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by ridgeguy 3095 days ago
Non-oceanic internet distribution might mitigate concerns raised in the article. [1]

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/11/space...

3 comments

Satellites are a poor choice for this particular problem (i.e. when you think an adversary may cripple your communication capabilities), because they can be disrupted, especially if your adversary is one of the premier states in spaceflight and weaponry.

A more resilient choice is troposcatter [1], which has evolved since the 50s [2][3]. A nice property of troposcatter is that it's difficult to intercept and difficult to disrupt between the origin and the destination.

Of course, such a system still lacks the bandwidth for day-to-day commercial usage, by orders of magnitude.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropospheric_scatter [2] http://www.comtechsystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Tro... [3] http://www.mwrf.com/systems/troposcatter-system-maintains-50...

I wonder how well 4QAM or something similar does in those situations. 2Ghz is a pretty fast rate, 8gbs + FEC is probably still not that large of a link though.
I don't think wireless technology will ever be able to compete with fiber for bandwidth. You can cram incredible amounts of data through glass. It's on the order of Petabits/second for a single strand.
They mention inter-satellite optical links, but an operational space-to-ground optical system might be tolerable.
Free space OAM communications perhaps?
Will be quite awhile before that is as cheap and has as much bandwidth as those cables. The other disadvantage(s) is/are broadcasting your communication emissions in open air, weather or otherwise other types of interference (naturally occurring or deliberate).