16 May
2012
16 May
'12
8:28 p.m.
Dear baseband enthusiasts,
on SMOS project we had this crazy idea for catastrophe communications
in which cellular base stations would be miniaturized enough to be
airdropped into disaster zones. We felt that this might
be possible if all functionality except SMS was stripped from the base
stations (hence SMOS, SMS Our Souls). Most ideally such technology
would come in near cellphone size (excluding batteries), something
like osmocom's earlier "Phone acting as BTS" hackwork.
We did not have the guts nor skills to start doing this by ourselves,
so we just published our findings and studies under Creative Commons
BY license. As we wish to keep this idea open to everyone, our
web-documentation would benefit on this regard from some more in-depth
HW-related analysis and suggestions (our team fell short on this
area). Once it's all published, it cannot be patented. I personally
see some humanitarian & karma-improving angle in doing it this way.
Helping human kinds in disaster should not be bound by patent laws.
So I'm asking for constructive criticism and also offering possibility
to write some informal blogs about your views on
www.zygomatica.com/smos (with our team's editorial support) . At the
same time it should be noted that such technically oriented blog
writings at my friends' site zygomatica.com would likely reach 50
readers at most. To put it more nicely, reaching the widest possible
audience is not our focus here anyways.
My technical vision is presented at
http://www.zygomatica.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/SMOS6-Technical-goals-…
.. and the full list of formal documents at end of
http://www.zygomatica.com/smos/ . The other provided background
material might be even more valuable to those that start considering
this idea more seriously.
So, For instance, can stripping down the functionality just to
supporting SMS delivery bring down the power consumption in any
significant manner?
Thanks and regards,
Kalle Pietilä
P.S. Mailed to this list as suggested by Harald.