Context:

BCA was approached by 401 Tech Bridge, a non-profit that aids in economic development in Rhode Island, who connected us to the end customer, a research/development facility for the US Government. The end customer wanted to get data from an off-shore object to the land at about a mile’s distance.  Their previous solution of cables is time consuming to get in place and expensive, so BCA was tasked to figure out an inexpensive wireless solution to get high-speed data sent a long distance over open water.

Solution:

We began by evaluating off-the-shelf wireless technology to get to a proof of concept.  Technologies under consideration were Wi-Fi, LoRa, LTE/Cellular, and a proprietary off-the-shelf solution. BCA performed transmission and theoretical calculations to come up with a link budget, proving out the feasibility, and guiding our choice of technology. We concluded that Wi-Fi was the best fit solution and were able to implement a demo system using 2 directional high-gain antennas on the receiving side (shore) and 2 omni-directional antennas on the transmitting side (floating object).  This system was brought to the end customer’s facility and we were able to transmit data in excess of 27 megabits per second at a distance of 4,000 feet, surpassing their requirements.