High Stakes Networking For Safety and Reliability

Overview

High Roller Ferris Wheel operating with 28 spherical cabins on the rim of its 550ft wheel in the harsh desert environment of Las Vegas USA - wanted a reliable mission critical networking infrastructure providing cabin safety and control systems communications to its main control room on the ground.  Emergency communication system with video capability in each cabin must be instantly available at all times.

System Requirements

• High level of communications redundancy and reliability for passenger safety
• Highly complex network topology due to rotating cabins and wheel
• Extreme reliability for minimum downtime under harsh desert conditions
• Live, on-demand management from central control room

Solution

Moxa’s industrial-grade wireless and wired networking hardware were used for the communications infrastructure connecting each cabin on the High Roller to the central control room. To ensure the greatest degree of reliability, two separate, fully redundant networks were established for all wheel and cabin communications.

• Moxa’s compact DIN-rail mounted Gigabit managed switches were used for the dual redundant network within each cabin that connected to that cabin’s fire and life safety systems, intercom systems, and drive control systems.

• Specialized Moxa Wi-Fi access points were used to bridge communications between the rim and each cabin. Instead of traditional wireless antennas, leaky coax cable was used to ensure the most stable and reliable connection as the wheel and cabins rotated.

• A redundant, self-healing fiber Ethernet network around the rim connected to each of the Wi-Fi access points on the wheel. Moxa switches designed for high shock and vibration resistance were used for this network and for communication and control of the wheel’s outdoor LED lighting system. In addition, Moxa’s high-performance Turbo Ring network topology provided additional network resiliency with a 20 ms recovery time.

• At two opposite ends of the wheel, Moxa rackmount switches with hardened Gigabit SFP modules were used to send network communications over fiber cables to the spindle at the center of the wheel. Moxa wireless access points were used to bridge communications between the spindle and the axle of the wheel.

• The backbone network to the central control center utilized Moxa’s high performance Layer 2 and Layer 3 switches with industrial-grade redundancy and security features. Moxa’s easy-to-use network management software enables operators to identify any communication issues in the entire network at a glance.