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Open Spectrum: Free the Airwaves
akb writes: "Most of the RF spectrum in use is licensed for exclusive use. What do we get? Inefficient use through spectrum hoarding, political finagling to abuse the regulatory system to gain competitive advantage and access to the airwaves for only a few players. A good article over at CNET picks up on the example of 802.11b in using spread spectrum technology and unlicensed bands and proposes that model be applied to the rest of the spectrum. For the hardcore check out NYU law professor Yochai Benkler's writings, particularly this article (pdf) and Durga Satapathy's papers for the tech end of things."
All right, our 100 years of plain broadcasting has ended. How are we supposed to pick up an alien signal if their window of opportunity is 100 years wide also?
Amateur radio operators still have access to huge amounts of valuable spectrum. While HF (shortwave) bandwidth is somewhat limited, it is successfully shared with a multitude of other services: military, industrial, broadcasters. Hams also have access to TONS of VHF and UHF bandwidth, especially in the GHz and up range, that are prime experimenting ground for whatever your heart desires. The price of entrance is passing a straightforward license exam. My point is that the RF spectrum is not entirely "owned". If you want to play, you don't necessarily have to pay. More information about becoming a ham here.
If you really want to both free the airwaves and make the most efficient use of them, there is one and only technology. It is secure too as you have allready guessed. Governments were really resentful of this and hostile toward even myself that i'd suggest if you can move around fast enough you will not be detected! It should be obvious to anyone that has the least RF technical knowledge (unfortunate, but this is a closed technology) that spreading yourself thin will only slightly increase the background noise.
It's just too bad for those pathetic suits that authorised $Billions to be spent on tiny slices of the microwave spectrum for the 'next generation' wireless phones. So it goes for those that invest unknowingly!
Today we can transmit huge amounts of data and NOT cause any noticable interferrence. In time the world will catch on. There will allways be winners and losers.
It seems to me that one of the main advantages of spread spectrum is that by distributing a signal across a wider range of frequencies, better use of that frequency range occurs and so multiple transmitters/receivers can share the same bit of spectrum. And yet some products which claim to be spread spectrum seem to take spread spectrum to mean they can just transmit at high power across a larger frequency range.
I have a phone and an 802.11 network card which constantly conflict with one another. And yet both claim to be 2.4 GHz spread spectrum... I had also tried (and returned) one of those remote TV boxes and that also interfered with the phone.
What's up with that?
-Kekoa
Cable modem bandwidth is finite.
RF bandwidth is finite.
What's your point? Mine is that when given a finite resource, people will try to maximize their share if it suits them.
Don't blame the cable companies for a fundamental problem with human nature. Blame them for not enforcing bandwidth limitations when they sign people up. IMHO, using the word "unlimited" in any marketing campaign should be a felony.
~wally
The main problem with the radio spectrum today is that is has been portioned out over many decades. Over that time both needs and technology have changed. I don't think the entire spectrum should be opened up, but it would be smart to reevaluate and reorganize it, leaving more spectrum open for personal use, consolidating the entertainment bands to more efficiently use space with digital technologies like this, and leaving clear bands for scientific and emergency use. And of course, desiging devices so they don't transmit louder than they absolutely have to.
The only real problem with this are legacy devices, namely TV, mobile phones, and especially radio, and their transmission towers. If the transition can be eased for those devices (with adapters or cheap replacements and some gov't subsidy to upgrade transmitters) then I think things would go fine.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Back when the FCC started the plans were all laid out.
Control- absolute control for the governmrnt over communication.
The only way to get "freedom" in the airwaves is the same way we gained "freedom" in 1776
It's called a public uprising that torches the government buildings, locks the public officials in stockades and publically humilates them and thne throws them in a boat and told to never come back.
The best you can hope for is that the damage done to the public sections is very limited from year to year.
They sell off ham frequency sections on a regular basis, to UPS, to whoever wants them. The ham frequencies are the property of the US citizens or citizen of that country that resides below that section of Z axis.
you cant stop it, and they will ignore any cries to stop it.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
They sell off ham frequency sections on a regular basis, to UPS, to whoever wants them.
ONCE in the last 50 years, hams have lost a (small) portion of their allocation.
Hams, in fact, are likely to gain MORE spectrum before they lose any. The ARRL has petitioned the FCC for a new HF allocation around 5 MHz. It's likely to be approved in the next year and be available to hams by 2004 or 2005.
Why is the FCC giving hams more space? Simple. Hams are a cadre of men, women and kids who can, in a time of national emergency, provide critical communications and support to the government. Nobody else can do this.
Picture this. It's 3 AM. You're up late playing the latest mind-fuck console game from Sony. A massive-ass tornado hits your neighborhood. At the same time, a giant fucking hurricane slams into the coast. Your entire state is ruined, you're now living in a tent where your pool used to be. Roads are impassible. No cell phones, no internet access, no power. Nothing. Yet, a competent ham radio operator in the neighborhood has an antenna strung up in the last remaining tree, and he has his Kenwood TS-850 hooked up to a couple of deep cycle gel-cell batteries. Your neighbors are lining up to make phone-patches through another ham two states away, so they can call their relatives and let them know they are alright.
Hams can provide this service that nobody else can. When the lights go out, and I mean *REALLY* go out, hams will get the message through. Bluetooth will not save you.
I am currently studying to become a signals officer in the Swedish army, and I have experience with spread spectrum radio transmission.
There are several important things to consider when dealing with spread spectrum transmitters and their jamming. First, with regular spread spectrum devices, you don't have to jam all the frequencies involved. If you succeed in jamming, say, half of them, a lot of air time will be wasted for resend requests only, which will soon choke the link.
A way to deal with this is to equip the devices with some kind of link level diagnostics, which continously evaluates which frequencies are jammed, and avoid them. With a hop rate faster than the jammer, this would significantly reduce jamming influence. It does, however, add to complexity and cost of a system, which might be hard to justify in a commercial civilian system.
Second, if you want to use a very wide frequency band, there will be a problem with designing the antenna. Normally, an antenna is designed for a very specific frequency, but it can be made a bit "more" wide band with some circuitry. A very wide band antenna usually tends to get quite bulky because it physically has to respond to all the frequencies it is going to be used for.
Score:-1, Wrong