Drone-Based Communication Network Provides Blazing Speed

You know those action movies where the good guy is deep inside hostile territory, and has a real-time video ‘face to face’ meeting with the General? That may be feasible with classified military tech, but in the the civilian world, that would require a satellite link. That means shoddy bandwidth, crappy video quality and a 240ms lag, so you might as well say “Over” after every sentence.

Radionor’s (http://www.radionor.no/) invention will bring movie fiction closer to reality. Ultimately for military use, which will trickle down to consumers as it always does, the invention discloses an array of Long-range Adaptive Mobile Beam-forming Ad-hoc Communication (LAMBACOM) units. Parsing through the details, it seems that Radionor has balanced a way to aim a stream of data connectivity with impressive bandwidth, positioning system and adjustable power emission (just in case the baddies are listening in).

Here is text from the application: “[D]isclosed is a method and system for providing a long range communication network for mobile applications where the offered bandwidth is high, the frequency re-use and network efficiency is high. The communication range is long according to the disclosure as a combination of modulation technique, analog implementation, digital spatial-time signal processing and method of utilization of a highly directive adaptive array symmetrical antenna system. The implementation of a communication controller provides a very high efficiency for both short and long range. The mesh network is organized so no base station is required, and is self-organized so traffic collisions and interference is avoided, and transmission can be done with low latency and jitter. Also disclosed is a system with a high precision positioning system integrated with the communication system that provide a high positioning accuracy and low latency transfer of the positioning data across the wireless ad-hoc network to the other nodes in the system.”

Claim 30, which is the new 1, likely redacted after a first round of USPTO prosecution:

A method of setting up a wireless long range communication network between several communication units each having a Long-range Adaptive Mobile Beam-forming Ad-hoc Communication (LAMBACOM) unit (11) including an array RF transceiver section (15), a spatial phase front analysis section (16), a delay section (18), a beam-former section (17), a RF switching section (13), an antenna element section (12), a positioning system (32), a communication controller (22) and a data link (23), comprising the following steps:

• a. performing a frame-by-frame spatial scan for a phase modulated, coherent code-word from other communication units using spatial analysis of signals from the RF-transceiver section (15);
• b. provide beam forming according to a selection of optimum signal to interference ratio via utilizing a digital antenna beam-former (17) with an appropriate coefficient set to optimize signal energy before first RX data are passed through a plurality of delay elements (18a-n) of the delay section (18) for achieving an optimum antenna shape and demodulation of the first received RX data from any direction;
• c. calculating the spatial angular direction of each received communication message from another communication unit in the network;
• d. measuring time-of-arrival between the communication units based on correlation of a code-word that is included in each communication message in the network;
• e. transmitting a response message to other communication units containing information about time-of-arrival for a decoded message and delay time from the time-of-arrival to the transmission of the response message;
• and f. mutually exchanging position information between all communication units in the network through the same RF transceiver section (15) that is used for positioning.

Title: “METHOD AND SYSTEM FOR LONG-RANGE ADAPTIVE MOBILE BEAM-FORMING AD-HOC COMMUNICATION SYSTEM WITH INTEGRATED POSITIONING”

US Patent Application Publication No: 20140105054

Filed (USA): May 16, 2012

Published: April 17, 2014