DoD Dreams of Efficient Spectrum Usage

Unstrung writes "US Military research agency DARPA is sick of all those static-filled cellphone calls and dropped connections too. The shadowy eggheads are working on a way of using the bandwidth available today more efficiently."

Comments

Well.

[Krapangor]

As far as I understood the article is that some dude got a research grant and the guy at the DoD thinks that he might get results eventually.
This is nothing very expectional.
People in research always get some grants and think that they'll get some results in some time.
But often they get only one result: Is doesn't work. Or it does the same as the old stuff but more expensive.

If often wonder if anyone has tried to get a grant for "the development of a disc-shaped flying object" yet.

GSM

[Zephy]

Why not just convert everything to GSM? it works fine for the rest of the world. You never get static (digital transmission), and the call drop rate is a lot lower than analogue

Re:GSM

[funky womble]

Errm, don't you mean that US cellular industry would rather use an incompatible system to help protect it's native manufacturers from higher levels of competition from international manufacturers?

I don't see many countries converting GSM to CDMA... maybe some of the 3G protocols are CDMA, but that's adding to the GSM networks already in place, certainly not replacing them anytime soon.

And I don't think the existing US cellular infrastructure is really on a par with what's planned for 3G. A lot of changes will be needed, whatever the current tech.

There's quite a difference between GSM and MS: GSM does what it's supposed to, and works pretty damn well. You tried taking a CDMA phone to a different country lately?

Sure, there are advantages with CDMA. Better range, for example, though that's less important for more densely-populated parts of the world (and analogue probably still has the edge). But GSM has advantages too - well-established packet data, SIMs, global roaming...

If CDMA has won, how come GSM is expanding so much in the US?

Re:Doubt it.

[PD]

Let me shorten that down a bit for you:

The efficiency isn't about money, it's about efficiently destroying the enemy, weighed against the expense of our own soldier's lives.

Must be listening to George Gilder

[John Jorsett]

George Gilder has been talking about this for years. He gets your attention by making statements like, "available bandwidth is infinite." His basic point is that if the whole spectrum was available and if communicating entities continually adjusted their power levels and frequency to just what's necessary to communicate, the reuse of the spectrum could make it seem nearly infinite. I think he's probably right; I've seen some special radios designed on this principle, and their ability to communicate great distances with teensy power levels was nothing short of phenomenal.

What? Use CW?

[AX.25]

After all it is bandwidth efficient and is the most effective in low signal to noise ratio applications.

Not backward compatible.

[DraconPern]

This technology may be good for a spectrum where all the devices have the 'sharing' capability, but how are they going to make existing spectrum like the wireless network 'dynamic' without making everyone buy new equipment?

Re:Military

[Anonymous Coward]

Where do you think hand held GPSs came from? Where do you thing the *internet* came from? They started out as big military projects and now you have them in your pocket. That happens with huge amounts of military research. Unless you are a slashdotter, in which case you are completely blind and ignorant, in which case you are right, you'll never see any benefits from this or any other DARPA research ever.