After many months of hard work, we are pleased to announce that the microwave link to Davies Reef has been brought on line. The connection was made at 20:04:53 hours on Friday, 20 July 2007. This link provides speeds of 10Mb/s over a distance of 80km. Normally a microwave link over this distance, while long by microwave standards, would not be all that special. What makes this link unique is that the two ends of the link are only a few meters above sea level. Normally microwave links require line of site between the two ends, and the curvature of the Earth means that this would require a tower over 80m tall. Instead, the microwave beam is trapped in the layer of humid air a few meters above the ocean surface and is bent over the horizon.   To our knowledge this is the first high speed communication network exploiting this Phenomena.

The link to Davies Reef is believed to be the first long term installation to use this humidity duct, and it opens up exciting possibilities for remote monitoring of offshore environments in tropical oceans. Davies Reef will be one of the monitoring sites in the Great Barrier Reef Ocean Observing System. The amount of data that can be shipped back over this high-speed link will allow a range of parameters to be monitored in real time. Live video streams are also being transmitted.

This achievement is the culmination of the efforts of many people, lead by Dr Cameron Huddlestone-Holmes, Dr Graham Woods and Mr Gilles Gigan all of JCU (Maths, Physics and IT and Engineering). emSolutions manufactured the microwave equipment used and continue to provide invaluable technical support. AIMS have provided a great deal of logistic support, as well as access to the weather station on Davies Reef. The Queensland Cyber Infrastructure Foundation and DART funded the project.

Stay tuned to further announcements as we bring live data to your desktop - see the "Sensor Data" link above to access the live data.