Something I have been "casually" looking at is the potential for using tethered blimps (inflatables) to float a base station in the air above an area that is damaged and provide limited cellular coverage - using a generator on the ground to provide power (and dead weight stability) with a microwave link in the blimp to the nearest working base station for connectivity.
Very similar to the idea for stratosphere based blimps that would provide commercial wide area broadcast services, but tethered to the ground so only a couple of hundred foot above the ground and also significantly cheaper.
The difficulty is maintaining the microwave connection as the blimp will move around a bit in the wind.
Such a blimp would cost less than $10,000 + cellular equipment to buy and would be a significant asset in a disaster area - not only providing urgently required communication services both for victims but also for the aid agencies and emergency services, but also a visual focal point to indicate "here be food & blankets" to those in the area.
http://www.tsfi.org/ may be of interest as well.
---------- Original Message ----------
FROM: Curt Sampson <cjs@cynic.net>
TO: keitai-l@appelsiini.net
DATE: Thu, 24 Mar 2005 12:55:07 +0900 (JST)
SUBJECT: (keitai-l) Re: keitai for earthquakes
On Thu, 24 Mar 2005, Arnold P. Siboro wrote:
> I don't know about 702NK, but manual power generator (squeeze and you
> can charge your keitai) are available for many kinds of keitai.
You can also buy battery packs that just plug in to the bottom of
your phone. Some of them can even be refilled with standard AA or 9V
batteries. I keep one of these in my bag at all times.
[ excessive quoting removed by moderator ]
Received on Thu Mar 24 11:32:27 2005