US Navy Prepares To Navigate With Wireless Lans. Wireless LANs are being installed on Navy warships to free up manpower, reduce crew sizes, and improve monitoring of a range of mechanical and electrical systems.
The installation effort, dubbed Total Ship Monitoring, lets Navy crew members check and control systems from computers anywhere on board. It's an extension of the Smartship refitting and redesign program the Navy launched in 1996 to let captains command their ships from anywhere on board. Advertisement The USS Howard, a guided-missile destroyer commissioned in 2001 and assigned to the Navy's 3rd Fleet, based in San Diego, is being outfitted with specialized wireless gateways based on the IEEE 802.11b wireless LAN standard. The gateways, which defense contractor 3E Technologies International (3ETI) designed and built, use a radio link to interconnect sensors on gear such as pumps and motors with back-end data processing applications.
So instead of laying hundreds of feet of cabling by cutting through a steel ship and adding weight to the vessel, the radio link makes possible much faster and less-disruptive deployment of the sensors. [Smart Mobs]