This is a grant subsidized mesh project for typical consumer wifi enabled gear such as Android phones, laptops, iPhones and the like.

I wonder how it is they did not connect with the hsmm-mesh folks, or NW-Mesh. (Perhaps they did but I do not see familiar callsigns.)

http://project-byzantium.org/isc-milestone-three-amateur-radio-integration/ 

ISC Milestone Three: Amateur Radio Integration

Published on June 22, 2013 in Announcements.

The intended goal of our third development milestone was to integrate amateur radio functionality into Byzantium Linux.  A persistent technical limitation of our network architecture is inherent in consumer 802.11 wireless chipsets – their transmission range is limited due to the design of their associated antennae, relatively short battery life, and limited radiated power (200mW).  In practice, this means that wireless mesh networks may become segmented if one or more nodes are farther apart than the maximum theoretical range of 802.11 wireless.  Signal attenuation results in the inability of radios to detect one another’s traffic.  This limits the effectiveness of the network and hampers the ability of nodes to route traffic and synchronize. The higher transmission power allowed under amateur radio rules, superior transceiver quality, lower frequencies available, and greater antenna flexibility would help ameliorate these problems by providing increased range for independent nodes in the mesh.  Fewer nodes would then be required to prevent mesh segmentation, and usable broadcast sites would be less scarce.  Re-purposing existing amateur hand-held transceivers (HT’s) would be especially helpful, as most amateur radio operators already have several of these.

After doing some research we discovered that amateur radio could be used for data transmission.  Licensed amateur radio operators can use linear amplifiers, specialized antennae and other techniques to boost the effective strength of broadcasts on the 2.4GHz band, persuant to Part 97 rules.  There are also transmission modes which can be used to transmit text and binary data over a number of amateur radio bands (such as 70cm and 2m).  Our stated use case of temporarily repurposing portable devices as mesh nodes implied that investigating the use of hand-held amateur radio transceivers (HT’s) might be fruitful.  We concentrated on HT’s capable of accessing parts of the amateur spectrum earmarked for data communications to see if we could send and receive mesh traffic and break the distance barrier.
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