3 ms·
My understanding is it's tough to beat point to point microwave arrays for directness in a lot of cases, they're already pretty close to the straightline path b
by rtkwe 6y ago
My understanding is it's tough to beat point to point microwave arrays for directness in a lot of cases, they're already pretty close to the straightline path between some locations. The same is basically true for the longer range low bandwidth links that curve around the Earth.
Starlink is at a disadvantage because fundamentally it's pathing across a sphere with a larger radius so even when the path is direct across the Starlink cluster it still has to traverse a longer distance than the equivalent path on the ground. Adding to that the path won't always be directly across the surface of the constellation, depending on where you are and where the destination is you'll find some pockets where the link has to zig zag across the constellation slightly adding to the additional link distance. This [0] isn't necessarily a perfect representation but it does show how starlink's linking may work and how it's not a perfect net. It also doesn't account for the acquisition times for new laser links which were on the order of 20 seconds in another laser sat link test.
[0] https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4?t=103 https://youtu.be/AdKNCBrkZQ4?t=103 (it's also comparing fiber to Starlink where the best in class now is radio links generally)
- Diederich 6y agoYup! I saw the linked video shortly after it came out, pretty cool stuff. > where the best in class now is radio links generally What would I put into a search engine to learn more about these more recent long distance radio links? Thanks!
- walrus01 6y agoI do terrestrial point to point microwave/millimeter wave stuff professionally, so it depends what you're trying to search for. Microwave isn't really used for any significant portion of traffic at "long distances" anymore, like it was in the days before singlemode fiber. But it very useful in places where you want to reach a very rural area or go somewhere that would be cost prohibitive to build to with fiber. There are atmospheric and practical effects that make going more than 50-60km with PTP microwave, and data rates above 700-800 Mbps, increasingly costly as the distances increase. It is totally possible technologically to build very long chains of many microwave PTP radio hops, as some high frequency trading companies set up between new york and chicago, but the aggregate throughput and capacity is minuscule compared to fiber. Would be happy to answer any more specific questions. Here's an example of a current state of the art point to point microwave radio, for use in the common FCC licensed part 101 bands (6, 11, 18, 23 GHz, etc) https://aviatnetworks.com/products/all-outdoor-radio/wtm-4000-outdoor-ip-sdn-radio/ https://aviatnetworks.com/products/all-outdoor-radio/wtm-400...