Soldier sets up UAV communication system in Afganistan
Big bandwidth, 4G, wireless networks are popping up everywhere these days; it is almost hard to find an area that does not have a fast connection. That is not the case for our men and women fighting on foreign battlefields like Afghanistan. Wireless networks out there are hard to come by even at 3G speeds. Wars are won with information. Having soldiers connected is paramount.
Slow data speeds will soon be a problem of the past though as DARPA’s (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) STO (Strategic Technology Office) looks to bring 4G level connections to even the most remote of battlefields. To do this, DARPA plans on using their Mobile Hotspots program that uses a millimeter-wave communications platform (wavelength of 10 to 1mm.) This system will be implemented in air vehicles as well as ground and will be able to give the war-fighter the speed of a typical 4G fixed tower, which is about a gigabit per second, without the infrastructure (kind of hard to hide a cell-tower in a war zone). The Mobile Hotspots program will also utilize DARPA’s ‘Fixed Wireless at a Distance program' which is essentially a high-performance cell tower that’s placed in a protected area like a forward operating base (FOB). This work is being looked at to boost UAV transmission power in hopes to extend the range.
DARPA Program manager *** Ridgway explained how they will get up and running, "Mobile Hotspots will require the development of steerable antennas, efficient millimeter-wave power amplifiers, and dynamic networking to establish and maintain the mobile data backhaul network. We anticipate using commercial radio protocols, such as WiFi, WiMax or LTE [Long Term Evolution], as a cost-effective demonstration of the high-capacity backbone. However, the millimeter-wave mobile backbone developed during this program will be compatible with other military radios and protocols.”
"The principle of strategy is having one thing, to know ten thousand things." - Miyamoto Musashi (Book of Five Rings)
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