Arduino to connect to 2.5Ghz/5Ghz Tropos wireless network

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello, I am new to this forum and field and I would like to have some help.

I have a situation where i need to monitor door open alarms(control cabinets) from 20,000 points in the city. We have a city wide wireless mesh tropos network (2.5 Ghz/5 Ghz cloud) available. I need to send this alarms via the tropos network to a control room for monitoring purpose.

My initial idea was to use nRF24L01 modules or similar modules with arduino uno with high power as the tropos signal would be weak at the control cabinet level. Could you recommend whether this idea is possible or do i have to use wifi shield modules. Or is there any other alternatives. Since this is a large scale project what would be the best feasible approach.

Note: The tropos networks can be pointed to internet(WWW) at the control room

2

It's not clear to me what you need, and what are the specs of the Tropos network.

First you need a receiver/transmitter hardware of matching RF frequency and modulation, according to the network specs. In security applications it may be required to use dedicated/qualified hardware.

Next you have to handle the tropos protocol for data transfer in code. When you can find such a library for Arduino, that source should include further information about the supported module(s).

Perhaps you can use nRF24L01 modules, when the Tropos network uses the same technology. An external (outdoor) mounting or antenna may be required for good connectivity.

3

I doubt that building your own city wide WIFI network from scratch will work out cheaper than extending the existing Tropos network.

This is a multi million dollar project, therefore the sensible thing to do is contact ABB and ask them to provide a solution at a reasonable price.

4

Thank you so much for your replies. It was very helpful. I have the following information.

WLAN Standard used in our Tropos : 802.11 a/b/g (Modulation as per this standard i guess is OFDM)

Authorization type : WPA2-PSK, 128 bit.

Are these information sufficient to select a suitable transceiver module.

We do not intend to build a city wide wifi network from scratch as we have sufficient range and bandwidth already on our existing tropos network. Also power line communication is another option we are considering.

5

In your original post you said "tropos signal would be weak at the control cabinet level".

WIFI is a bidirectional system. If the received signal strength at the cabinet is poor then whatever transceiver you put there is not going to be able to establish communication with a Tropos router regardless of its transmit power.

If a Tropos transceiver at the cabinet cannot establish communication with a router then a nRF24L01 transceiver isn't going to work either.