[SatNews] Cobham is using the latest wireless mesh technology to help journalists on assignment set up…
…all their facilities, including video links, quickly and simply. With Cobham MediaMesh, a journalist can have all the facilities of the newsroom wherever they are in the world, established in just a few minutes from a single flight case. MediaMesh can be seen at IBC 2012 on the Cobham stand, 1.F41 along with Cobham’s range of flyaway and backpack uplinks.
MediaMesh uses ground-breaking wireless technology to create a mesh, a dense wireless network that covers the typical working area and can be expanded at any time. The network supports broadcast quality video and audio for live two-ways, as well as data and voice, connecting the journalist in the field to the newsroom. Communication is over Ka-band satellite where available, or MediaMesh can use direct Ethernet access or even the public 3G or 4G mobile network.
For a typical breaking news story the journalist will establish a base in a hotel room, with the camera on a balcony and a Ka-band dish on the roof. With MediaMesh, no time is lost in physically connecting each piece of equipment and testing out the communications links: all automatically pick up the wireless mesh network. There are no cables to lose or confuse, and any data can be carried and delivered to the right device: the camera can be controlled from the newsroom, for example. The mesh will include a number of nodes which talk to each other, and if the network needs to be expanded more nodes can be added as required. Intelligence in MediaMesh means that the network automatically detects new nodes and uses the additional resources without the need for any operator intervention. Similarly, the system is self-healing: should a node fail MediaMesh will work around it. Only one node need be connected to the outside world, either through the satellite link or through the ethernet.
