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Non Line of Sight Broadband

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the wouldn't-it-be-nice dept.

gfilion writes "IEEE Spectrum has an article about nifty wireless adapters that don't require LOS. At first, NLOS wireless may not sound like a big deal. After all, ordinary radios and cellphones are non-line-of-sight devices. But they don't carry broadband data. What makes the latest generation of NLOS wireless technology worth talking about and having is that it delivers data at high rates over substantial distances."

3 of 168 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Noone wants broadband? by fruey · · Score: 3, Insightful
    When offering staff here a better webmail client, more than 50% said they would rather stick with what they have than to change. With training included, and additional features explained, I might add.

    Saving $5 a month but having to learn a new interface, change email, or any other impediment, will stop a large number of users who read maybe 2 sites a week and read email on a non-daily basis. Broadband as a business model is shaky to say the least. Those consumers who want it happen to be those that are least wanted as consumers by the ISPs. Their cuddly minimal use people will be tying up modem pools for decades to come.

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    Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
  2. TV by wowbagger · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Excuse me, but TV is non-line of sight, and moves a lot of data (precious little INFORMATION, but that's another rant).

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    www.eFax.com are spammers
  3. Re:ordinary radios ...are non line of sight by mlyle · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Let me clear things up some more.

    First, FM is a modulation mechanism; many frequencies only propagate through the ionosphere under rare conditions. This includes the VHF (30MHz-300MHz) used by FM radio and much of TV.

    However, VHF is substantially propagated by diffraction and refractive modes. I receive a VHF TV station regularly which is on the other side of a mountain from me.

    High bandwidth technologies often require line of sight because other propagation modes create "multipath"-- there are multiple paths that provide nearly equivalent signal strengths. This smears bits together. The bandwidth of what you're expressing limits multipath from being such a concern for FM radio-- to express an audio signal that is mostly under 10KHz, as long as the paths don't differ by more than .00001 seconds, multipath is irrelevent. And the speed of light is pretty darn fast.