RFS Area
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Deployment Areas and Facilities
The planned deployment areas at Richmond Field Station for the NEST Final Demonstration (pending finalization). All measurements were made on the image itself and are only approximations.
The green area is the primary deployment area and covers about 25,000 square meters. The red area is the extended deployment area and covers about 92,000 square meters. The yellow area is for development and covers about 7,700 square meters.
All groups should be aware of obstacles in the field such as roads/trees/high grass, as described on the RFS Area web page. The main obstacle in the deployment area is a road that cuts through east-west. The road is lined on one side by trees and has a large truck-like building on it. The trees may attenuate radio signals and the truck-like building can be very noisy and may disrupt any acoustic sensors being used. The second obstacle in the depoyment area is the high grass, as shown in the photos at RFS_Area#Photo_Tour. The primary deployment is generally devoid of the 5-6 foot grasses and is completely covered with 1-2 foot grasses, as well as shrubs. The 50x100m area in the most South-easterly corner of the field will most likely be mowed. It also has another truck-like building at the edge of the field that may cause RF reflections. Each group should test their nodes in a grasses similar to these to verify that their demo will work in this environment.
The entire red area should be covered with a 802.11 network. A small shack in the bottom right-hand corner of the green/red area will be available for limited secure overnight storage and daytime use. A large building below the yelow area will be available for more secure storage and daytime use. Bathrooms are only available in the buildings below the yellow area.
The following areas are available for heavy foot traffic. These areas tend to have cut grass up to about a quarter meter high (10") and are generally hard earth.
- The south-of-road area in the green region
- The northwest pan-handle area in the red region
- The yellow region
All remaining areas are protected reserves and may only sustain occasional, light foot traffic. These areas tend to be more swamp-ish and may have regions of standing water. The vegetation in these areas is grass and weed that varies in height from 0.5 meters to 1.5 meters. Some of these areas are populated by prairie dogs.
To the south east corner of the red/green area is a trailer/shack available for development work and equipment storage. To the south of the yellow region is a small building also available for development and equipment storage.
RFS is protected by a security gate after-hours, though most regular RFS users and personnel have gate access. The RFS is populated by diverse research groups, and we do not yet have concrete plans for preventing tampering or theft of long-term deployed devices.
Photo Tour
General Grass Heights
Update: 7/29 - Here is a link to grass height information. Ignore the node ID and node height information in this file. This file is useful for grass height and GPS positions.
Around all edges of the field are either rocky or cut grass areas. This means that a network of nodes around the edges can serve as a radio backbone, and the PIR sensors can detect anything coming into or leaving the field.
Much of the RFS feild has high grass which is wilted in the summer months, leaving a 1ft bed of grass. A CC1000 radio 6cm from the ground has been seen to have about 25 meter range in this area.
Much of the grass in the RFS deployment area is about 2ft tall, as shown wrt. this 4ft tripod. This grass will be benign to both radio and PIR sensors above the grass. CC1000 radios below the grass line but 6in above the ground have been seen to have about 45 meter range.
Many areas w/ 2ft grass, however, have thin weeds that grow to 4-5 feet. This will interfere with PIR sensors above the grass line.
A small percentage of the field is covered with grasses and shrubs.
Other areas of the field have 5-6 foot tall grass, as shown wrt this person and 4 ft tripod. In these areas, a CC1000 radio 6in above the ground has been seen to have about 5 meter range. The high grass areas are generally the north 30% and the east 30% of the extended deployment area.
The areas with 5-6 foot grass are well contained in patches with distinct edges, as shown by the pictures below. The patches can be 10-20 meters wide, and can snake through the lower grass areas.
Road for UVA deployment
This road is about 280m long. On the left is a slight hill, behind the hill is an empty cement canal. On the right are two really long metallic buildings. The following picture contains the entire road in the image:
As we walk down the road, we see that it becomes narrower due to some fences.
Then, we see lots of junk on the right hand side.
Once we pass the first building, we see an paved area on the right with a storage truck before the next building.
Once we approach the second building, both sides of the road are covered with grass.
Towards the end of the building are some large crates.
At the end of the road is a fence.
