So, in both the Robot handbook and the new CSC, a satellite uplink is TL 6 and requires a large (2 slot for robots) dish, and I’ve been wondering about how to make that smaller, and I have an idea https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phased_array antennas don’t use dishes, they instead are electronically steerable (so no moving parts) and consist of multiple small antennas working together.
My take would be:
Basically, the outer surface of the robot would have a bunch of small antennas that could be use for both normal broadcasting and phased array beams. One other advantage of this improved satellite uplink is that someone could get it as an addition to a neural comm – since some frequencies of microwaves can safely penetrate several mm of skin, you place several hundred tiny antennas on the outside of the user’s skull, and when combined with the zero-slot 5,000 km transceiver, you have a range of 500,000 km
My take would be:
Basically, the outer surface of the robot would have a bunch of small antennas that could be use for both normal broadcasting and phased array beams. One other advantage of this improved satellite uplink is that someone could get it as an addition to a neural comm – since some frequencies of microwaves can safely penetrate several mm of skin, you place several hundred tiny antennas on the outside of the user’s skull, and when combined with the zero-slot 5,000 km transceiver, you have a range of 500,000 km