Overview | Amber Wave

Introduction

Amber Wave uses the various license-free frequencies of the Industrial Scientific Measurement bands to create a Wide-Area Network. Built to transmit data through a tandem of radios, internet portals, and servers Amber Wave uses its behind the scenes flexibility to transmit data in harsh circumstances in the quickest and most efficient way possible. This results is data that can be collected from anywhere across the globe.

Advantages over other networks

Network architecture is using new and independently developed R.F. technology (not legacy cell network architecture)
The network runs entirely outside of the main power grid making it very reliable under any circumstances
Communication through the network is safely encrypted through all transmission stages.
Data collected by the network is viewable from any internet access point
Any device can be connected to the Amber Wave network by the addition of a very low power LITE node. For more information about nodes look at our "Node Types" page
Use of the network is free for the end-user (No subscriptions, no monthly fees)

Intro

Network Overview

Amber Wave takes advantage of license-free I.S.M. frequencies and the internet to transmit data from any one location to another in the fastest way possible. However, for convenient access to data collected by the network Amber Wave can also sort data within the network with an M.Q.T.T. protocol allowing it to be easily accessible to any device that is internet capable. Once the data has been written to a server it is then distributed to any subscribing party. Any device can receive data from the server by simply connecting to the internet or connecting to the Amber Wave itself through a computer linkable node. The network can also be used to send data bidirectionally via the same protocol.

Netwok Overview

Node Types

Lite Node

Heavy Node

Mid Node

Lite Nodes are a cost-effective way to connect any design to the Amber Wave network. These nodes can communicate with your project through various communication protocols, including UART, I2C, I2S, CAN, SPI, IR serial, touch, and analog. Lite Nodes are designed to regulate power to themselves and the project they are plugged into. To satisfy the broadest range of applications Lite Nodes come in two different power topologies. The H.E. variant specializes in high-efficiency power regulation and can be powered by a 1.8V to 6V D.C. voltage source while regulating power to itself and any project with %95 efficiency. The W.V. variant specializes in regulating power over a wide voltage range by accepting a 3.5V-32V D.C. voltage source allowing your project to run from standard automotive, marine, and aviation power sources. Lite Nodes are an affordable and straightforward way to connect any design to the Amber Wave network giving your project long-range wireless capabilities with minimum cost.

Heavy Nodes are stand-alone devices that provide a strong R.F. backbone to any location they are deployed in. Although Heavy Nodes are capable of being wired directly to a project themselves, their real purpose is to increase the data throughput of the Amber Wave network. Heavy Nodes can communicate on all Amber Wave bands and protocols, including WiFi, BLE, XBee, LoRa, and ASK. They can talk to any node and translate data from one protocol to another, giving the Amber Wave network another layer of optimization. Heavy nodes also have multiple LoRa channels allowing them to talk to numerous Light nodes and Heavy nodes at long range at the same time. These features, paired with a high-efficiency power regulation system and solar energy regeneration, means they can indefinitely operate in the field. One example of a proper Heavy Node deployment could involve a Heavy Node linking several field-deployed Lite and Mid nodes to an Amber Wave server.

Mid Nodes bridge the gap between long-range Lite Nodes designed to attach to a project and more specialized Heavy Nodes designed to handle high R.F. data throughput. Mid Nodes use XBee for mid-range mid-speed communication. They are designed to connect to your project through a UART or analog interface and connect to the Amber wave network with greater data throughput than a Lite Node but with a slightly reduced range. Mid Nodes have an integrated solar panel and can stay deployed in the field indefinitely.

Node Communication

Amber Wave has a general A-star topology with the added benefit of mesh network attributes. Unlike an A-star network, Amber Wave does not rely on a central node to pass data to a central server. The network understands where data entered the network, where it is being sent and optimizes a path between those two points. The starting and ending address information is obtained in a semi-implicit way. For example, an end user’s node can attempt to transmit data. The second it does the nodes within range automatically integrate the end user’s node into Amber Wave itself. The user’s node becomes the starting node. The destination node is given within the data packet. Once these two points are known, any immediate receiving node that was originally part the Amber Wave network executes a pathfinding algorithm that determines the best possible path through the network to the end node. This is a powerful protocol that allows the user’s node to physically move through the network connecting to new nodes while losing connection with others but never interacting with the network differently. The network itself never loses efficiency while transmitting data as the starting node and ending node relationship is always optimized for best efficiency even if they change locations within the network between data transmissions. For this reason, Amber Wave is not a true A-star network and never needs to route data through any one node to complete a transmission. However, it does use its mesh network capabilities to be fully adaptable to location changes during data transmission.

xBee Equipt Nodes

Mesh Analysis

Xbee is a mid-speed, medium-range wireless transceiver designed and manufactured by Digi. One of the many things that make these radios a flexible choice for mesh networks is the many different XBee configurations that the designer can implement. The structure we are using with the Xbee Pro is the DigiMesh protocol. Digimesh is Digi's own proprietary protocol that uses ZigBee and Ad Hoc routing programs to determine the best route in a mesh network for a package to take. Traditionally, most networks use a central Coordinator Node that branches off into Routing Nodes, which reads data from End Nodes. These networks are very fast but rely on every node being active constantly, and if any one node is down, then all connecting nodes using the deactivated node cannot communicate. Below are two different diagrams on how each type of network operates.

Network Communication

Amber Waves node-to-node communication happens efficiently using extended range radio links such as LoRa and Xbee. Low power, long-range protocols work great for WANs in a single location. However, to send information to nodes in other networks that are not R.F. linked Amber Wave uses the internet. In this way, we can link separate WANs over long distances without sacrificing any information or connectivity.

Internet provides Amber Wave with the ability to:

Communicate between WANs in distant locations
Access Amber Wave data from anywhere on various devices
Log data of particular sensor/peripheral connected nodes
Manage the health of the network

Messages

Imagine there is a node out in the wild collecting temperature data at its location. Sending temperature information is easy throughout the wide-area network by encapsulating this data into packets. These packets can be sent out to a single node or a whole other network.

MQTT and the Pub/Sub model

Using the Publish/Subscribe model nodes can publish messages to topics that other nodes are subscribed to. Any node can subscribe and be sent this information as they see fit. This node to node communication happens asynchronously, meaning that nodes can publish messages without worrying about who receives it. That job is left for the message broker.

Message Broker

The message broker, RabbitMQ in our case, makes the delivery of data much easier. Published data is sent directly to the broker where it can be routed to the correct queue. The broker can be thought of as a post office. It organizes messages to be routed to a mailbox at a specific address. Data in the network is routed to the correct queue (mailbox) based on the topic (address) specified by the sender.

Nodes can therefore publish to a specified queue where messages can be consumed (picked up) by any subscribed nodes.

MQTT Protocol

The nodes and broker communicate using Message Queueing Telemetry Transport (MQTT). MQTT is an efficient and compact data transfer protocol that can work well on low power devices like Amber Waves small nodes. By keeping packets small data can be sent more frequently at a higher rate with a smaller chance of dropout.

Network Specs

Lite Node Range Test

Rang testing consisted of two phases. The first involved conducting real-world range testing with the lite node connected to a GPS module. The lite Node transmitted the updating GPS coordinates to a stationary Heavy Node. The received coordinates made up the red line. Some drop out is detectable.

The second phase consisted of calibrating our R.F. propagation software against our real-world results. Here you can clearly see the propagation software is accurately predicting the dropouts between these two nodes.

Once calibrated a more suitable node location could be determined by the software. The real-world test was conducted with both nodes three feet off the ground in an urban environment. This isn't ideal for long-range transmission as the expanded map below shows.

If one of the nodes is located on top of a building the true range potential of the R.F. link can be realized.