Solar-Powered Wireless Testing
Oki Electric Industry Co. Ltd. began running an experimental ZigBee-based sensor network in Japan’s western port city of Kobe on Monday, the company said the same day. The company has installed a network of five solar battery-powered wireless terminals on streetlights and 15 terminals in the ceiling of a shopping mall in the city to test the networking capabilities of ZigBee technology, said Naomi Takeuchi, an Oki spokeswoman. ZigBee is a wireless system based on the 802.15.4 standard approved by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
The system is designed to carry data at up to 250 Kbps and use very little power. The experiment, which will last for five days, is being conducted to test whether a ZigBee network can successfully transmit data in real-life settings: in this case, a mall crowded with shoppers, Takeuchi said. Continue >>