Million Mile Remote

The goal of this project is to increase the range of a remote controller beyond any reasonable limits. Why? Because we can and that the techniques can be used in hundred and fifty other contexts as well.

• Point-to-point communication using IR transmitter and receiver - just as any regular remote controller.
• Apply spread spectrum signalling to allow below noise floor reception.
• Apply Error Correction Coding to squeeze the last few dB's out of the system
• Use old camcorder-lens as receiver “antenna” to improve receiver bit-energy-to-noise ratio.
• Use laser or high directional IR diodes as transmitter. Hmm, does it have to be eye-safe?
• Look into types of hyper-sensitive IR receiver components - maybe combined with liquid nitrogen cooling to suppress noise?
• Apply “front-end” with controllable baseband filter and Variable-Gain Amplifier(s) to increase the dynamic range.
• Apply noise reduction techniques in PCB design.
• Open-questions; sampling, chip and data rates, spreading code types, baseband signal processing (FPGA?), signal acquisition