[HN Gopher] Digital Telecommunication in HF band - WWWAN - World...
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       Digital Telecommunication in HF band - WWWAN - World-Wide Wireless
       Area Network
        
       Author : pabs3
       Score  : 58 points
       Date   : 2024-05-05 02:52 UTC (20 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (pretalx.sysmocom.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (pretalx.sysmocom.de)
        
       | KaiserPro wrote:
       | Related but not quite the same: http://www.dxcluster.org/
       | 
       | Dxcluster used to use a lot of radio links to disseminate data.
       | However fixed internet lines have become much cheaper, so there
       | isn't the need to have massive HF antenna to create relay link
       | any more.
        
         | runlaszlorun wrote:
         | > so there isn't the need to have massive HF antenna to create
         | relay link any more.
         | 
         | HF is having quite a resurgance among various militaries.
        
           | blantonl wrote:
           | I'm not sure why this was downvoted. The author is correct.
           | 
           | Given that space communications and the militarization of
           | space is becoming more and more prevalent, we are on the cusp
           | of seeing some military actions in space that could render a
           | few defense agencies impotent with regards to C3.
        
       | greenish_shores wrote:
       | "Multimedia"? Over HF where one "cell" (using the WWAN
       | nomenclature) may have several tens kbps of total (uplink and/or
       | downlink) throughput at most? (see Shannon-Hartley theorem, which
       | is distinct from Shannon-Nyquist sampling theorem) But for emails
       | and the rest of proposed use, sure.
       | 
       | Also, OsmoDevCon is iirc invite-only, making linking to its
       | schedule on a public forum mostly pointless (visit #osmocom on
       | Libera for more info; disclaimer: I wasn't invited, either).
       | Unless, of course, a recording would be added (which it probably
       | will), but it's not true yet (as the event didn't took place
       | yet?)
        
         | lxgr wrote:
         | If you consider SSB voice one medium, and CW morse code
         | another, HF has been multimedia for more than a century :)
        
           | nrdgrrrl wrote:
           | There's also SSTV. Surely images, voice and text counts as
           | multi-media?
        
       | DeathArrow wrote:
       | What HF means in this context? A few GHz? Also, for long range I
       | thought the longer the wave length is, the better.
        
         | SigmundA wrote:
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_frequency
        
         | macnetic wrote:
         | HF is 3 MHz to 30 MHz. Yes it does not make much sense, the
         | term is ancient.
        
           | nativeit wrote:
           | I mean, any higher and I'll have to start thinking about
           | printed circuit boards, shielded wires, and non-coat-hanger-
           | based antennas...frankly if 30,000 kilocycles can't get the
           | job done, I'll just have to light the thing on fire and use
           | it to make smoke signals.
           | 
           | Best regards, 50 years ago
        
             | xattt wrote:
             | 640 K[Hz] ought to be enough for anybody.
        
           | 1992spacemovie wrote:
           | If you did a modicum of reading it makes sense.
        
           | yau8edq12i wrote:
           | Ancient? The HF band is still very much in use... Modern
           | developments have not changed the fundamental properties of
           | RF propagation. UHF ("a few GHz") can only be propagated in
           | line of sight reliably. HF can literally travel around the
           | world.
        
             | lxgr wrote:
             | GP called the term ancient, not the band itself, and I find
             | it hard to disagree with that.
             | 
             | Calling something "high", "fast", or "new" is rarely a
             | naming decision that'll stand the test of time, but given
             | that there were already LF and MF below it, it did make
             | sense at the time. Who could have predicted we'd go up all
             | the way into visible light with our RF communications?
             | 
             | The only thing on a lower frequency used daily by most
             | people would be contactless payment cards and maybe NFC at
             | around 13 MHz.
        
               | yau8edq12i wrote:
               | Millimeter wavelength RF was already studied in the 19th
               | century... The RF communication band you're talking about
               | is smack dab in a band already defined in the original
               | 1937 document.
               | 
               | Honestly the naming scheme makes sense to me. The
               | spectrum is divided into 12 bands of equal (log) size, up
               | to a frequency where we don't know whether such waves
               | will _ever_ be reliably generated at room temperature
               | without breaking the laws of physics. Then these bands
               | are consistently named from  "extremely low" to
               | "extremely high", with an extra annoying band at the top.
               | Really, it could be worse.
        
               | zamadatix wrote:
               | I agree it could be worse but the idea it's really any
               | good seems more like us being used to it than anything
               | else. It's a stupid naming scheme. For a log scale I
               | would really have been happier with everyone using band
               | numbers or something rather than explaining "super high
               | frequency" is higher than "Ultra high frequency" and,
               | despite the terms, that's probably where most typical
               | radio device use cases are these days.
        
               | lxgr wrote:
               | Fortunately we have not just one but two competing band
               | designators - IEEE (widely in use in e.g. satellite
               | communication; L-band, Ku-band, Ka-band etc. come from
               | that nomenclature) and EU/NATO (which seems somewhat
               | obsolete) :)
               | 
               | In addition to that, hams (in study materials and exams)
               | use wavelengths, which is always "fun" to convert from/to
               | frequencies.
        
               | cycomanic wrote:
               | I'm not sure I understand. In 1937 we already knew that
               | light and RF are both part of the EM spectrum so I don't
               | know what you mean by generating waves that break the
               | laws of physics (we have and had absolutely no issues
               | generating waves with 100s of THz frequency). As a
               | physicist coming from the optics I find naming in RF
               | often quite puzzling, e.g. why do we call it microwave,
               | while wavelengths are all longer that millimeters?
        
               | yau8edq12i wrote:
               | > we have and had absolutely no issues generating waves
               | with 100s of THz frequency
               | 
               | In a way suitable for even medium range RF communication?
               | No. That's what I mean. The required power would be
               | insanely high. So high that it's not achievable without
               | some breakthrough. I didn't literally mean "break the
               | laws of physics", because that's something we obviously
               | cannot do.
        
             | cameldrv wrote:
             | UHF can be used with troposcatter techniques. Before
             | satellites this was somewhat popular. It seems to be having
             | a little bit of a comeback as well as you can get hundreds
             | of miles of propagation fairly reliably and since it's
             | higher frequency you can get a pretty wide bandwidth.
             | Something that can fit on a small trailer can send hundreds
             | of megabits hundreds of miles.
        
           | lxgr wrote:
           | Even today, it still is higher than low and medium frequency
           | :)
        
       | mannyv wrote:
       | How is this different from what the ham radio guys have? They
       | were doing ip over ham in the 90s, i think, which is more
       | performant than uucp for sure.
        
         | ale42 wrote:
         | Not very different I think... on the air it's the same: they're
         | using VARA, which has been introduced by a ham radio guy
         | (https://rosmodem.wordpress.com/), and is widely used by ham
         | radio operators.
         | 
         | I'm a bit annoyed by the closed and Windows-only nature of VARA
         | (see also discussion https://old.reddit.com/r/amateurradio/comm
         | ents/12d2s3e/would...), but well, it works well as far as I've
         | heard.
        
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