
FCC move to release 'white spaces' has tech firms dreaming of wireless boom - pchristensen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/12/AR2010091203925.html?wpisrc=xs_0005
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pchristensen
Is it just me or do "wireless microphones" seem like a very narrow application
to get dedicated spectrum? Am I underestimating their importance and/or
technical needs?

~~~
yock
I would think that the desire for a dedicated spectrum for wireless
microphones comes from how interference affects their performance. A crude
example might be to compare a wireless microphone to a wireless computer
network. Whereas a PC may need to re-broadcast a "message" several times in
order for the receiving station to contain a complete copy, this happens at
great speed and the repeated messages aren't terribly inconvenient for the
user. Imagine if an individual experienced the same complications whilst
speaking into a microphone, only to be garbled by interference and requiring
re-broadcast. Now imagine the same effect during a concert, where your
favorite guitarist's riffs are intermittently garbled into junk because the
wireless signal from his guitar is competing for dominance in a crowded
spectrum.

Someone may come along and correct any or all of this thought, but my basic
understanding of spectrum and interference leads me to believe that it's the
consequences that are operative here, not mass adoption.

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asmithmd1
The article is almost content free (what does available frequency have to do
with connecting a refrigerator) but the news is big. The FCC is about to allow
unlicensed operation on a huge swath of desirable frequencies:

[http://www.betanews.com/article/FCC-set-to-allow-white-
space...](http://www.betanews.com/article/FCC-set-to-allow-white-space-
broadband-after-twoyear-wait/1284408785)

The hold-up was the rules for how a device would know exactly which
frequencies were unused in the area.

WiFi is crammed into a tiny sliver of undesirable frequencies -- 2.4000–2.4835
GHz -- only available because no one was using it because of all the
interference from microwave ovens.

But this is the entire range from 54Mhz to 698Mhz. A transmitter using this
range instead of 2.4Ghz will transmit father using same power but have a lower
data throughput.

This is great! We have seen tons of innovation with the current tiny silver
WiFi frequencies -- access to a much wider range of frequencies will allow
greater power/date rate/cost trade offs.

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DanielBMarkham
Not the "refrigerator that knows when your bananas go bad" again story. Yikes,
I hate that one. It's as worn-out as a "Cyber Pearl Harbor". I imagine if the
terrorists ever strike the U.S., the first thing they'll do is take out all
the banana-reading refrigerators.

Bad examples aside, this has a lot of promise. If they change it, it will be
interesting to see how long it takes industry to come up with viable products.
18 months maybe?

~~~
naner
I know, who puts bananas in the refrigerator? Ridiculous.

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DanielBMarkham
The day bananas go in the refrigerator, the terrorist will have won. (the
point being that once you mash together so many generalizations and cliches,
you end up with just a silly hash of meaninglessness)

