“Our ramp personnel are protected from lightning, and it’s all due to Synapse’s monitoring and control wireless mesh network technology.”

All that was required was the ability to flash some lights to alert airline personnel working outdoors as to the possibility of imminent lightning strikes. With lives at stake, delays were unacceptable. Nothing seemed capable of addressing the situation’s unique requirements until Synapse Wireless came to the rescue with its easy-to-deploy, wireless control and monitoring mesh network technology.

Located between the cities of Dallas and Fort Worth in Texas, with six runways, multiple terminals, and numerous buildings covering over 18,000 acres, Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) is the second largest airport in the United States and the fourth largest in the world. Now, Texas is known for extremely violent thunderstorms that roll across the state and that often produce a lot of lightning and hail.

For many years, American Airlines predominantly resided in terminals A and C. Over the course of time, all of the systems in these terminals were fine-tuned to best meet their exacting requirements and standards. However, due to some recent changes American Eagle (a sister company to AA) relocated to Terminal B and the existing equipment could not be expanded to alert the employees of the danger.

“With the help of Synapse, we had a fully-functioning system in place well before the storm season commenced. Our ramp personnel are protected from lightning, and it’s all due to Synapse’s monitoring and control full-mesh wireless networking technology.”

As fate would have it, while “cruising the Internet” looking for possible solutions, the Manager of the Engineering and Technical support team came across Synapse Wireless, who seemed to have the ideal technology in the form of their Synapse RF Engine modules.

Small, light, and with extremely small power requirements, Synapse RF Engine modules have up to a 3-mile range. As soon as a group of these modules are powered up, they immediately self-form into a full mesh wireless control and monitoring network. Thus, all that was required was to install one Synapse RF Engine module close to the flashing light over which American Airlines did have control, and to use this to transmit signals to additional modules located at the other gates, where these modules could control the “slave” warning lights.

The end result was to have a fully-functioning system in place well before the storm season commenced. Although the ramp personnel probably don’t know (or care) how “the magic” was achieved, they are doubtless more than happy to know that American Airlines “has their back covered” with regard to protecting them from lightning, and it’s all due to Synapse’s monitoring and control full-mesh wireless networking technology.

Synapse is a proud member of the McWane Family of Companies.

Source 1 Source 2