Goal

We need a reliable way to access our boat systems from a distance. There is a need for a higher-speed medium-range radio connection for debugging, and for a long-range low-speed telemetry.

Motivation

How can we to communicate over a distance of a few kilometers? The last competition has shown that 4G/5G cannot be taken for granted.

Plus, what if we want to go truly far away from the coast?

Maybe LoRa is a solution? Is there something we can re-purpose, for example from Ham Radio? Can we somehow fit a satellite antenna on the boat? And how much power does it draw?

Requirements / Interests

• You have a basic understanding of physics / electrical engineering
• You have heard (a) lecture(s) about radio waves and want to apply it
• People have thrown around words like „standing wave ratio“ and „free-space loss“ and you are curious what they mean in practice
• Maybe you have looked into ham radio, LoRaWan or remote control before
• Maybe you have a cool idea on how to make really long range connections?

Tasks

• Look at different radio concepts: UHF, shortwave, satellite comms…
• Figure out how to integrate the antennas into the boat
• Maybe build the antenna into the boat structure? Or use the whole boat as antenna? Or something entirely different?
• Measure energy consumption, find acceptable compromise
• Evalute solution: How far can we go? How reliable is it?