INSULAR Technlogies

International Networking System for Universal Long distance Advanced Radio

Technically speaking INSULAR Technologies consists of fixed and mobile computer-network nodes communicating with each other on various radio channels in the high frequency range (HF). The nodes may or may not have LAN's attached. They may or may not be a gateway to the Internet. The nodes to be built will be easy to set up, easy to use and intelligent enough so that - once switched on - they will automatically establish the necessary connections required by the data traffic. Data transmission on HF is a proven technology although with bandwidth limitations. Relying on technical experience gained in different environments over more than 10 years, it can be realistically assumed that a networked system as proposed by INSULAR Technologies can be established based on HF links. For the prototype phase INSULAR Technolgies will choose a specific combination of hardware and software. Relevant standards and protocols that the system is built upon at the moment are PACTOR, AX.25 and TCP/IP. All relevant software developed by and for INSULAR will be open source and non-commercial and available to the not-for-profit Consortium members. The architecture of the whole system will remain open.

The prototypes (hardware and software) will be developed in PACT systems and Ljudmila hw_lab in Ljubljana. The low bit rate digitized voice transmission technology will be developed by Vimas technologies from Kiev in cooperation with the INSULAR Technologies technical team.

INITIAL TASKS:

An option worth to examine is the inclusion of a digitized voice transmission at low bitrates using new vocoder techniques. In the prototype version, the analogue voice tranmision will not be used.

Details of the technical setup and proceedings are for now available from PACT systems.