Area Mesh

Compute Asset area mesh
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Citizen Structure

Crowd Operated Infrastructure

Infrastructure partnerships between citizens and their governments.

Scaling Up Community Networks

Using the revolutionary Compute Module design framework, Area Mesh removes the skill and cost barriers to the building and operating of Community Networks by dividing the network up into fixed size cells.

Area Mesh enables you to turn those annoying wifi signals from your neighbours into an indoor geo-positioning system or use those wifi as backup links when you own internet link is down.

1. Existing Community Networks

There are many Community Networks around the world, for example in Germany, Greece, Spain, USA , Austria, South Africa etc.

It is interesting that similar community wireless efforts which will be most useful in less developed countries (e.g in Nepal) has stopped while they are still going in more advanced countries (e.g. from wifi hobbyists in Australia to farmers in Italy to low income families in USA).

Area Mesh pushes high tech collaboration between citizens to the limit, from reporting pot holes on the road to helping elderly do shopping.

2. Existing Mobile Carriers

Most mobile carriers are migrating to 5G in order to to gain improved capacity (eMBB), latency (URLLC), density (mMTC).

5G
source: dspcsp

One important feature of 5G not commonly list (e.g. missing above) is it positioning ability, which was first introduced in 5G release 15 in 2017 (target accuracy 50m) with increasing accuracy and capability in every following release (the latest 5G release 18 in 2024 has target accuracy of less than 0.5m). Deployment of 5G positioning in the field is still very limited due to reliability, cost, power consumption etc.

5G's carrier centric approach relies on carrier built infrastructure (e.g. mobile towers, fibre backhaul etc.) and carrier defined services (e.g. URLLC, eMBB etc.).

Area Mesh complements those same 3 service areas

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Area Mesh Design

1. Roof Stations

A secure and private communication network is required to underpin collaboration between citizens.

The MIT Roofnet is an early example of a roof based network where radios on the roofs in the neighbourhood talk to each other, forming an independent high speed data network.

roofnet

A radio mesh on the roof is cool since we can also interact with Unmanned Autonomous Vehicles (UAVs) easily on the roof e.g. refuelling them like in Float Mesh nodes. However, the installation of equipment, line of sight requirement etc. make it very difficult to achieve wide adoption. We started on the roofs of some buildings in Sydney using Australian WiFi Frequencies and Australia LoRa Frequencies.

sydney_mesh10

About a year after we have linked 3 buildings (points 1, 2, 3 in above image) together with roof top radios, a new hotel was built in the middle blocking the WiFi signals between point 2 and 3. We now have to install another radio at point 4 in order to maintain roof top connection between all 3 buildings (this installation might be part of the planned 2022 year end meet up in Sydney).

As can be seen, roof node s can be challenging to deploy and operate.
For cities that have 4G in the air and fibre in the ground, we have put the deploying roof top radios on hold. We are still using radio mesh in other cases e.g. Float Mesh and Water Pile, but Virtual Private Mesh over the Internet, which can be deployed with just one command, is now the preferred method linking citizen sites within cities together.

2. Window Stations

With increasing restrictions on UAVs in the city, the advantages of placing Nearby Mesh Nodes on the roof have reduced. And as can be seen in our Roof Top deployment above, building up such a network can be difficult.

However, placing indoor nodes near a window and outdoor nodes on a balcony can still be viable, we will need to investigate that next.

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OpenStreetMap

Community Map inserts a value-added layer on top of the amazing OpenStreetMap.

OpenStreetMap has a very simple design, everything is made up of just 4 elements:

  1. Node - a point in space
  2. Way - a line in space
  3. Relation - groups elements
  4. Tag - defines elements
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Introduction

Through geopos.org ordinary citizens can enhance the geo-positioning infrastructure of their country substantially in two ways:

  1. Increasing the accuracy of existing satellite positioning systems (e.g. through RTK)
  2. Participating in building their own sovereign terrestrial positioning systems (e.g. through WiFi signals).

While a citizen owned high precision positioning system (what works seamlessly indoors and outdoors) has numerous peacetime applications, the benefits of having ownership really shine through in wartime, when the citizens can deny enemies of accurate positioning information (e.g. introducing errors or encryption) at will.

Console Applications are progressive web apps that runs on your mobile phone, under the control of your Person Console. They are like helpers providing either deeper customisation or extra functionality to your Personal Console.

Most Personal Consoles (installed with just One Click on your phone) already come with a number of Console Applications e.g.

You can add or remove console applications within your personal console easily by adding or removing disposable nodes.

1. Remove Skill Barrier

Application Exchange removes the SKILL barrier to private cyberspace ownership by enabling complete customisation through mixing and matching of computing nodes (like toy bricks) without technical knowledge. Everyone can INNOVATE and shape their digital environments their way via simple interfaces.

For the first time in history, Homomorphic Encryption is delivered at scale, protecting individual privacy yet increasing community visibility.

1.1. Citizen Application Design

If all you have is a hammer,
everything looks like a nail.
Abraham Maslow

A lot of large scale problems facing humankind cannot be solved with Cloud Application which concentrates power, lacks capacity and limits innovation.

citizen_application_1

Citizen Application turns the existing Cloud Application control flow UPSIDE DOWN, giving the control of both infrastructure and application to the user, enabling everyone (from billionaires to refugees) to build asset, gain insight, boost innovation and make impact.

1.2. Citizen Application Implementation

All existing contact tracing solutions are based on centralised cloud computing, which lacks the privacy, visibility and speed needed to control COVID.

Virtual Vaccine is a Citizen Application that takes advantage of millions of mobile phones (not just as passive data collectors but also as active data processors) to hunt the virus down precisely and stop its spread rapidly.

citizen_application_2

Unlike Cloud Platform there is no locking in of applications and devices to platform rules that prioritises platform before users, Citizen Applications run inside fiduciary exchanges preventing data leakage with homomorphically encryption while promoting innovation by enabling direct connection between clients, servers and applications across platforms.

1.3. Demo Personal Console

The demo app.contacttrace.com.au Personal Console has many Citizen Applications preloaded inside the following exchanges:

Application Categories Fiduciary Exchanges
Citizen Identity Dynamic Alias, Anonymous Interaction
Citizen Insight Citizen Timeline, Community Map
Citizen Resource Campus Compute, Home Compute
![private_space 451x679](upload://tK9KKvk5JgN7x7UOlfDXtaUc7YF.png)
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In the age of AI and deep fakes, owner secure is the ONLY WAY to be secured.

Neighbourhood Mesh

Virtual Private Mesh enables latent resources in the neighbourhood to be utilised in a private and safe manner.

For more details on "alternative networks" like Virtual Private Mesh please refer to

Virtual Private Mesh provides a mesh of Virtual Private Network (VPN) under different ownerships with restricted and audited traffic.

Broadband Comparison

Using Australia's National Broadband Network as a comparison, a neighbourhood based Virtual Private Mesh can decrease cost and increase performance by reducing neighbourhood traffic from 11 hops to just 1 hop.