Lane County Scanner Guide

Ricochet, the Wireless Modem and Service

The Ricochet system is popping up around the University of Oregon.

Following is a brief description of the service.

The Ricochet service, developed by Metricom, Inc., is a radio network operating in the 
unlicensed 902-928 band. The network is comprised of Ricochet radios, Wired Access 
Points (WAP) and Network Interconnection Facilities (NIF). In order to use the Ricochet 
service, a subscriber must have the Ricochet modem. 
The Ricochet modem looks like this:


The Ricochet network achieves its high performance by using frequency-hopping, 
spread-spectrum technology, packet radio repeaters installed geographically in a mesh 
topology throughout a service area. These radios are shoe-box size, require low power 
levels and are typically deployed on utility poles or roof-tops. Packets are sent to the 
subscriber device utilizing the geographic address of the local radio.  
The remote antenna looks like this:

Copyright 2000 - Duane Anderson