, the lack of a suitable communication system can be a
major drawback.

The Nevada Department of Transportation (NDOT) collects traffic-related data at remote
locations over an area of 110,540 square miles. Fortunately, only a small part of this area
is not serviced by either telephone lines or a cellular communication network. NDOT’s
problem lies in the fact that it locates its trafficrelated data-collection sites based on need
instead of the availability of a communication system. The manpower required to collect
data at these sites taxes the department’s resources with an annual cost in excess of 1,000
man-hours. The Meteor Burst Project began with the awareness of this problem and the
desire to find an effective solution. Although Meteor Burst Communication (MBC) has been
used for 30 years in military applications and for various types of remote environmental
data collection, it had never been used in this application.
Working together, NDOT and the Electrical Engineering Department of the University of
Nevada-Reno developed a selfcontained, roadside MBC station. In addition to the existing
data-collection devices, this station consisted of a solar panel, a rechargeable 12-volt battery
power supply, the meteor burst transmission unit, an interface board, and a five element
yagi antenna. This remote roadside station is completely controlled by the interface board,
a microprocessor-based unit that acts as the brains of the system. This board is designed
to connect multiple trafficmonitoring devices to a single transmitter/receiver. It can also
perform duties such as automatically downloading data from the traffic-recording devices
before their memory storage overflows, or downloading data at programmed intervals.
Once these data are in the interface board, they are reformatted and compressed before
copies of the data are transferred to the meteor burst transmitter. A status report of the
system can also be transmitted in order to alert operators that repair or service is required.
During NDOT’s research, the data were sent to an MBC master station located in Bozeman,
Montana. The data were then forwarded to a data center in Kent, Washington, via telephone
lines, where they were reformatted back to their original configuration and finally sent to
the NDOT headquarters in Carson City, Nevada.
NDOT continued to use MBC to retrieve data at one remote station for four months, saving
the department approximately 150 manhours. At that time, the cellular communication
network serving Nevada was expanded, eliminating the benefits of MBC for current
NDOT traffic data-collection sites. However, NDOT is currently reviewing MBC for
data collection in conjunction with FHWA’s continuation of the SHRP anti-icing study.
The results of this research project have served to break new ground in the area of data

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