Argo floats
Mesh network with diversified nodes
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If I would like to create a global ocean data mesh network, I would like to :
- determine the best long distance data intensive communication technology we should use.
- the energy necessary to each floating antenna-relay.
- calculate the number of floating objects required
- determine roughly the cost of such a technology to be implemented.
I will do the calculation on what I could find on the internet, as a very rough sketch of calculation.
For the example, the antenna I found for WIFI long range are 80km in range (radius), and cost say 3000£, just as example.
To cover up an area of 1000 km2, I need to set up a grid of 25 x 25 80km long range WIFI antennas in the seas.
The antennas signal need to overlap, so I can only exploit a 40km radius (this is why I dont have 12.5 antennas for 1000 km long square).
So I need 25x25, 625 floating antennas to cover up 1000km2 of sea.
So the ratio of antenna needed on 1m2 is 1/1600.
The ocean is ~3.61 x 10E14 m2 (361'000'000'000'000m2)
So to cover the oceans with antennas I will need
~3.61 X 10E14 m2 / 1600 = 225'625'000'000 antennas
Let's say that each antenna is 3000£.
225'625'000'000 x 3000 = 676'875'000'000'000£
We were 6,692,030,277 humans in 2008.
676'875'000'000'000 / 6,692,030,277 = 101'146.43£ / per person to cover the ocean with antennas.
This is too expensive, the environmental impact negatively huge. I blame it on :
- the idea, perhaps a stupid idea, perhaps not.
- the technology efficiency
- the cost of technology
- the lack of money in the world
So my question is : What is the technology that would enable the world population to have an entirely free ocean wireless data mesh network? At what price? How?
It is a technology question at this point.
So anyone : just an advice, of which technology to look into for long distance wireless mesh network would be amazing.
If you know someone who could answer this question I would be very happy to know about.
Please add in the comments below, or send me an email cesar.harada@opensailing.net
Is there really any need to cover the whole surface of the oceans? I would think a few well-covered pathways linking the continents would suffice (like the redundant undersea cables we currently rely on). The only real question IMHO is how to build such platforms such that they are resistant to the elements including rare natural events such as large earthquakes and tidal waves, and also such that they are resistant to sabotage (undersea cables are easy to sabotage but difficult to access).
ReplyDeleteI really think that by the time you could cover all of the ocean surface area, we'd already be transitioning to quantum methods for transmitting data, possibly obviating the range limitations of conventional transmission methods.