User Manual

Glossary
Antenna – The Gateway and associated transmitters are provided with an antenna. The antenna is
designed for both transmit and receive and is configurable for either horizontal or vertical mounting.
FCC – Federal Communications Commission.
Firmware – The micro-processor program that runs in each transmitter.
Frequency – Number of cycles-per-second of the radio signal.
License free – Term used to describe a radio frequency band in terms of license to broadcast. RF500
uses the license free band of 2.4GHz where there is no requirement to purchase any kind of license in
order to use the product. Also refer to the FCC approvals.
Meshing – The technology used in the RF500 system provides a unique operating environment for
the transmitters. Transmitters are setup to be either part of the Backbone or to be Leaf Transmitter.
Those designated as part of the Backbone remain in RF contact with each other. By doing this the
system is able to dynamically adapt to changing conditions automatically ensuring the integrity of the
system at all times. The meshing technology allows the system to determine the best route for any
data packets to be transmitted from the transmitters back to the Gateway or vice-versa.
RF – An abbreviation of the words Radio Frequency. Commonly used to describe “wireless radio
communication”.
RH – Relative Humidity. The amount of water vapor present in the atmosphere expressed as a
percentage of the maximum that could be present at the same temperature.
IEEE 802.15.4 – is a standard which specifies the physical layer and medium access control for low-
rate wireless personal area networks (LR-WPAN's). It is maintained by the IEEE 802.15 working
group.
IEEE – The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is an international non-profit, professional
organization for the advancement of technology related to electricity. It has the most members of any
technical professional organization in the world, with more than 365,000 members in around 150
countries.
EIRP – Effective Isotropic Radiated Power is the amount of power that a theoretical isotropic antenna
(that evenly distributes power in all directions) would emit to produce the peak power density observed
in the direction of maximum antenna gain.
dBi – dB(isotropic) is the forward gain of an antenna compared to the hypothetical isotropic antenna,
which uniformly distributes energy in all directions.
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