We picked "N" for a number of reasons, mainly the following:
- "N" supports MIMO (multiple in, multiple out transmission), if you look at the pics the blue alliance guys are circulating of the Arena Access Point (AP) you'll see it has 6 antennas, 3 of those are for the 5GHz radio which the bots will be running exclusively on. With N and MIMO we can "theoretically" get 300mbps bandwidth for the 6 bots on the field, although the individual VLAN bandwidth that each team will be on this year will be much less. This is for future addition of teams being able to get video back from their bots to the drivers station, this wasn't implemented this year for various reasons.
- Alot of the venues that we set up the FIRST FRC fields in already have established 802.11b network infrastructures, 5GHz limits possible venue interferrence issues.
- When the APs start up, they will automatically find a clear channel to establish themselves on, 5GHz has many more channels it can utilize than 2.4GHz.
- With 5GHz we can use Ethernet Bridges (i.e. the game adaptor for your bot) that don't have external antennas. thereby removing the temptation for teams to add large external antennas that could interfer with adjacent bot radio reception (RF 101)
- CISCO reps wanted us to use the APs we're using because they are the latest and greatest - they are amazing devices
- few other reasons too
I suspect this year we'll have far fewer "actual" radio "issues" than previously, systems testing so far has gone very well, but we won't know for sure till we get some regionals going. This is all new tech that will take the teams some time to get used too.
I'm very impressed with the new systems and can't wait to see what teams do with all the new capabilities, this year will be a "getting used to" period, but future season ought to be down right mind blowing
wish I had this stuff when I was in High School
Good Luck all
BotBash BOB Pitzer
4FX Design