When I hear people talking about wi-fi and ranges of their routers you usually get to hear a few hundred feet at the most. This has been totally smashed and a record of 382KM was announced. Thats 238 miles (basically from where I am in Leeds and about 33 miles past London. The equipment used was customised with technology from Intel as well as some custom built parts. The parts used were all off the shelf. The guy who made this is also able to get about 3MBps from this connection which is quite amazing.
Problems faced are that wifi signals tend to break off when the range is increased. By focusing the signal you can increase the distance quite a bit. The next problem is obstacles. You need to have line of sight at this kind of distance… but unfortunately the curve of the earth gets in the way as well as the occasional tree, building etc… which is expected over 238 miles. Intel has created a way to steer electrically the signal which increases bandwidth also. I believe this test was performed up a mountain so it could have near line of site.
The reason behind these tests is to try get internet access in to the hard to reach places. If a signal can be transmitted from high up to a base station it could give a village access to the internet with out the need of expensive cabling underground. 382 KM is quite an achievement as well as the upload/download speed of 3MBps which was sustained in the test.
Via: News
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