Replies to post #17982 on Airborne Wireless Network (ABWN)

[D B Cooper]

You are correct, it would be overkill if they were going to only use some of those aircraft in the 400 mile diameter for data transport. I would think they would use all available aircraft in the mesh across the 400 miles and fractionalize the traffic across multiple aircraft for performance and redundancy. I thought I read somewhere in the technical data that they were also looking to do a test using lasers for data transport. Been there and done that, lots of complications; the first being the power consumption needed to maintain lock and drive the signal the 200 mile distance, that will certainly lead to weight and space issues. That being said, I’m excited about this technology and hope this little company succeeds, it could certainly be a game changer for both civil and military wireless communications. This is only in its infancy today, the same place the cell phone was 25 years ago.