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Before anyone gets too excited about this - half duplex/TDD-like mesh radio systems with omnidirectional antennas are one of the LEAST efficient possible ways o
by walrus01 3y ago
Before anyone gets too excited about this - half duplex/TDD-like mesh radio systems with omnidirectional antennas are one of the LEAST efficient possible ways of building a wireless village/town scale IP network. The thing about an omni antenna talking to another omni is that an omnidirectional antenna is also a 360 degree noise gatherer, and gathers traffic/timeslot occuyping stuff that might be coming from other, slightly further away, mesh nodes it can hear that your radio is not immediately engaged in tx/rx with...
Similarly, for everything that you transmit packets towards another specific node, 99% of your RF signal is going in azimuth directions that you don't want and don't need, but because it's an omni it goes everywhere. Raising the noise floor for all other nearby nodes of similar hardware configuration.
I would encourage people who want to do something like this on a very tight budget to look into the designed for purpose point-to-point (primarily parabolic reflector based) 802.11ac/ax based radio systems that exist to form L2 ethernet bridges between two locations. And some newer very low cost 24 GHz and 60 GHz based stuff also designed for exclusively line-of-sight (and line-of-fresnel-zone-clearance) point-to-point bridges.
LoRA stuff is also much better if have fixed-link needs between two spots in bands far below the typical 2.4 or 5.x GHz, working in VHF/UHF-like bands (or generally anywhere below 1300 MHz), and can point a few yagi-uda or dipole type antennas at each other instead of having two omnidirectional antennas talk to each other.
If you have sites which are not mobile and do not move around or change location relative to each other, and you want better link reliability and data rates, I would strongly encourage people to look into using just about anything else that isn't an omni to form network links between nodes.
randomly chosen example in 5 seconds of googling, note gain pattern in one specific direction:
https://www.elprocus.com/design-of-yagi-uda-antenna/ https://www.elprocus.com/design-of-yagi-uda-antenna/
One of the cool things being done with LoRA-type chipsets and RF modules these days is ExpressLRS, which implements a serial UART bridge between remote controller and UAV (or unmanned boat, ground vehicle, etc) for link between human and onboard flight controller. Evolution of the same general idea as TBS Crossfire for RC applications.
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=expresslrs+lora https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=expresslr...
- kaliqt 3y agoWe could even slap these on drones in a rotation to keep boosting signal for a sector. There's so much possibility to bypass ISPs...
- lormayna 3y agoThis is why stuff like smart antennas and beamforming were invented. But for a system like LoRA that has a very low thoughput (AKA slow in the time domain), it's not an easy concept to apply in mobility.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoThat's a whole lot of commenting from someone who clearly doesn't know what meshtastic is. It's text messaging with channels, some provisions for nodes transmitting sensor data, and some location data. It's not intended to provide TCP/IP networking.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- walrus01 3y agoAlmost inevitably, people building "mesh" networks do try to run IP over them, because the most common and popular applications and services are all TCP/IP based. DIY things capable of a few hundred kbps and text only are a very niche application. "Mesh" at very low data rates and duty cycles has very good purposes when purchased in a fully packaged single purpose industrial/embedded system from a vendor with support, such as how electrical grid operators implement some forms of smart meters.
- datadeft 3y agoI think your comment is based on something that LoRa is not. > building a wireless village/town scale IP network This was never its goal. You can build a simple messaging network for text that has a pretty good range and low bandwidth. That is all.
- niles 3y agoLoRA , capital A for LLM training, LoRa for wireless