Wireless Mesh Network Ties Together San Diego Shopping Center

Nov 1, 2006 12:00 PM, By RANDY SOUTHERLAND

Westfield UTC is one of San Diego's most stylish lifestyle shopping centers. Its 155 shops, along with numerous restaurants and a movie theatre, draw millions of shoppers. The center is spread out across a campus made up of numerous buildings, so the idea of creating a secure computer network to serve the multiple goals of providing point-of-sale functions, high-speed Internet and security video monitoring presented a formidable challenge.

Westfield, the nation's third largest real estate investment trust in the retail space, found a system that provides the needed high-speed network without the cost and sales-dampening disruption of installing traditional fiber-optic cabling.

“We could basically go in there with a very simple wireless infrastructure that could connect to the Internet as sort of a “hot spot” environment or we could go in with a more sophisticated switched-and-rooted IP-based network infrastructure,” explains Desmond Wheatley, president of enterprise services at San Diego-based Wireless Facilities Inc. (WFI). “We chose to do the latter.”

WFI knew that Westfield wanted to leverage a secure network for a variety of uses that included CCTV, digital surveillance, access control and alarming along with building automation services.

To make all that happen required a design criteria that included a single networking structure supporting all services and applications. To provide greater integration they chose a single all-in-one converged network instead of multiple vendors and disparate systems.

“It is simpler, it is less expensive, you get more functionality out of it and from Westfield's point of view, it is easier to manage,” Wheatley says.

Deploying this system presented a challenge common to many lifestyle center environments. Shopping centers are frequently built out across several generations of construction. The anchor stores come first and then the land between them is filled with other segments later. Construction is driven by the sheer economics of the deployment with one building going up followed later by others.

“Westfield UTC has a fairly large, spread-out campus of separate buildings, and there is little or no interconnectivity between those buildings,” Wheatley says. “That is to say we do not have free and clear congruent runs, and in many cases it is very hard to get complete sets of drawings that show the entire campus.”

Connecting separate buildings into a single network required a choice of how bandwidth would be deployed. Running fiber was an obvious choice since its broad pipes could carry vast amounts of data and support multiple applications with ease. Digging up streets, cracking open marble, and creating ditches in front of stores was not an acceptable alternative for Westfield. It would cause far too much disruption and the cost would be high. Running it through the air would also be an unacceptable blow to the mall's upscale ambience.

UTC selected a wireless optical mesh solution from Pasadena, Calif.-based ClearMesh Networks. The company's Metro Grid system enables all the shopping center's buildings to be connected using a secure line-of-sight optical system.

“If we were just deploying so that someone could check their e-mail or surf the Internet on a laptop, we would be far less concerned about the robust nature of the link because a few lost pockets here and there would not really matter,” Wheatley says. “But when you are deploying for something like CCTV or other life safety-type network infrastructures, a lost pocket could mean a lost camera, and that could mean a crime that we don't have covered.ClearMesh provided a link with characteristics similar to fiber, including a network that does not lose connectivity to interference, power outages or other events. They also wanted to avoid the cost of a creating a licensed network. Yet, unlicensed frequencies presented challenges of their own.

“The difficulty with it is that because you do not have the government on your side in terms of maintaining the robust nature of that link and preventing other people from interfering with it, anybody can put an access point right next to yours,” explains Wheatley.

ClearMesh was able to avoid this interference problem because its nodes require a clear line of sight to make connection and transmit large amounts of data using a special polymer coating that blocks sunlight. These nodes are also resistant to wind and other elements. While fog presents a problem when attempting to transmit beams of light over distances, ClearMesh limits its range to 250 meters to ensure optimal connectivity.

If a transmitter is blocked by a physical object such as a crane, the system automatically switches to an alternate route with no break in connection.

“The latency per node is a fraction of a millisecond,” says Fima Vaisman, vice president of marketing for ClearMesh. “So, for applications that are latency sensitive such as video, this certainly makes it a unique platform.”

After deploying the initial wireless LAN infrastructure, the next stage in WFI's project was to supply the property with digital surveillance. The company deployed more than 70 cameras throughout the facility, monitored both on-site and at a remote location. The CCTV system uses a variety of cameras, digital video recorders and other components.

From The Field Retail

Anti-Theft Applications From ADT Spreading Throughout Europe

All of the items that end up on the shelves in the European lingerie store Women'secret have been protected throughout the supply chain — from the manufacturing and distribution centers to sales outlets in Spain and worldwide — as part of a source tagging program implemented for the retailer by ADT Security Services, a unit of Tyco Fire and Security.

ADT has also installed Sensormatic electronic article surveillance systems in 30 retail outlets and supermarkets owned by Gruppo Aspiag, a consortium of large retail chains in Italy's Triveneto and Emilia Romagna regions.

In Spain, the Natural Optics chain of 117 eyewear stores has chosen similar ADT anti-theft systems. ADT will also supply Natural Optics with special anti-theft tags designed specifically for display frames. Due to their small size, the tags do not inconvenience customers wishing to try on the frames and can be used to add information such as price, barcode and store logo, thus avoiding the need for several labels on a single frame.

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