My friends and I are going off to college ~180 miles/290 kilometres apart. As a project, we are looking into creating a data communication connection between our two schools. Our requirements would be:
Becoming licensed for amateur radio would be assumed in order to take advantage of lesser regulations/more frequency options.
Are there any technologies attainable at the enthusiast level that would offer these features?
The most accessible way to get digital communication at that speed is WiFi. You could use unmodified consumer equipment, or getting a ham license would allow you to use frequencies not usually available to the public, as well as much higher limits on power and antenna gain. Of course the ham route would add additional restrictions, like it must be strictly non-commercial, and can't be encrypted.
Propagation at these frequencies for the most part requires line-of-sight, and 180 miles (290 kilometers) is too far on flat terrain. Even if you had a 100 meter tower at each end, you might get approximately 82 km. The general formula is:
$$ 4.12 \sqrt{h} $$
Where $h$ is the antenna height in meters, this gives the radio horizon in kilometers. The horizon distances from each end add together.
If the terrain isn't flat, and one or both ends is atop a hill or mountain, you can get more range. There are tools which can predict radio coverage. Unfortunately my favorite, CRC-COVWEB, seems to be defunct. You can also use HeyWhat'sThat just to check line of sight. It doesn't account for towers but it will show an elevation plan between two points, and then you can see how big the towers would need to be from that.
Another possibility is troposcatter, see Can tropospheric scatter effect be used by 802.11 links?
Or perhaps you can set up routers at intermediate points. This is an especially good option if there is a high vantage point visible from each of your respective schools. If so it's quite likely there's already a ham repeater(s) on it, and while they may not provide the data connectivity you seek, repeaters are often administered by a club. The club will likely be able to help you get access to the site, or at least introduce you to the right people.
If you can accept a much lower data rate, HF can reach 180 miles easily. However you won't be able to attain more than a few kilobits per second.
In a word, No. For 1Mb/s you'd need a line-of-sight connection, so over a 180-mile path, you would need multiple hops. The alternative would be satellite communications but the ham satellites have neither that kind of throughput nor are geostationary (meaning you'd get at best a few minutes of connectivity per pass). Voice communication would be possible, as would low speed (300bps) data communication. And even if you did, there'd be no guarantee of privacy.
What you are looking for does not 100% exist yet.
However there is something close to it:
AREDN , Amateur Radio Emergency Data Network
It is mesh networking using Wifi protocol. Range is about 13 miles. It is under active development.
I think one thing overlooked here is the practical logistics of operating Ham radio from a University. Having done so at U. Central Florida, I can attest that one must be part of an Amateur Radio Club on campus which has a fixed station set up with antennas suitable for your purposes. If the equipment and logistics do not exist, they must be "created" and financed in some way.
Student government usually holds the purse strings for major club purchases. Thus you would have to provide a compelling reason for the university to purchase equipment necessary to create these links from school to school and also offer some public benefit for the expenditure.
If you and your friends are all Engineering students perhaps the College of Engineering might find Amateur Radio a good teaching tool and could supply the necessary resources as part of independent study.
Truly the most difficult part of this quest is the antenna(s).
In the meantime, using radio for basic email type communications is as easy as a local WINLINK system to inject your messages into an internet backbone to get them the rest of the distance to your friends via radio on the other end. While not strictly radio to radio, the experiences are invaluable and keep your comms away from the school's email servers. Not a bad benefit on it's own. ;)
Be creative in your quest!!!
