Mirror in the Sky: Democratizing Continent-Scale IoT Connectivity via Amateur Satellites

Nearly 90% of Earth’s surface remains disconnected from wireless networks, leaving vast oceans, forests, and polar regions invisible to continuous sensing. Existing “Space-IoT” offerings provide global links with proprietary satellite constellations, and paid subscriptions, restricting open and affordable deployments. We present Gaia, the first demonstration of open, continent-scale IoT connectivity that operates entirely on publicly accessible infrastructure. Gaia transmits data by “bouncing” packets off existing amateur-radio satellites, achieving direct ground-to-ground links over 1200 km without store-and-forward relays or proprietary gateways. To enable this, Gaia is designed to overcome extreme path loss and Doppler drift at the physical layer and interference sensing and coexistence challenges at the MAC layer using commodity SDRs. Beyond demonstrating feasibility, Gaia makes the case that if spectrum access analogous to ham radio were allocated for open IoT communication, it could spark a Wi-Fi-like moment for global sensing—democratizing planet-scale connectivity.