[Infowarrior] - A Big Ball of Connectivity

[Richard Forno]

http://www.popsci.com/popsci/technology/8d81e8ee82c82110vgnvcm1000004eecbccd
rcrd.html

Name: GATR-Com
Inventor: Paul Gierow
Cost to Develop: $1.5 million
Time: 5 years
Prototype | | | | | Product

No, it's not a giant beach ball. It's an ultralight, ultraportable antenna
tucked inside an inflatable shell that can pull down a superfast broadband
satellite connection at any location. The GATR-Com is designed for
disaster-relief responders, far-flung video producers and front-line
troops‹anyone whose job (or life) depends on getting digital
information‹video, Internet, calls‹in and out of remote places.

"You just can't do effective disaster relief without decent satellite
communications," says Eric Rasmussen, a U.S. Navy physician and commander
whose relief experience includes the Indonesian tsunami of 2004 and the
aftermath of battles in Bosnia and Iraq. "But when the mud is two feet deep,
if you can't pack a dish on your back or drop it out of a plane, it's not
going to get there."

The GATR-Com (an acronym for "ground antenna transmit and receive") system,
complete with electronics and tethering gear, weighs less than 70 pounds and
fits easily into two backpacks. It can be powered by a car's cigarette
lighter or a small generator. There's nothing else like it that's this small
or rugged.

The GATR-Com is the brainchild of engineer Paul Gierow, who spent 20 years
developing large deployable space antennas for NASA. Gierow realized that
the need for a highly portable antenna is just as relevant on Earth as it is
in space‹especially considering the earthly inevitabilities of gravity, mud
and sky-high air-freight costs.

The antenna is made of a flexible, high-strength plastic lined with
conductive mesh inside a large (six- or eight-foot) sphere constructed of a
material similar to that used for racing sails. A valve from a small
compressor directs slightly more air pressure to one side of the antenna,
giving it a parabolic shape. At first, Gierow and his business partner,
William R. Clayton, worried that an inflatable sphere might just blow away.
But the GATR-Com's spherical shape actually deflects air twice as
efficiently as rigid disks do and protects the internal antenna's shape from
being distorted by gusts.

"The idea itself is actually fairly simple," Gierow says. "The trick was to
come up with a way to tie it down, target it [to a satellite] to one tenth
of a degree, and keep it stable." Backed by research grants from the Air
Force and Darpa, the Pentagon's R&D branch, Gierow refined his invention for
nearly three years before he got up the nerve to quit his job as vice
president of NASA contractor SRS Technologies and bet his livelihood on his
creation.

The next day, Hurricane Katrina gave him a perfect opportunity to prove the
device worked in the real world. Gierow drove from where he lives near
Decatur, Alabama, to Biloxi, Mississippi, and set up his prototype at a Red
Cross shelter. For two weeks, the system served as an electronic lifeline to
the outside world. "One lady had just had an organ transplant, and she
didn't have her anti-rejection medication," Gierow recalls. "We were able to
get in touch with a pharmacist [about four hours north of Biloxi], and he
drove it to us."

Gierow's improvised effort caught the attention of the organizers of Strong
Angel III, a disaster-relief simulation led by Rasmussen. Held last August
in San Diego, the six-day event brought together teams from the Pentagon,
relief agencies and high-tech companies. The mission: to field-test new
technologies and tools that could be used to respond to natural disasters,
epidemics or terrorist attacks.

"They were the only ones who walked in carrying their gear," Rasmussen says
of Gierow's team. "At first look, the device incited snickers. But they
pulled it out of the backpack, inflated it, and tethered it‹and in 15
minutes, we had a rock-solid satellite signal. This is a technology that
could give us a huge increase in our capabilities."

The GATR-Com's $50,000 price tag makes it an unlikely accessory for most
solo travelers. But its cost is far less than that of other
remote-deployable satellite antennas, not to mention the savings it provides
in transportation costs.

With inquiries from a wide range of potential clients, Gierow regularly puts
in 70-hour workweeks in his warehouse office/lab. But last summer he managed
to take a week off to bring his family to the beach. Not surprisingly, the
antenna came too. "I was the nerd on the beach with the really big ball,"
Gierow says, "and the T1 connection."