What kind of options are there for very high bandwidth long distance data links?

We use Microhard Systems 1.5 Mbps radios that send data over 100km. They run at 900Mhz www.microhardcorp.com

They make 54Mbps broadband wireless gear too, quoted range is 16km.

We've used their 900Mhz gear for years, and it's only gotten better, from 1200bps to 1.5Mbps. Works great in cluttered environments (urban or forest)


A 10km link for 80Mbit/sec? Not going to happen. You're going to have a hell of a problem getting consumer gear to do 10km with one endpoint mobile, let alone 80Mbps.

Why not encode that stream with an FPGA or encoder chip to get it down to a more manageable bit rate? Now you can start looking for high-power commercial gear, but I'm guessing that you won't find anything you can use without a license. The gear that Tim is talking about is all for fixed point to point links. I've set up some long range 2.4GHz stuff but again, fixed points where you can use a big antenna and jack up the EIRP.

Sorry for the letdown of an answer, but there isn't consumer gear which can do this yet, and the commercial gear will either be pricey or simply unavailable.


There are a few things you need to consider in a project like this:

  1. What are the wireless regulations for the markets you are planning on selling to? Typically the wireless spectrum is very limited on what frequencies you can use, how much power, and for how long you can broadcast. Of course you can usually pay a licensing fee to go above it, but you would have to look into the rules for the area you would be selling to see if the license is something you can afford for your project.
  2. What is the free space and obstacle loss that are associated with the range and environment that you want it to work in? Now how much power will you need in order to go that far?
  3. Portable or fixed? How high (elevation wise) will it be? Because of the curvature of the earth, the longer distances you want to go the higher you have to be.
  4. Do you want the user to have to aim their antenna or is it going to be omni-directional. How tight of range are you going to have? The tighter the range the higher your effective gain will be on your antenna.
  5. Are you going digital or analog? This will effect how you will encode your data, acceptable error amounts and acceptable signal to noise ratio.

I think once you consider these items you will probably realize it isn't practical for a consumer application.

Tags:

Radio

Data

Hd