Long range radios

Wireless & IoT
1

Hi all!

I have a project that involves a high altitude balloon and I’ve been looking into different radios that don’t require a licence. I’ve seen that a few people have had sucess with the high power xbee pro 900 Xsc radios. Their price however is a little restrictive, are there other radios out there that are cheaper than these but still have the range? I live in the US so the free bands that I know of are slightly limited.

Thanks

2

You could significantly extend the range of the XBee 2.4Hz modules by way of a hi-gain antenna on the groundstation but that would invalidate the FCC approval if you exceeded the maximum ERP.

Mind you, since the ground-station (hi-gain) antenna would be facing skywards, I don’t think such a violation would be detected, nor would it cause issues with other users of the band.

If you’ve got GPS onboard your balloon it becomes an interesting project to design and build an auto-tracking antenna for the ground-station too.

A 20dBi gain antenna on the groundstation shouldl increase the range of an XBeePro system (air to ground) to more than 15 miles at least – while maintaining relatively low power consumption at the airborne end.

3

If you’ve got GPS onboard your balloon it becomes an interesting project to design and build an auto-tracking antenna for the ground-station too.

Thats what I was thinking of doing at first with a Yagi antenna, but I’ve read some other posts on a few forums saying that only the 900 xcs xbess and the xtend have enough power. I also don’t want to be inviolation of anything :!: just to make sure I don’t screw any important things happening :slight_smile: .

Are there any other modules that are as eazy to implemente as the xbee XCS with the same range with less impact on the budget?

Thanks

4

Thric:

If you’ve got GPS onboard your balloon it becomes an interesting project to design and build an auto-tracking antenna for the ground-station too.

Thats what I was thinking of doing at first with a Yagi antenna, but I’ve read some other posts on a few forums saying that only the 900 xcs xbess and the xtend have enough power. I also don’t want to be inviolation of anything :!: just to make sure I don’t screw any important things happening :slight_smile: .

Are there any other modules that are as eazy to implemente as the xbee XCS with the same range with less impact on the budget?

Thanks

see attachments: 1Watt Digi XTEND and 50mW XBee. both with zero gain ant. on one end, 6dBi (yagi) on the other end
5

Thric:
I have a project that involves a high altitude balloon and I’ve been looking into different radios that don’t require a licence. I’ve seen that a few people have had sucess with the high power xbee pro 900 Xsc radios. Their price however is a little restrictive, are there other radios out there that are cheaper than these but still have the range? I live in the US so the free bands that I know of are slightly limited.

Hi,

what altitude/range are you expecting?.

What “free bands” are you aware of in the US.

A similar project was completed in 2008-09, called Meteotek or Meteotek08.

The main page is at http://www.teslabs.com/projects/meteotek08/

but there are several writeups on other sites too:

  • http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/0 … above.html

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstop … lloon.html

    http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/0 … 6B48984890

    • For the radio, they used a MAXON SD125, as shown in this pic:

    http://www.teslabs.com/wp-content/uploa … oster2.png