3 ms·
Iridium, and Globalstar are low earth orbit systems needing very different radio hardware. It may sound super counterintuitive, but providing a stable link to
by baybal2 5y ago
Iridium, and Globalstar are low earth orbit systems needing very different radio hardware.
It may sound super counterintuitive, but providing a stable link to a geosynchronous satellite on a handheld hardware with tiny antenna is easier than with fast flying low earth orbit satellites.
And I doubt't that voice communications, or even Internet service would be there, just SMS, or pager like functionality most likelly.
- lxgr 5y agoVery different than what? Iridium modems are among the smallest satellite transceivers available, much smaller than GEO ones. Looking at something like the Garmin InReach shows what‘s possible with Iridium, and I imagine Apple would be throwing a lot more money at the technical/design constraints.
- detaro 5y agoTransmitting short few-byte messages like the InReachs vs making phone calls as claimed here?
- lxgr 5y agoPhone calls would be surprising, but in a way that seems vaguely plausible based on current technology. GSM phones used to have large external antennas too, until one day they simply didn‘t anymore.
- detaro 5y agoaddendum: does anyone know if those actually have different requirements? obviously calls are more data and thus need more energy, but from a quick search through public documentation I don't find a clear claim that the Short Burst Data service actually uses a less-demanding encoding.
- baybal2 5y ago> Very different than what? Than system communicating with geostationary sats. Training the circuitry onto one weak, but stable satellite signal is much easier than keeping readjusting, or communicting with multiple satellites at once. Just like with the GPS, the trick is the super duper accurate, and stable frequency reference.