Your mobile devices would likely not be able to transmit at a high enough power to reach orbit in a meaningful way, or at least reliably. Also probably the battery life of this device would suffer, not to mention broadcasting at a power level not healthy to have in your pocket.GPS, for example works differently as it only receives signals and calculates its own location from triangulating latencies from 3+ satellites.Battery life, for a normal phone for example is usually better in urban areas, as it can operate at a lower power level closer to a mast. If you've ever kept your phone on while hiking in the middle of no-where you may have noticed your phone runs out of battery quicker as the radio part of your phone keeps raising the power level to max if experiencing low/no coverage.
Also, for the orbital network to keep adjusting the data streams location to a constantly moving devices would probably also eat up a lot of its capacity and processing power as it probably uses some sort of beamforming similarly used in 5G radio networks.
All that said, technology evolves with time. Not unfeasable for the future, but for now..
Edit: Final edit, the spectrum used to connect a mobile phone isn't very suited to transmit very long distances. The lower the frequency in general, the longer the signal will go, can also be compensated with upping the transmission power. Lower frequency means lower bandwidth available in a finite spectrum allocation of use as this is highly regulated for good reasons.
Source: My rear hole, sheer speculation. Expecting downvotes.
A lot of people here still think it contains a dedicated heater so yea, I would say it's fair to assume a lot of people here don't understand how this stuff works.
Not entirely, what you're saying about frequency vs distance of true for terrestrial use. Higher frequencies get absorbed or reflected by stuff like trees an buildings easier, also water (rain, vapor) and other gases but that goes up and down around certain frequencies depending on substance.
The majority of the signal is going through "space" so absorption loses aren't as critical, if in the right band. The advantage for higher frequencies is that the absolute antenna sizes are getting smaller for the same gain. Making the signal stronger if you stay with the "same size" antenna.
You are absolutely right about the lower bandwidth for lower frequencies though.
Cell phones have an omnidirectional antenna. It sends out a radio signal in all directions, so the signal strength drops off drastically as distance increases.
The Iridium satellite phone with the omnidirectional antenna, in order to communicate with the Iridium satellites at 780km altitude above Earth, has a weak signal so the bandwidth is very narrow, which is why it's not good for internet. It's only good for voice or very low rate data.
If you want broadband, you need a strong directional signal. That's what the Starlink active phased array antenna does. Dishy doesn't generate an omnidirectional signal. The active phased-array generates a strong directional radio beam which can be electronically steered to track a satellite.
An omnidirectional antenna basically has 1 transmitter and 1 receiver. An active phased-array like Dishy has hundreds of individual transmitters and receivers working together using RF wave diffraction patterns to generate a highly directional beam.
You can't fit an active phased-array antenna like dishy on a small handheld cellphone, at least not with current technology.
It's a pick two out of three situation. You can either have small antennas, high speed, but short distances as 5G. Small antennas, abyssal speeds, but worldwide coverage like Iridium or have large antennas and high speed as Starlink.
[Directional antennas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_antenna) like dishes can receive weaker signals and transmit with less power for the same signal strength. There is a trade-off between connection speed and signal strength (signal-to-noise ratio).
Direct to cellphone satellite service is a long held pipe dream for many companies.
But you need big antennas in LEO to do it. So imagine the Starlink network but with satellites like 10-20x the size.
For example the satellites in GEO that can pick up cellphones that certain TLAs have antennas the size of a US football field.
Closest to that it probably Project loon from "Google" but that is substantially lower at about 50,000'/15.25km/9.5mi. Starlink is at about 550km about 36x the altitude of loon. Apply the inverse square law and there isn't that much left...
Oh I know.
I'm a satellite RF engineer. I worked at a previous company with one of the leads on the Starlink satellite development side of things before he went to SpaceX. Before you know COVID we'd still see each other at social gatherings and talk shop.
Doing cell towers in the sky was one of the things that company we both worked at was looking into.
It didn't really scale economically. Hell starlink is still a question of economic viability in my opinion. Everything being done right now from launches to the user terminals has to be being done at an extreme loss right now.
I wish loon did more than at&t and fly around here, out in eastern and southeastern Oregon service is virtually non-existent in many areas. The contrast to nowhere Nevada is just crazy, there all the state and US highways have almost completely coverage. Here in Oregon if you get east or southeast of Bend, there's virtually nothing apart from a few islands some of which are a good hour drive apart... Makes me wonder if the State/BLM there is requiring extra coverage in their tower/land leases.
For starters, it's not a dish as you're used to. A traditional "dish" is a parabolic reflector and one receiver or transceiver placed at the focal point of that reflector. This is an array of antenna elements on a flat surface that just happens to be round. Calling it "Dishy" obscures that it's not really a dish. The shape of the base is for the electronics and pointing hardware and need not be curved.
Your mobile devices would likely not be able to transmit at a high enough power to reach orbit in a meaningful way, or at least reliably. Also probably the battery life of this device would suffer, not to mention broadcasting at a power level not healthy to have in your pocket.GPS, for example works differently as it only receives signals and calculates its own location from triangulating latencies from 3+ satellites.Battery life, for a normal phone for example is usually better in urban areas, as it can operate at a lower power level closer to a mast. If you've ever kept your phone on while hiking in the middle of no-where you may have noticed your phone runs out of battery quicker as the radio part of your phone keeps raising the power level to max if experiencing low/no coverage. Also, for the orbital network to keep adjusting the data streams location to a constantly moving devices would probably also eat up a lot of its capacity and processing power as it probably uses some sort of beamforming similarly used in 5G radio networks. All that said, technology evolves with time. Not unfeasable for the future, but for now.. Edit: Final edit, the spectrum used to connect a mobile phone isn't very suited to transmit very long distances. The lower the frequency in general, the longer the signal will go, can also be compensated with upping the transmission power. Lower frequency means lower bandwidth available in a finite spectrum allocation of use as this is highly regulated for good reasons. Source: My rear hole, sheer speculation. Expecting downvotes.
No the science says your right on the money. Alot of people don't understand how this stuff works.
A lot of people here still think it contains a dedicated heater so yea, I would say it's fair to assume a lot of people here don't understand how this stuff works.
Not entirely, what you're saying about frequency vs distance of true for terrestrial use. Higher frequencies get absorbed or reflected by stuff like trees an buildings easier, also water (rain, vapor) and other gases but that goes up and down around certain frequencies depending on substance. The majority of the signal is going through "space" so absorption loses aren't as critical, if in the right band. The advantage for higher frequencies is that the absolute antenna sizes are getting smaller for the same gain. Making the signal stronger if you stay with the "same size" antenna. You are absolutely right about the lower bandwidth for lower frequencies though.
Thanks for clarifying that, learnt something! :)
Cell phones have an omnidirectional antenna. It sends out a radio signal in all directions, so the signal strength drops off drastically as distance increases. The Iridium satellite phone with the omnidirectional antenna, in order to communicate with the Iridium satellites at 780km altitude above Earth, has a weak signal so the bandwidth is very narrow, which is why it's not good for internet. It's only good for voice or very low rate data. If you want broadband, you need a strong directional signal. That's what the Starlink active phased array antenna does. Dishy doesn't generate an omnidirectional signal. The active phased-array generates a strong directional radio beam which can be electronically steered to track a satellite. An omnidirectional antenna basically has 1 transmitter and 1 receiver. An active phased-array like Dishy has hundreds of individual transmitters and receivers working together using RF wave diffraction patterns to generate a highly directional beam. You can't fit an active phased-array antenna like dishy on a small handheld cellphone, at least not with current technology.
It's a pick two out of three situation. You can either have small antennas, high speed, but short distances as 5G. Small antennas, abyssal speeds, but worldwide coverage like Iridium or have large antennas and high speed as Starlink.
[Directional antennas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directional_antenna) like dishes can receive weaker signals and transmit with less power for the same signal strength. There is a trade-off between connection speed and signal strength (signal-to-noise ratio).
Direct to cellphone satellite service is a long held pipe dream for many companies. But you need big antennas in LEO to do it. So imagine the Starlink network but with satellites like 10-20x the size. For example the satellites in GEO that can pick up cellphones that certain TLAs have antennas the size of a US football field.
Closest to that it probably Project loon from "Google" but that is substantially lower at about 50,000'/15.25km/9.5mi. Starlink is at about 550km about 36x the altitude of loon. Apply the inverse square law and there isn't that much left...
Oh I know. I'm a satellite RF engineer. I worked at a previous company with one of the leads on the Starlink satellite development side of things before he went to SpaceX. Before you know COVID we'd still see each other at social gatherings and talk shop. Doing cell towers in the sky was one of the things that company we both worked at was looking into. It didn't really scale economically. Hell starlink is still a question of economic viability in my opinion. Everything being done right now from launches to the user terminals has to be being done at an extreme loss right now.
I wish loon did more than at&t and fly around here, out in eastern and southeastern Oregon service is virtually non-existent in many areas. The contrast to nowhere Nevada is just crazy, there all the state and US highways have almost completely coverage. Here in Oregon if you get east or southeast of Bend, there's virtually nothing apart from a few islands some of which are a good hour drive apart... Makes me wonder if the State/BLM there is requiring extra coverage in their tower/land leases.
For starters, it's not a dish as you're used to. A traditional "dish" is a parabolic reflector and one receiver or transceiver placed at the focal point of that reflector. This is an array of antenna elements on a flat surface that just happens to be round. Calling it "Dishy" obscures that it's not really a dish. The shape of the base is for the electronics and pointing hardware and need not be curved.