Google Building a 100kW Transmitter at Spaceport America (hackaday.com) 75
szczys writes: Google is building a 100kW transmitter at Spaceport America. As is becoming the regular source of early info, this comes via an FCC filing in which Google has asked the agency to keep the project secret. The signal strength itself isn't [groundbreaking] until you learn this is a directional antenna. Some of the most powerful FM radio transmitters get to 100kW, but those are omnidirectional. This is a highly focused directional antenna and that makes it sound like a big piece of Google's hushed Broadband Drone program.
No, HALF a watt. (Score:5, Informative)
According to TFA, the highly directional antenna gives a peak effective power of 96kW along its lobe, but total radiated power is 500mW -- half a watt. So the comparison to "powerful FM radio transmitters" is kind of silly. In fact, it's even sillier than that, because FM broadcasts (at least here in the US) are around 100MHz, and this transmitter will be in the range of 70-80GHz, with completely different propagation characteristics.
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I was wondering what they were going to do with 100kW through a highly directional antenna, supply satellite TV to Mars?
Re:No, HALF a watt. (Score:5, Funny)
Google Eye of Sauron.
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I'm not sure if you're telling me to google Eye of Sauron or if that's the name of the thing, "Google Eye of Sauron".
Re: No, HALF a watt. (Score:5, Funny)
Shush, we're hysterical with misinformation and misunderstanding.
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You seem to be thinking of a different wavelength. We're talking about 80GHz here. I actually get less than 60cm, but that's assuming 100% antenna efficiency.
Re:No, HALF a watt. (Score:5, Informative)
So we are to believe 96KW raw power results in 500Mw of final output?
No.
1. You meant 500mW (milli-watt) not 500Mw (mega-watt).
2. You have it backwards. 500mW raw power results in 96KW of equivalent omnidirectional output.
How inefficient is that?
3. This is not a measure of efficiency.
Look up EIRP [wikipedia.org]
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MobiDisk has made the common mistake of referring to an isotropic radiator as an omnidirectional radiator. Omnidirectional does not have the same rigorous definition as isotropic, which has led to your misunderstanding of his comment. If you re-read his comment, replacing "96kW of equivalent omnidirectional output" with something more like "radiated power in the major lobe equivalent to a 96kW isotropic radiator" then you will understand his original intent better.
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What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)
Fried birds falling from the sky, for example.
http://deadlinelive.info/2011/... [deadlinelive.info]
Re:What could possibly go wrong? (Score:5, Informative)
You must get really tired of frying the side of your head with your cell phone, then; its maximum transmit power is more than one watt, and if you're holding it to your ear, you're intercepting close to half of that power.
This isn't a high-power transmitter. This is a low-power, but hyperdirectional transmitter. Think cantenna on steroids.
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You must get really tired of frying the side of your head with your cell phone, then; its maximum transmit power is more than one watt, and if you're holding it to your ear, you're intercepting close to half of that power.
These same morons somehow thought it was better to wear an earpiece and keep the "radiation emitting" phone in their pocket or on a holster near their genitals instead.
If they were wearing a wireless earpiece, then they're probably not morons, and it probably WAS better. The power emitted by the phone in order to reach a cell tower is FAR greater than that emitted by a Bluetooth earpiece that's good for a few tens of feet at most. OTOH, if it was a WIRED earpiece, then it was probably a luck-of-the-draw thing as to how much RF energy was conducted / guided by the earpiece cable to the head.
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near their genitals instead.
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Well, I was replying to a post about "fried birds falling from the sky", but sure, go ahead and point to a study that shows higher increases in cancer rate with lower levels of radiation -- it's a miracle life ever arose on Earth, apparently, what with our exposure to the homeopathic death aura of cosmic background microwave radiation.
As far as actual risk, you're more likely to be killed by flying goalposts, at least in this thread, apparently.
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There's plenty of evidence that microwave radiation at the level of a cell phone increases cancer risk. Here's one repeated, peer-reviewed study: http://microwavenews.com/news-... [microwavenews.com]
I'm not willing to pay for a copy of the research paper, (fuck Elsevier), but I'd like to read it. It's so easy to play games with numbers in order to arrive at 'statistical significance'. All too often a 'smoking gun' turns out to be the combination of a replica firearm and a puff of mist. I'm not saying there ISN'T a causal link between RF exposure and various kinds of biological harm; I'm only saying that it will take more than third-hand conclusions about a scientific study to convince me. (This in spit
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I'm not about to pay 42 bucks to read the study so I can't speak to it directly. With that said, there's been numerous OTHER studies which have entirely refuted these types of claims.
There's also plenty of evidence that god exists depending on where you set the bar for 'evidence.'
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You must get really tired of frying the side of your head with your cell phone, then.
In the days of analog-only cellular, I DID (somewhat) fry the side of my head with a cell phone. I was using my boss's (fairly) small hand-held unit - this was shortly before digital cellular came along IIRC. Whenever I used the phone for more than a minute or so, I would get a diffuse itching feeling inside my head near the phone antenna. When I switched sides, the itch moved to the other side, consistently and repeatedly.
I know, I know, correlation isn't causation, etc, etc, but this was utterly consisten
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Not to play grammar nazi ... but you're interSECTING about half of the radiated power. You're certainly not interCEPTING half of it.
This assumes cell phones use omni-directional antennas which I rather expect is the case. If your body intercepted half the radiated power then holding the phone to your ear would result in a lot of dropped calls in mediocre coverage areas.
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Eh, maybe. I guess I was thinking of "intercept" in the sense of "x-intercept" on a graph. You're in the way of about half of the radiation, but you're absorbing only a tiny fraction of that. As you say, phones wouldn't work well if it were otherwise.
Tinfoil hat (Score:5, Funny)
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Everyone not wearing inductive wrap that locks-in the cooking juices.
Just a bit of editing, please (Score:4, Informative)
As is becoming the regular source of early info
What?
The signal strength itself isn't [groundbreaking]
Not as [groundbreaking] as your bizarre use of [square brackets], certainly.
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Is {this} better?
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Square brackets are used by hackaday to highlight people's names/handles, so there is no confusion.
So clearly, in this case, [groundbreaking] is just someone's name.
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I suppose it was a quote. Then the use of the brackets would be quite customary. They are used to indicate a word that originally wasn't in a quoted statement, but was implied by context and added to the quote to restore the meaning of the statement. For example, see the Harvard style guide for quotations [leeds.ac.uk] for reference.
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Anytime Now (Score:2)
Google's Solar-Drone Internet Tests About To Take Off
"About to"?
What is this some kind of Duke Nukem thingy?
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Google doesn't exactly have a reputation for vaporware announcements... More like the exact opposite - They release fairly mature services at the drop of a hat. And sure, many of those fail, but enough don't that we've come to take Google for granted as just shy of "infrastructure" in terms of their importance to the proper functioning of the internet.
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any old-timers left?! (Score:2)
reminds me of the original Tesla Tower (Score:2)
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He built in New York and Colorado Springs.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Not even remotely the same purpose, same frequency or even the same construction or appearance.
But other than that, sure, it's identical.
.
More like 100mW (Score:1)
It's probably more like 100mW with a 2 meter dish that gives 60dBi of gain at 80GHz.
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can i have that again in proper units such as libraries of congress or blue whales?
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It's probably more like 1/15000th of a microwave oven with a volkswagen-sized dish that makes the signal ONE MILLION TIMES STRONGER when the signal is going SOOOOOOOPER FAST.
Broadcast power (Score:2)
Some of the most powerful FM radio transmitters get to 100kW
The Sutro Tower (San Francisco) has a couple of stations transmitting at 5MW. See this chart [sutro.org]. Sutro is by no means the "most powerful" tower, either, at only 24MW ERP.
100 kW ERP is commonplace - My laser pointer... (Score:1)