Communications and GPS

Communications and GPS

Background

The arrival of the Rifts effectively destroyed all modern global, international, and national communications infrastructure. All communications and GPS satellites in orbit ceased to exist along with a significant portion of ground based infrastructure. This effectively meant that the Internet also ceased to exist, which effectively meant all “smart devices” ceased to function, including all mobile phones and tablets, and people had to fall back onto “old” technologies.

The Current State

Since the arrival of the Rifts, communications have moved on mixing the best of technology from the era of the mobile phone and the age of the internet with old fashioned radio.

Thus 1024 bit PGP encrypted digital radio traffic is now the norm. A person’s public key is effectively their “telephone” number, as you need their public key to be able to decode their messages. There is no “master” repository of keys so there is the potential for 2 people to have the same key, although the chances are vanishingly small.

Most people who don’t habitually wear environmental armour, have a comms unit, effectively a cross between a mobile phone and a 1980s short range radio transceiver. These are typically 11+1 channel devices and typically have a usable range of between 2 and 3 miles and a maximum range of 5 miles. Depending where you are, your ability to communicate with anyone else varies. Within major towns in the Coalition and most of the independent states there are likely to be repeater towers, which sever much the same function as mobile phone masts did, except there are now frequency bands, much like old CB bands, which serve particular purposes.

A lot of the current infrastructure has evolved and grown organically, so what works in some areas won’t work in others. The exception is a single frequency band, which is reserved for Emergency (Mayday) type broadcasts, and is deliberately an unencrypted channel (unencrypted digital transmission, as digital encoding is far more reliable and uses less bandwidth and suffers less issues than analogue broadcast).

Most comms units in environmental armour are 7+1 channel devices, the +1 being the generic Emergency channel. Coalition Armour uses a completely different set of channels to everyone else except for the Emergency channel. Coalition units generally only respond to such calls within their borders or to score easy kills against DBees. They’re just as likely to kill the callers if they’re not Coalition citizens, as any attackers/threat the callers are facing.

Shiftsville

Broadcast radio communications (including microwave) into and out of Shiftsville is not possible, the dimensional boundary just doesn’t permit transmission. Even most forms of Line-Of-Sight transmission do not work. However, short wavelength ultra-violet Laser Line-Of-Sight direct transmission does. This means that in-order for the Militia and Residents to maintain communications with each other relay stations are required.

The problem is that Shiftsville moves, which means the relay stations need to move. Thus Shiftsville has 4 mobile transceiver vehicles. These resemble the large heavy cranes of the early 21st C. They are basically a telescoping 30m mast which mounts a number of radio transmitter/receiver units, and an ultra-violet laser relay station. Additionally they mount a broadcast locator beacon. Three of the stations are always deployed, each 50m outside the City limits, giving a linear transmission distance of between 100m and 150m. Each transmission/receiver station is a 15 channel Free Space Optical(FSO) device using 165nm Ultraviolet lasers. Depending on Shiftsville’s actual location the mobile transceiver stations are located • one at 11,12,or 1 o’clock, • one at 3,4,or 5 o’clock, • and one at 7,8,or 9 o’clock.

The city fixed stations are at 12 o’clock, 4 o’colck, and 8 o’clock. The mobile stations coupled with the fixed stations at xxxx, xxxxx, and xxxx, mean that a rough equivalent of GPS can be instigated, by those who can decrypt the locator signal, using the signal delay between the stations (encoded clock signal time vs time of receipt).

Because the FSO’s use UV lasers they are affected by atmospheric conditions (Rain, Snow, Fog, or Smoke). They are not affected by sunlight because of shielding. The FSO dishes need to be initially manually optically aligned (within a few degrees). Once the UV lasers are powered and can perform a handshake with the station counterpart then alignment is maintained automatically.

When Shiftsville moves, there is a 6 hour window before the move where communications with the city are lost, and a 6 hour window after the move before they are re-established. This is because the mobile stations need to pack up and move back into the city prior to the move and then re-deploy after it.

There are 5 standard Militia frequencies (Hot, Magic, General 1, General 2, and Emergency), 4 squad frequencies (Militia 1 through 4), 4 Shiftsville specific frequencies (Council, General 1, General 2, Emergency) and 2 generic public bands (Public 1 and Public 2). Shiftsville requests that all citizens register their public keys, but also requires all Militia members (including non-serving members) to have a second Milita public key for which registration is mandatory. In addition to Militia member public keys there are 12 generic Militia Keys, and 140 Squad Keys.

Note: Shiftsville Militia Environmental armour has upgraded 21+1 comms units which allows them to monitor/use all local channels and the commonest 6 Coalition channels. Usually all members of a squad will have the same squad key tied to one of the squad militia channels. A second squad key will be allocated to all members of the team on a second squad frequency, and for use with the Militia frequencies. Environmental armour comms units can typically store up to 32 keys. A standard commercial comms unit can typically store 511 keys.

---

The Legal Bit  Rifts®, Megaverse®, and Rifts Books® are registered trademarks owned and licensed by Kevin Siembieda and rifts Books, Inc.  © 2002 Kevin Siembieda; © 2002 Palladium Books®, All rights reserved world wide.   No part of this work may be reproduced in part or whole, in any form or by any means, without permission from the publisher.   All incidents, situations, institutions, governments and people are fictional and any similarity to characters or persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.