[Ham-80211] Experimenting with ... Wireless Networking in the 420 MHz Band paper

[David Bern]

Friends:

I submitted a paper entitled Experimenting with High-Speed Wireless
Networking in the 420 MHz Band to the The 31th Annual ARRL and TAPR
Digital Communications Conference on September 21-23, 2012 in Atlanta, GA.

http://www.tapr.org/dcc.html


ABSTRACT:

This paper reports on our testing the Doodle Labs DL435-30 and Xagyl
Communications XC420M wireless networking miniPCI cards. They behave
like IEEE 802.11 wireless networking cards but operate in the 420 MHz
band. We have successfully tested these cards over 10 miles at about
three Mbit/s data rate at a 5 MHz bandwidth in the 420 to 426 MHz ATV
sub-band. Our test applications were a Webcam video streaming program
and a file download server program that ran on inexpensive netbook
computers.

. . .


CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS:

We can confidently claim that the Doodle Labs DL435-30 and the Xagyl
Communications XC420M wireless networking cards on 420 MHz work as
advertised. They have comparable performance since they easily passed
our acceptance test of one Mbit/s data rate over a 10 mile distance.
The Doodle Labs cards appear to have a faster data rate, but in North
America, the Xagyl cards are more conveniently available since they are
shipped from a U. S. address or a Canadian address and they were 35
percent less expensive than the Doodle Labs cards at time of purchase.

We have demonstrated that it is possible to assemble a long distance
high-speed data link on 420 MHz with only purchased available
components. The only construction required was to make quarter wave
antennas and to drill holes in lightweight metal boxes.

. . .


The full version of this paper can be found at

http://www.tapr.org/pdf/DCC2012-Experimenting-...-Wireless-Networking-in-420-MHz-Band-W2LNX.pdf


Thank you,
David, W2LNX