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Comment by someguydave | Hacker News Reader

Your low-cost LORA/whatever plan would be foiled by lack of regulatory approval for using those frequencies and those waveforms.

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I'm not a radio guy so I may be missing some nuances, but in my experience that's not a problem. If you're broadcasting over the whole world, you may have trouble using 915mhz. But if your ground stations are in places where 915mhz is lightly regulated it is no big deal. I think that is the case for the entire western hemisphere. The FCC lets you do pretty much whatever you want in the neighborhood of 915mhz as long as you're not pumping out more than a couple watts.

We've mentioned frequencies and transmitter power in ODAR paperwork but it hasn't been an issue (ODAR is a form that the FCC gets which is mostly there to make sure you don't litter while you're in space).

Edit: Actually I looked into this and we had to a bit more paperwork than just the ODAR. The FCC also wanted to know about signal modulation and ground station locations.

Even if you succeed in using ISM frequencies "without paperwork" (not gonna happen) would you be really happy about investing in a satellite which is parked in the middle of massive terrestrial interference?

When we went through the FCC ELS it certainly wasn't "without paperwork". But most of the paperwork was just reformatting engineering work that needed to be done regardless of the FCC process.

"where is the transmitter going to be?"

"where is the receiver going to be?"

"how is the cubesat going to be disposed of?"

"what frequencies will be used?"

"does anyone on the team do DRUGS?"

etc

The whole process took a couple months, with IMO is fairly lightweight for a massive government bureaucracy like the FCC

If they're already ISM do they need special approval to use in space?

Yes. https://www.space.com/40001-four-cubesats-unauthorized-launc...

The last time so checked, I could not find anything preventing the use of Lora in space (if you are operating in the UK). However, the frequencies you can use are different over different territories so it is up to your satellite to use the correct ones depending on where it is and what it is pointing at.

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