As friendly heads up before you get started - you may have already read this post on our Mirror page here. This is the same information. If you want to share this information with others outside of the Trust Zone Program, then please use the Mirror page.
The goal of the Trust Zone program is to have select partners run the FOAM protocol in different geographical environments and test different zone configurations. The selected participant partners will also assemble the current prototype of the Zone Anchor, secure a minimum of four locations for installation, run localization experiments and submit the results for evaluation.
This is a beta testing program for early qualified stakeholders aligned with the mission of the protocol to contribute to refining and defining needed features. The partner participation process will be to maintain your own Zone with a focus on building a high quality fault tolerant network that will seed the network’s initial growth and security.
Until now, we’ve been running these experiments in a closed network. We are excited to announce that it is now time to open up this experiment by adding community run Zones!
A Trust Zone is a beta radio network run by partner participants to further test and further develop the FOAM Proof of Location protocol. A Trust Zone also serves as a development platform to implement new features and run localization experiments.
A Trust Zone requires a minimum of 4 radios installed with quality line of site visibility to each other. A Zone maintains a quorum over time and space across their location horizon by upholding accuracy and precision, Trust Zones will play a crucial role in verifying the growth of the network and uphold sovereign and secure location services. This is infrastructure for the future.
The goal of the Trust Zone program is to test FOAM technology is as many types of environments as possible. A diverse set of test data will further refine localization performance. Participants in the Trust Zone program are welcome to build their Zones across urban and rural environments.
In addition to line of sight between four Zone Anchors, basic requirements for a Zone regardless of environment type is for each Zone Anchor radio to have access to power and internet backhaul.
The Current FOAM test Zone in the Brooklyn Navy Yard has a maximum distance of 1 kilometer between Zone Anchors
An additional goal of the Trust Zone testing program is to further understand this question. As a radio based system, the performance of the network is impacted by a number of factors such as signal obstruction from buildings. Each Trust Zone will have its own limits on distance and size and will need to take this into consideration. The optimal zone configuration for each Trust zone will take some trial and error.
While the radio’s used in each Zone Anchor can transmit up to multiple miles, within FOAM the localization performance is directly correlated to how consistently each of the four or more nodes receive each others radio packets. The further away Zone Anchors are from each other the higher the chance there will be packet loss, degrading performance of localization. Participants will contribute in determining a system wide maximum zone as a best practice.
The Current FOAM test Zone in the Brooklyn Navy Yard has a maximum distance of 1 kilometer between Zone Anchors, in a dense industrial environment, as a starting baseline data point. When building a Zone tests are required before committing to the selected locations. One of the first steps is to run a visibility and packet align test across the Zone Anchors to assess the location's viability. Partner participants will work with the Foamspace team on assessing the results of these tests before approving a permanent installation of the Zone.