[thisnews]

I am a hydrographer in the NT working out in very remote areas- Phone reception is rarely possible for such monitoring sites. Currently we use satellite Comms. to relay water data home, but this is very expensive and prone to failure.

I'm wondering if you, or anyone else, has some ideas on long range communication strategies for large areas (NT is 1.4 million km2).

The area we are required to cover generally means sites are chosen based on accessibility rather than operational importance — it would be great if we could expand the network with low maintenance loggers capable of communicating long distances.

[syedkarim]

Which operator are you using? We've found L-band to be very reliable and does not suffer from any of the attenuation issues found in Ku. And heavy spreading on the return path provides for an even more resilient link.

Disclosure: We'll be offering an L-band satellite gateway for IoT this summer.

[thisnews]

We currently use Iridium. On Ku band I beleive. I'll look further into this and see what our options are for L-band.

Outernet looks like a great project. How small of a satellite can be used to achieve the connection? Any more info/documentation on the L-band gateway?

[detaro]

What update frequency is required?

[thisnews]

It's heavily dependent on river/climate conditions. During the dry most loggers will only need to be polled once every hour. However, during the buildup and wet, the stations would ideally be sending back every ~5 minutes.