Re: 802.11b wireless lan equipment and ham radio ?

From: Matti Aarnio (hwy.tsbqwhci@fraghaus.com)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 10:30:33 EEST

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    On Wed, May 01, 2002 at 05:33:54PM -0700, James Cutler wrote:
    > > Most WLAN cards have extremely wide receivers, which drown out their
    > > AGC when they receive powerfull RF within 200-400 MHz. Narrow Rx
    > > pre-filter helps, but does not appear at commodity pcmcia cards.
    > > For that matter, separate Rx/Tx paths, and PTT signal are not
    > > available at commodity stuff either.
    >
    > Anyone know if WLAN cards can handle doppler shift say from a LEO
    > satellite?

       Possibly can. It all depends on the oscillator if it can be
       programmed in small enough steps -- and having suitable firmware
       that can be commanded. Lets see more:

       Spacecraft downlink can be at 2.4 GHz, but uplink must be somewhere
       else, say 5.6 GHz (national regulations vary a bit again, but
       the uplink can't be at 2.4 GHz.)

       8 km/sec speed (average LEO) translates to doppler as:
         2.4 GHz: 64 kHz
        10.5 GHz: 280 kHz
       Which of course means that it is coming straight at you, while
       in reality it passes by -> radial speed is always lower.

       For link-budget S/N reasons there most probably is need to:
          - Narrow the bandwidth ( = bitrate)
          - Send shorter frames to improve changes of sending correct frame
          - use non-IEEE spreading-code (one of those ARRL codes?)
          - Center frequency tuning by 100 or 1000 Hz steps.
          - Separated Rx/Tx/PTT signals

       Which all boils down to: new firmware
       and possibly custom hardware.

       I have wondered what would be the interesting technical thing for
       a talked about AMSAT-OH satellite, a Spread-Spectrum datalink would
       be a first one (although AO-40 should be able to do it too).
       (And no, we are just beginning the talks..)

    /Matti Aarnio -- OH2MQK
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