User's Manual

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GENERATION ACTIVE RFID
4 Ambient Network
This section explains what an Ambient Network is and where it consists of.
4.1 Nodes
An Ambient Network consists of a number of so-called 'nodes'. A combination of these nodes are
used to build an Ambient Network. As mentioned before, there are three (3) types of nodes which
are the Master Gateway, the MicroRouter, and the SmartPoint. A Gateway is considered to be a
Master Gateway unless indicated otherwise.
The GW is connected using a RS232 serial cable to a peripheral device (e.g. a PC or a GPRS logger).
GWs and MRs build up a network by creating dynamic links with each other. These links adapt to
the current deployment set up and environmental changes. SPs only communicate periodically with
one of the infrastructure nodes – i.e. GWs and MRs – when they have data to send (e.g. temperature
reading, location information, etc.).
An overview of the symbols used for these nodes throughout this document is given in Illustration
1
1
.
4.2 Network Layout
An example network layout is given in Illustration 2. The illustration shows a network with a GW,
MRs, and SPs. GWs and MRs maintain a permanent wireless connection with each other. In this way
they built up a backbone infrastructure.
The network is build up originating from the GW outward. SPs use short beacon messages that are
transmitted by both GWs and MRs to communicate with the infrastructure. These links are not
permanent but only exist only while the SP is communicating with the infrastructure.
1 The products Auxiliary Gateway and RapidReader will be released in 2009-2010. Auxiliary gateways can be used for load balancing
purposes in heavily loaded network. The RapidReader can be used to set-up a point to point connection to a device for faster
uploading/downloading files or configuration purposes.
16/73 Ambient Systems B.V.
Illustration 1: Overview of Ambient network
nodes