I’d prefer to have gross pointing and a higher bit rate.
Cutting the bit rate in half to achieve little or no pointing seems like a bad trade at these very low rates. If the rates were 10x what they are it might might some sense.
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A “No Pointing” device is the future. Whoever goes to market with it will win.
Consumers HATE the slightest complexity.
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I only test receivers with antennas lasting flat now. I’m in Chicago.
Coming in late…
Highest bit rate possible even if it needs pointing. The gps “flat” antenna only really works because the satellites are moving, even overhead. We are stationary. It only needs to be pointed to one spot in the sky. The most precious commodity nowadays is “time”. Waiting for downloads or data is no go for me and therefore even lower bit rates is a show stopper. Outernet only has a future outside of the “hobby” approach if the information is relevant and timely.
Maybe if I say it differently…
So, with no consideration of bandwidth costs, and in the interest of making the signal easier to capture with a small, flat mounted antenna, what if instead of one stream, there were four adjacent streams? If one low bandwidth stream can be captured handily by the small antenna, it seems logical four low bandwidth streams could carry four times as much data. And still be received reliably.
Question is, can the CHIP handle decoding 4 streams simultaneously?
And, who will write the quad decoder?
- You can’t discard cost from consideration. If it were not considered then the solution is just to turn up the power AND run a faster bitrate. Cost is what forces this trade-off.
- The constraint is really power per transmitted bit. Higher power/bit = easier to receive. If the total bitrate remains the same and you make four separate channels, each with 1/4 of the original bitrate, with the same total aggregate power then the power per bit is the same. Then it is equally easy to receive and more complicated. Maybe you are thinking that there is higher coding gain at lower bitrates, but that doesn’t seem to be the case?
- The cheapest solution probably lies on the receiver end - a different antenna and a receiver that can decode at a lower SNR.
@cyoung Makes a very important point. The fees we pay for bandwidth are the defining factor in the service. From my perspective, it is the most important consideration by 10x.
I’ll be making an announcement about this very soon, but for now I strongly agree with Point 3: A different antenna and receiver.
Probably not only the bandwidth but also the power transmitted in that bandwidth…
With the existing modulation parameters and a few dB more transmitted power you could receive
using an omni and still have good SNR. But that power increase would cost money as well.
@pe1chl You are correct; we pay for a combination of power and bandwidth. I was doing some shorthand by lumping power into bandwidth.
Maybe if I say it the same but differently…
Same bandwidth per carrier as today. Same bits per carrier. Same power per carrier. But do four at the same time and they don’t have to be necessarily adjacent as long as the software tuner(s) can see them all simultaneously. Aggregate the bits for an effectively equal bitrate to one larger channel. Think OFDM or port trunking.
You see, I have no idea how Outernet is getting its slot allotted on the bird, how much it costs, or who owns it. For all I know, it could be an unused subcarrier or control channel of some other larger entity.
What if the service could be promoted to big Inmarsat tenants as a ‘public service’ of sorts that they could donate unused pieces of bandwidth for in exchange for promotional consideration, like PBS does. PBS viewers probably don’t buy a lot of stuff from Lockheed/Martin, but there it is, sponsoring the news.
Sadly, we pay an exorbitant sum for our tiny channel. I’m unable to go into details, but I can say that what we raised from our crowdfunding campaign was not enough for even a year of our channel. Yes, really. I’ve tried for, well, years to do exactly what you described–and have not had any takers. But if anyone knows of a way to get this thing subsidized, I will gladly work with them.
i wonder if the cost of getting coverage from Iridium would be any different and even work better since there satlights are in low earth obit.
Ha! Order of magnitude difference in cost (higher). And GlobalStar even higher than that. OrbComm not interested at all.
that sucks
If only Outernet could tap into the wasted frames of repetitive text Fleetnet sends down 54W all day long on the NCS channel.
They won’t let us/anyone touch the SafetyNet/FleetNet channels.
It seems like everyone is saying the same thing that one size does not fit all. You will need a couple of solutions.
- If mobile have an omidirectional antenna. The price for being mobile is reduced data rates.
- If fixed have a higher gain directional antenna. Since you don’t move you get more data as a benefit.
-Dan
Hmmm. Let me look into this.
-Dan