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FCC Approves 802.11b Phased Array
n6zfx writes "802.11b Networking News is reporting that vivato received FCC approval for the 802.11b AP that has a range of 4 miles... This was discussed recently here on slashdot -- There were comments that it might not be totally legal. Hopefully, this paves the way for more WISPs, bigger hotspots, and replacement of outdated wireless technology that seemed to be the only competitor to DSL and tv-cable for the last mile."
Actually, that's why it needed certification. It won't, it has very little different output to your laptop card. It works by actively steering antenna beams at associated users. Very cool for ISPs and big campuses.
A company in Sweden conducted tests with a stratospheric balloon. They broke 300 km (187+ miles).
Not entirely salient, but a reminder that there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Actually, on second thought...
Peak power output corresponds to 2 Watts or 2000 milliwatts (mW) which averages to 250 mW of continuous power. An analogue phone (AMPS system) has peak power limited to 600mW.
Source
I live in Portland, OR, home of PersonalTelco - a fairly well known volunteer group for WiFi access. We have more nodes listed on nodedb for the Portland metropolitan area than nearly any STATE - and take that to all states if you count all of Oregon.
We had a big landmark case here a while ago that's exactly what you're fearing. PersonalTelco's been providing a totally free 11Mb connection to Pioneer Courthouse Square (a major hotspot in downtown Portland), and the Starbucks on one corner of the square tried to compete with them, broadcasting their pay-to-use TMobile service on the same channel.
Starbucks ended up having to back down - they now broadcast on channel 11, and PT on 6.
PT's a great group to get involved with - not only do they have regular meetings and stay active with local politics, they also organize a lot of things like group buys on antenna connectors and workshops on Pringles can waveguides.
A few years back, a company came to my school to give a talk about SDMA -- Spatial Division Multiple Access. It was essentially based on the concept that, duh, a single cell phone is only one position, so the tighter a beam you could direct / detect from the phone, the more points could use the same frequency.
The cool thing about SDMA is that as your load increases, so too (to a limited degree) does your available bandwidth. As long as people are relevantly separated from eachother, their physical positioning relative to other hosts adds disambiguatable bandwidth. It ain't perfect -- node to node crosstalk is a real problem, since your wifi cards are omni -- but they're talking about such range that there's lots and lots of omni hexes to expand through.
Whoot to Vivato; hopefully they'll get a lower end antenna for fixed wireless clients!
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Please guys, this techonology is NOT about splattering megawatts all over town!
It is about aiming a low power beam in the right direction using a smart antenna AND that same smart antenna is a better listener.
It's a high-tech equivalent of a parabolic antenna and it is adjusted to radiate the same power at a distance as a normal omnidiretional antenna would do. That's what the FCC require in order to approve an antenna.
It's a common mistake to think that range=power. Note that this is a two way operation.
You also have to be able to hear the other guy, right? That takes good listening skills = a directional antenna.
Vivato's Wi-Fi switches significantly increase the range of Wi-Fi. Rather than transmit the radio energy in all directions, Vivato's PacketSteering concentrates the same amount of energy into a narrow, long beam. This beam is effectively a high-gain antenna that is formed for the duration of a packet transmission. The result is extreme range - extending the reach of Wi-Fi from tens of meters to kilometers.
Another key attribute of switching is preserving compatibility with standard client devices. Vivato's Wi-Fi switches deliver increased capacity, range and security to standard Wi-Fi clients based on the IEEE 802.11b, 11a or 11g standards. With increasing capacity and range, Wi-Fi switches are more scalable than Wi-Fi traditional micro-cellular implementations and are managed in much the same way as Ethernet switches for easy adoption and widespread deployment.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello