What are the physics behind the 20mb/s bandwidth limit over radio? He said more ... | Hacker News

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kylebrown on Dec 2, 2014 | parent | context | favorite | on: NASA: We're sending humans to Mars

What are the physics behind the 20mb/s bandwidth limit over radio? He said more than that isn't "feasible", because of power requirements or why?

etimberg on Dec 2, 2014 [–]

The information bandwidth in bytes/s is limited by the SNR and the bandwidth (in Hz) of the radio channel. The atmospheric "window" is only so large. At the same time, antenna's can only be so focused and transmit power is only so high. If you're interested in reading more about this look up "link budgets."

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