Perhaps balloons launched from Hawaii daily, could provide store and forward or relay capability at 5.8GHz. Consider the 200 watt EIRP of 5.8 GHz. A 500 mW Demarc Access Point controlled by a PocketPC or 9 ounce OQO could use an inexpensive passive phased array antenna like etenna or Paratek, with 23dB gain on both ends, might have a range of 20 miles with +19dB of fade margin. A palm-sized 10 Gig HD, like the iPod, or the 9 ounce OQO could store and forward video or daily telemetry at 10 Mbps. The store and forward relay service might also be used by airlines or freight haulers flying (or driving) over less populated areas. Even on buses. VOD is enabled as the bus rolls by the local Blockbuster. It’s delivered to your local bus stop or your window-mounted antenna in a few hours.
The states of Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah have vast, unserved areas and might work with U/W’s Neptune Project and the Navy. How else are you going to get multi megabit connections at sea?
Paratek’s DRWiN™ (Dynamically Reconfigurable Wireless Networks) electronically steerable antenna scans its beam on command and has the capability to reshape its beam - all with no moving parts. Paratek’s Wi-Fi antennas might also be used for fast, mobile 802.11 connectivity in units like Personal Telco’s Satellite Truck.
For about 50 years, the weather service has launched balloons to collect high-altitude data. The balloons rise to the stratosphere, about 20 miles above the Earth’s surface, and drift with the prevailing winds. Their instrument packages transmit data to ground stations for 12 hours, and then a new generation is launched. The old balloons eventually fall back to Earth.
The FAA limits the weight of the instrument packages to 6 pounds. Improved electronics has shrunk the size of the NWS packages. Now there’s room for Space Data to ride along. A 190-watt repeater’s signal can cover an area 360 miles across. The signals relayed from a balloon would go to a base station at the balloon’s launch site. Cell towers cost up to $230,000 to build, and at least that much to wire up. Space Data intends to act as a virtual tower company, selling its coverage to primary cellular carriers. The target market would be the 20 percent of the population in the 80 percent of the nation that is too remote for economical cellular coverage.
Using its GPS data, Space Data has recovered the repeaters from about half of its 33 test flights and all repeaters from the last 13 flights. The repeaters, which cost about $300 each, would fall to Earth in protective plastic packages with return postage to Space Data. The company is considering posting the last GPS coordinates of the falling packages on a Web site and offering a $50 reward for their return.
In World War II Japan launched nearly 10,000 Balloon Bombs which drifted over the Pacific. They started forest fires in Oregon and throughout the West Coast.
The Blimp hanger in Tillamook, Oregon, may house a major development in using blimps for repeaters. Here’s a Navy balloon radio project (pdf), that drifted over the Pacfic to the Tillamook Hanger. The UK is testing a telecommunications blimp at 60,000 feet.
