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Satellite Uplinks For the Masses
kgeiger writes "Intellectual Ventures has spun out Kymeta to develop and mass-produce their mTenna product line. mTennas are based on metamaterials like the invisibility cloaks discussed on Slashdot and elsewhere. Metamaterials enable beam-steering that ensures an mTenna remains in contact with satellites even during motion. Kymeta will use 'established lithographic techniques' to make them. IMHO, these antennas may be as big a leap for mobile computing and remote communications as the invention of fractal antennas was for mobile phones."
IMHO, these antennas may be as big a leap for mobile computing and remote communications as the invention of fractal antennas was for mobile phones.
Sorry to be brash, but IMHO, you shouldn't be talking about things of which you have no knowledge. There's nothing new here. Phased array stripline antennas have been done to death. To death.
News at 11.
Is this the same notorious patent troll owned by former microsoft bazillionaire Nathan Myhrvold? The company that makes nothing but taxes just about everybody in the tech world and claims to be doing God's Work by not actually selling a mosquito-killing laser gun?
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
This is just a phased array antenna (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array). The applications of a phased array allow you to have a direct "beam" to the transmitting tower, which means that you can use significantly less power, and possibly transmit over a larger distance. The idea has been around for a long time, almost 100 years.
It will be interesting if they get this to work, especially for mobile devices like laptops and mobile phones, because when you move your phone you need to immediately redirect the signal "beam" towards the transmitter / receiver. If you miss, you lose your signal. Not only that, calculating the direction of the beam and requires you to regulate frequency and intensity of hundreds of the transmitters on the phased array, this calculation will create a superposition of waves in one direction and cancellation of the waves in the other in the other directions. Hence a "beam" in one direction. The calculation of direction of the "beam" is computationally intensive, but I presume it could be optimised using a lot of hard coding.
IMHO, these antennas may be as big a leap for mobile computing and remote communications as the invention of fractal antennas was for mobile phones.
I suspect not, actually.
There are certainly cases where this could be a useful technology, especially in rural or remote areas. I happen to live in a state (Alaska) that has far more area NOT covered by cellular or WiFi hot spots than IS covered by them, so I can certainly see niche use-cases for this tech. Yet I'm still skeptical that this is going to be a game-changer for mobile computing.
I rather suspect the author of TFS has never actually *USED* satellite links for any kind of Internet activity. About two years ago, the company I work for used satellite Internet to connect to a number of remote field sites. As a network administrator, I got the dubious pleasure (hah!) of trying to maintain routers, switches and even a couple of servers on the far side of that satellite link. CLI connections, like SSH, were slow...sometimes painfully so. GUI connections, like remote desktop or VNC required large doses of valium to even be tolerable (I kid, but not by much). Just to show that I'm not a high-bandwidth prima donna, I was using -- and reasonably happy with -- a 768k x 320k DSL line for my home Internet connection at the time.
Trust me -- if you have 3G, 4G or WiFi connectivity, I guarantee you will use it rather than satellite Internet. You won't save money by using satellite, and you will be very, very disappointed with your throughput.
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Invisibility cloak? I'll believe it when I see it...
"But this one goes to 11!"
That's not entirely true... Your sat phone connects to Iridium satellites, whick, IIRC site at about 450 km about earth. These satellites have low data capacity, and are generally not suitable for data.
For data, you need to go all the way out to Geo Sync, something like 65,000 km out there, so a bit further. We use self-aligning dishes to lock on to the sat, and they are a major pain in the ass. Any time there is a power inturruption, there is a good chance they lose their link. Then I have to arrange for some cook, or janitor to go out there and try and fix the thing. It's frustrating.
Needless to say, I am very interested in one of these.
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Ham radio operators have been working satellites for decades with cheap TV antenna rotors. you can EASILY build an X/Y tracker out of two used antenna rotors and build the simple Helical antennas and talk to the guys on the ISS or work several of the ham radio satellites that are up in the sky and have been there for a long time now.
This antenna tech is neat, but it's not going to make any differences. Mobile computing will stay terrestrial or Geosync. Having owned and used an iridium phone, you do not need a special tracking antenna to have phone service anywhere on the planet, what you need is for the craptastic satellites to be replaced with something that can handle more than 56K of bandwidth per connection.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
You can get Geosyncronous data connections now for $99 a month. Absolute dirt cheap for what it is. Outfitting an RV with a tracking dish is not hard nor expensive, less than $560.00 to give you Heughes Net anywhere your RV goes.
The problem is in that the birds in the sky are low power and outdated horribly. This new antenna design will do nothing to fix the fact that there is nothing to receive.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Mine is $99 a month. what are you over paying for? you dont need more than the entry level data package for a part time vacation RV or Yacht. Sounds like someone sold you a overpriced plan.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
We use self-aligning dishes to lock on to the sat, and they are a major pain in the ass. Any time there is a power inturruption, there is a good chance they lose their link.
We've got one of these for emergency communications in the county. It's a ... let's be charitable and say "pain".
First, the elevation from around here to geosynchronous sats is right through the local treeline. And we have trees around here. Then you need to know that the firmware and sat data needs to be updated often, which requires someone to go out and fire up the sat dish about once a month.
They are cool, though. The first time I ever fired it up, it sat waiting for GPS lock. Once it had that, it poked its little head up and started sweeping the sky looking for the satellite. It got 1/4 of the way around and started fine tuning. Did I mention, it was pointing NORTH when it started fine adjustments? It did that for 15 minutes and then went back to home position, and did it again. Pointing NORTH. Did I mention, I'm in the northern hemisphere? As in, all the geosync sats are SOUTH from here.
Well, we had parked the sat dish next to a large metal pole building, and it was, of course, sensing the reflection off the wall. It wasn't smart enough to think, hmm, maybe since I can't get lock here I'm actually pointing the wrong way and I should seek a global maximum in signal and not the local maximum I've found. And apparently the controller doesn't have a built in compass (which just about every smartphone made today does, using a $5 chip) to know LOOK OVER THERE, MORON.
Not impressive.
What's even funnier is the next time we had it out for training. Someone flipped the circuit breaker by accident and the sat controller lost its configuration, which actually included information about how much current it was supposed to use to drive the motors to point the dish. Since the dish was UP at the time, and the controller would no longer send enough current to the motors to actually make them do anything, the dish could not be stowed. It had to be forced back so something close to down so it could be driven back to the barn overnight, and then 45 minutes the next day to the sat dish repairman. That was a hoot.
We got this because the local hospital chain got a bunch of them for their emergency comms. The hospital has since dumped them because they were such a pain to keep running.
This is actually rather neat. It's a steerable phased array antenna without the phase shifters or delay lines.
If this technology could be adapted to millimeter and submillimeter radar for automotive collision avoidance, it could accelerate the adoption of automatic driving technology. This is a technology that allows conformal antennas, so antennas can be placed behind plastic body parts. For automatic driving to be acceptable automotive design, the sensor suite has to be almost invisible. The Velodyne rotating scanner on the roof is not going to be acceptable. But if the forward looking long range gear was behind the rear view mirror, and the side and rear looking sensors were conformal arrays under body panels, the technology would be almost invisible.
Meanwhile, the technology can be used to replace those mechanically steered TV satellite dishes found on top of RVs.