3 ms·
Latency and bitrate are both affected by distance. Bitrate scales down roughly by 1/d squared. Latency scales up by o(d) obviously. In theory, multiple small ho
by jvanderbot 6y ago
Latency and bitrate are both affected by distance. Bitrate scales down roughly by 1/d squared. Latency scales up by o(d) obviously. In theory, multiple small hops could keep power high over a long distance. On practice, the different sun-centered orbits the relays would operate on mean you'd have a lot of them. That's spendy.
Also, there's a spectrum limit on Earth side or else we could blast signals back with very wide bandwidth
- maxov 6y agoThis is a really clean explanation, thank you! Is the O(1/d^2) decrease in bitrate due to the inverse square law for radiation intensity?
- spookthesunset 6y agoGoing real wideband would run into antenna efficiency issues. Designing an antenna that can handle a massively large bandwidth has a hell of a lot of engineering trade offs involved.