3 ms·
Radio horizon is somewhat complex, but 45 miles is not entirely unreasonable from an elevated position. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight_propagation
by ac29 4y ago
Radio horizon is somewhat complex, but 45 miles is not entirely unreasonable from an elevated position.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight_propagation#Radio_horizon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-of-sight_propagation#Radi...
There could also be timing related constraints that limit max range: radio waves propagate at the speed of light which is fast, but not instant.
- genewitch 4y agomicrowaves go about 10% further than the horizon, barring any tropospheric ducting - which cell towers shouldn't, in general. The issue you have with long distances is multipath, which can throw off the complex timing required to have multiple users in realtime on a single radio.
- MichaelCollins 4y agoI've heard that US spy satellites used to eavesdrop on soviet telephone calls transmitted between line-of-sight ground-based microwave relay towers. The relay towers used directional microwave antenna aimed at each other, but satellites in space could pick up those signals. I can't find a direct reference to it on wikipedia, but I suspect this is what the Vortex satellites were doing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_(satellite) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_(satellite)