how can i provide a wifi network solution to large community

[codenamenikky]

My company builds windfarms and we have a fiber running through our wind farm for networking and SCADA. we were wondering with addition of some more hardware we can provide free wifi to the entire region of the wind farm. We can add additional fiber with in the collection system and we usually have a fiber line from AT&T at our substation location. We were thinking about a solution like xfinity wifi i was wondering how much engineering is required and what would be the most simple starting point

 

[vmfantom]

A good starting point would be checking the limits for point to multipoint radiated power on wifi bands at the link below. The US and Canada appear to allow up to 4 watts/36 dBm, so that might be the starting point for your link budget. If you can use street lamps and utility poles for access points, you could get fairly close to people's houses, otherwise a mast and sector antennas are good.

You can calculate free space loss using the second link. Obstructions like trees have their own attenuation apart from the air. -67 dBm is the threshold for packet loss, but lower throughput occurs before you get that low, which makes 2.4 GHz more problematic than 5 GHz.

You can also extend wifi over fiber using special transceivers, but that would be more suitable for point to point backhaul.

https://www.air802.com/fcc-rules-and-regulations.html

http://www.radiolabs.com/stations/wifi_calc.html

 

[kanewolf]

@vmfantom gave you a lot of technical info.

I will say, create a proof of concept system. Setup public WIFI at your company headquarters or some other less remote area. Setup multiple access points with using EXACTLY the hardware you would use in the remote locations.

You have some advantages by having access to the windmill towers and fiber infrastructure in place. Is the standard practice to pull multi-strand trunk fiber? Is it single-mode or multi-mode fiber? What distances have to be covered between fiber drops? Those are the basic layout questions that have to be asked. Ethernet has distance limitations in some fiber installations. Faster ethernet tends to have shorter distance limitations.