STORM transceiver

STORM transceivers are radio devices originally developed by Küiser Laboratories and later by Metatron that make use of Weather Run technology for ultra-long range communications. The background of their underlying technology in weather control makes transmissions especially resilient during storms and other types of inclement weather. Much like scaled-down Weather Run systems, they incorporate a standard-looking resonator antenna array, but require less power, originally so they could be supplied from regular industrial generators. Küiser never marketed the transceivers as a product, owing to their expense and the classified nature of Weather Run technology; they were primarily used to connect remote Küiser experiment sites to a central communications relay they owned.

Components

Antenna array

Technically just a scaled-down Weather Run resonator that looked like standard radio antennae, the antenna array transmits and receives the signal.

Radio head unit

The radio head unit (RHU) is a piece of equipment used to generate the necessary RF to drive the antenna array resonator, and is placed close to the array for both safety and loss-efficiency reasons. It is controlled entirely by the transmission computer, but has a small local control panel for maintenance purposes.

Transmission computer

The transmission computer (TC) is the “brain” of the STORM transceiver system and acts as the main control unit. It handles data flow control, as well as encoding and decoding, and implements authentication and encryption up to RAC-II via an onboard encryption module. The system architecture of the transmission computer is quite complex, and includes five redundant RISC-V control cores using a “voting” system for fault tolerance, an out-of-band management processor, and a computer driving the graphical user interface, which originally ran Küiser’s proprietary RealityOS, now Iridium. The data plane, control plane, and user interface are all completely seperate.

For maintenance and emergency access, the transmission computer features a large touchscreen, which can send text messages, administer cryptographic material and control the RF elements of the system. It also includes live graphs displaying data rates, the link quality, and a graphical node-based map of data flows in the network which allowed issues, such as a severed link, to be quickly identified and diagnosed. The computer's hardware also includes a phone handset for voice calls and a built-in printer to print out physical messages.

Effectively, the Transmission Computer operational interface functions as a fully integrated Communications Terminal for emergency scenarios.

Data feed processor

The data feed processor (DFP) is an optional edge computing system which allows for low-latency preprocessing, transformation, and compression of data payloads before going “on the wire”. This is primarily done to reduce bandwidth overhead.

Implementation-wise, the DFP uses semi-COTS software running in containers on a custom hardware platform, designed to allow for flexibility and provide future-proofing. It is effectively a ruggedised, radiation-hardened server platform.

In the case of the Island Resurrection Project, the DFP was used to forward data originating from the systems of the Electric Shed, which still ran using ancient pre-2000 protocols designed by Nevrin.

Appearance

The Transmission Computer (TC) has a large touchscreen displaying the main system menu and a graph panel, with a keypad below for text entry / manual communications, as well as various different interfaces and switches, such as the following:

Antenna impedance selector (J6/J15)
Alpha and Beta coaxial test ports; impedance test port for VNA
Volume and gain adjustment keys, transmit key, command key
Combination override / key load port (reverse R symbol) right of keypad
Zeroizer with K1 Kill switch (press to zeroize; when key inserted, initiates 30-second countdown for RAC module self-destruct)
STC handset with coiled cable, attaches to bottom of transmission computer
A/B antenna status lights (top left); alert light (top right); TX light (bottom left)