Wire Directional Radios!

[-=Fox=-]

Perhaps a Server Option of Limiting the Power of the radios would be better. Because if i make a MASSIVE Omni-Directional radio that is designed to communicate with any device in a Space build map... its gonna have to be REALLY powerful....

And that might fry a few people

[philxyz]

Perhaps a Server Option of Limiting the Power of the radios would be better. Because if i make a MASSIVE Omni-Directional radio that is designed to communicate with any device in a Space build map... its gonna have to be REALLY powerful....

And that might fry a few people [/b]

Well, I'm planning to have a cvar for the maximum transmitter box power (set in decibel-Watts)

It's [transmitter power] - [cable loss] + [antenna gain]

Also, the receivers will have a sensitivity setting.

I'll work out the best defaults for the map based on realistic scale-distances where possible (although the range may be less than normal due to map size etc)

The transmitter will most likely have a base "MHz" setting and the wire channels A-H on the transmitter box occupy 5MHz channels each upward from the chosen base frequency

I plan to implement the ability to have interference between radios, as well as horizontal / vertical using trig on the rotation of the antenna.

I've been working on the log periodic antenna today, the rest should be easier

It's gonna take me a few weeks yet but I want to make sure this mod is just right before I push out version 1

[philxyz]

Log periodic antenna

This model makes for a good TV antenna (wire TV signals to houses for example)

[-=Fox=-]

I didn't think you'd be going for that kind of realism! Kudos!

Do you plan to give us the ability to "interfere" with other signals? With two Transmitters on the same frequency?

How is cable loss calculated?

Any thoughts on a Software Radio?

As you can tell I'm REALLY excited about this

[philxyz]

I didn't think you'd be going for that kind of realism! Kudos!

Do you plan to give us the ability to "interfere" with other signals? With two Transmitters on the same frequency?[/b]

Hi Fox, I do plan to include interference in the design if possible, and also the effects of placing 2 antennas together etc.

How is cable loss calculated?[/b]

[Length of wire between transmitter and antenna] * [a constant] = cable loss in decibels


(I don't think I'll make the frequencies or wire width have an effect on signal loss unless people want it - it may be overkill )

Any thoughts on a Software Radio?[/b]

I wasn't quite sure what you meant here... ?

As you can tell I'm REALLY excited about this [/b]

So am I, I'd normally spend my evenings working on wine's Direct3D but this is too fun not to build... plus, I want to do as good-a job as I can (to avoid having to provide too much long term support heh)

[-=Fox=-]

*Regarding Software Radios*...[snip]...
I wasn't quite sure what you meant here... ?[/b]

Wikified!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_radio

A Pure Software Radio doesn't exist yet (although some progress has been made). The military has some limited capability software radios. But basically its a Radio who's hardware is controlled by software, Rather than the hardware being set in stone and the software being for communication protocol only.

The Wiki article describes it more accurately and in much more detail. Of course the technology hasn't been perfected, but we can create a perfect one!

[philxyz]

Thinking about it, this pretty much is a software defined radio (or as much as it would need to be)

Each wire signal is allocated a fixed 5MHz slot (to keep it simple) and it can be a number or a boolean or whatever is on the wire.

There will be a transmitter module and a receiver module. The receiver module will have a fixed sensitivity (adjustable on the server) and the transmitter will have an adjustable transmit power (and a default maximum power output setting, which can be overrided on the server).

[philxyz]

To avoid getting to complicated, I've decided to go for a 1 to 1 mapping between

Transmitter -> Antenna

Antenna -> Receiver


Of course, normally,

Case 1) Multiple transmitters sharing one transmit antenna...

Case 2) One transmitter outputting to multiple antennae...

Case 3) Multiple antennae could input to one receiver box

Case 4) One antenna could split out to multiple receiver boxes

..But then it gets mega - mega complicated and more laggy to work out. The simple solution above, solves these cases in the following ways:

Case 1) Each transmitter will have 8 channels. If you really need more than 8 channels then just add another transmitter with its own antenna on a different frequency.

Case 2) If you want to send signals in multiple directions from one transmitter, just use a separate transmitter and antenna combo for each direction. The frequency can be the same so long as you're directing the beams off at different angles from the centre.

Case 3) Realistically, unless you're receiving from 2 different locations and each location has its frequency carefully set so that the ABCD of the two transmitters is picked up as ABCD EFGH of your receiver, then just have two receiver boxes. One for each transmitter station. That way, you get all 8 channels from both instead of 4 from each.

Case 4) If people want to share the output of an antenna, they can all just wire their inputs to the same (prop shared) communal receiver box (with its own dedicated receive antenna)


More to come later
philxyz

[jason the wolf]

youve got a good idea there but how would you jam a radio would you just use another radio tranmitting on the same channal to jam it
you will know what they will do next they will make the radios so they change cannal every sec to stop jaming

[philxyz]

Hi jason,

I'm not sure exactly how to do that yet but I know it's not impossible. If you want to avoid jamming, yes you will be able to use a timer at both ends and change the frequencies as per an algorithm. Just make sure your algorithm is well hidden under a prop so nobody can read the labels as to what it does xD