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from the pay-no-attention-to-the-high-tech-behind-the-curtain dept.
Business Insider reports that Google is testing a new broadband wireless system for streaming data (video?) from a high speed race car to a base station.
It's all happening this summer at four events in NASCAR-loving locales like Tennessee, Michigan, South Carolina, and Virginia.
The application, filed with the FCC on Friday, is highly redacted and provides only limited details about the plans. There's scant technical info about the type of wireless technology to be used, other than the fact that it will involve a frequency between 3400 MHz and 3600 MHz.
That's the spectrum for the so-called Citizens Radio Broadband Service, an unlicensed radio band that companies like Google beleive[sic] could be useful for 4G LTE wireless networks.
I wonder how that high frequency works through chain link fencing -- which surrounds all the NASCAR tracks. Maybe they have to get the base station antenna up in the air and put it in the infield?
For all of the aw-shucks image that NASCAR exudes for the general public, there is actually quite a bit of high tech engineering behind the scenes, with the three car manufacturers supplying advanced engineering to their top teams.
If you would rather read the details from a racing site, try jayski.com's article at ESPN, but be prepared for ESPN's ads. Up until last year Jayski was an easy site to navigate, but not this year, it seems that ESPN has taken over the original managers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @02:47PM (3 children)
"For all of the aw-shucks image that NASCAR exudes for the general public, there is actually quite a bit of high tech engineering behind the scenes, with the three car manufacturers supplying advanced engineering to their top teams."
Well, yeah. Pro sports are where the money is at. Of course they are pushing the technological envelope. Same with the NFL, NBA, and other major sports.
I worked a season after undergrad setting up telemetry for NASCAR. The cars are individually tracked by satellite. We would have to set up, find the bird with the strongest signal, get permission to use said bird, tweak transmit power for every single car on the field, race, and afterward tear down the equipment. Every single week (minus All-Star weekend where we got to sit in Charlotte for two weeks). The end result? You can see instantaneously how fast a car is going during a television broadcast.
My current job as a satellite engineer with NASA is nowhere near as fast-paced, but at least I'm not on the road 10 months out of the year.
Major sports investing in unique technology is a surprise to absolutely nobody who has ever worked on technology you can't find at Best Buy.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:02PM (2 children)
Too bad they can't adopt modern technology for their car engines, instead of using crappy ancient 1960s tech.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @04:38PM (1 child)
Explain.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 03 2017, @05:07PM
NASCAR engines are a funny mix --
- Have to be V-8 with 2 overhead valves (single camshaft in block, pushrods, rocker arms), no 4+ valves per cylinder and no overhead cams.
- Valve train parts all have minimum weights and material spec to (in theory) prevent spending extra money on unobtanium materials.
- Electronic Fuel injection is single point, no individual cylinder injection or direct injection. Computers are all the same, heavy rules on what can and can not be programmed.
+ Dry sump (like every good racing engine)
+ Very fancy surface coatings on pistons and other parts, lots of research into metallurgy
+ Huge analysis effort into cylinder head flow (more airflow makes more power) and also into CFD (fluid dynamics modeling) for the internal water cooling flow to prevent hot spots and premature detonation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday May 03 2017, @03:22PM
I wonder how that high frequency works through chain link fencing
Multipath interference is the real entertainment in that RF scenario. Imagine you're happily receiving symbols and all of a sudden radar style the fence on the other side of the sports venue reflects the previous symbol back into your receiver right as you're trying to hear the next symbol. Even if its not integer shifts of the wrong symbol, it still shows up in the decoder as jitter.
Of course one advantage of high freqs and fast cars is they could, in theory, play doppler shift games to keep the competitors driving away at 200 MPH separate from the competitors driving toward at 200 MPH.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 03 2017, @08:37PM
That's the spectrum for the so-called Citizens Radio Broadband Service, an unlicensed radio band that companies like Google beleive[sic] could be useful for 4G LTE wireless networks.
So they will grab the citizens radio frequencies for their own corporate profit? seems like a bad trend.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Wednesday May 03 2017, @09:39PM
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a racing car filled with SD cards. And on NASCAR you are guaranteed to get high-speed data transport! :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Thursday May 04 2017, @11:56AM
I wonder how that high frequency works through chain link fencing
That's easy. They will have pigeons with antennas attached circling the track taking turns to deliver data using pigeon-ip [wikipedia.org].