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Open Spectrum: Toward Ubiquitous Connectivity
obiwan2u writes "ACM's Queue magazine has a moderately dense article describing how new intelligent radios may free up under-utilized spectrum bandwidth, possibly providing solutions to the
last mile bottleneck."
If you live in the wilderness, is getting broadband really a priority?
As it is, most residential areas have telephone coverage. As the internet gets more mature, the need for broadband lessens because of improvements in packet technology and of course data compression. What was possible 5 years ago on a 56K modem doesn't even compare to what you can do with the Internet today with even a lowly 28.8. The improvements are just so vast.
So what's the big deal with broadband? So you get to view Slashdot 2 seconds faster. So you get to look at the daily news on MSNBC 2 seconds faster. So what? We are talking about lengths of time that don't even register on our awareness.
Look, people who live far away from civilization chose that lifestyle. One big reason was to get away from all this technology crap. Let those hermits live in peace. Not everyone needs or wants the latest and greatest, sometimes they just need the simple and natural.
I have been pwned because my
How are you supposed to get some 0 day on a modem? Compression is good, but not that good.
I believe that today under 20% of homes get TV via over the air broadcasts. And the number is dropping. The rest get satellite or cable.
It's clear that if we opened up all that broadcast spectrum to unlicenced use, it could easily generate enough revenue to provide free satellite or cable for those few homes still with an antenna.
And just think of the huge value from getting all that spectrum for new technology, largely unlicenced uses.
Of course, the National Association of Broadcasters is one of the most powerful forces in the country. They think of that spectrum as "their property" even though they are blocking much more productive use. Same with the military.
So it won't happen, but we can dream.
Guess not for much longer...
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Read the latest article about UWB by Cringly. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit20030612. html
He is the best sailor who can steer within fewest points of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest obsta
The FCC won't go for it. knowing Morse code is still a requirement to use HF ham bands, even though you can now use a computer to code/decode it. See www.nocode.org
I can't think of one positive the FCC has done for RF bandwidth in a long time. Why would they start with this?
One that filters out all talkback and boyband/britney clone pop.
Elminate that and you've cleared up a large chunk of the spectrum!
What is the inverse of the Matrix?
Seriously, I live only 3 miles from the DSL limit and it angers me greatly. I have a crappy 24.4 connection. This would be great if I could be able to download stuff at highspeed. A few weeks ago I had to drive into town and go to a business of a friend to download a patch for Mac OSX that was 85mb. Satellite sucks, if this could eliminate the last mile problem that would be great.
Wanting to live in a cave doesn't always mean one wants to turn his back on knowledge and information.
So what's the big deal with broadband? So you get to view Slashdot 2 seconds faster.
Apparently you live in a different kind of "wilderness." Sorry for you, but being a hermit doesn't have to mean being a luddite. Nor does choosing to live in a "green ecosystem." Modern technology presents all sorts of new opportunities - even to those who choose to separate themselves from the greater of "society." In fact, that's the best part of it.
Just like modern tuning and broadcasting equipment freed up spectrum resources for low power FM....
Tech's half the story. How the authorities see fit and/or are lobbied to allocate spectrum is the other half.
Tweet, tweet.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
who wanted almost the same thing
same tech. difference is who owns it.
Is there any GPL software, fairly widely used, that supports an open standard for voice communications? Sure, I know there are plenty of standards for VOIP, but what's being used, now? If I went to my neighbors and told them we could "unwire" the neighborhood using cheap PCs and have not only local phone service but also faster internet connectivity than we get now, half the people in this very rural "town" of 200 would pony up tomorrow.
But, so far as I know, that technology doesn't yet exist. And until it does - until "broadband" means reliable, versatile connection to your neighbors rather than just really fast porn access, you can hang pervasive broadband on a hatrack.
Well, I wouldn't say we live in the "wilderness" per se -- we're a short 15 minutes from the county seat, and lord knows Wal-Mart is just 10 miles down the road! But it sure would be nice to be able to hook into the DSL that's 3 [road] miles away.
;-)
....Bethanie....
A modem speed of 56K isn't the end of the world, but when that's all the bandwidth you have and you're both surfing at once, it can be torturous. I use the Net a LOT less since moving to the country (and away from our cable modem). Believe me -- I notice the difference!!
Another issue for us is that the max upload speed we're getting is 33K -- try e-mailing pix of the baby to parents on the left coast with THAT!! It takes *hours*.
So, just a few things to think of before "stating the obvious" about those of us who live "in the wilderness." We wanted to get away from suburban sprawl and be able to own some land and a nice house -- not abandon civilization (which is defined, of course, by the availability of high-speed Internet access!)
a moderately dense article
C'mon, this is Slashdot. "Moderately dense" should be "light reading" for us.
Right?
The coolest voice ever.
Open spectrum advocates can gain a lot of credibility by demonstrating techniques like SDR, cognitive radio, and mesh networking in the existing unlicensed bands. (The article mentions LocustWorld, which is a commendable example.) Once there's quantitative information on the benefit of the technology it will be appropriate to ask the FCC to reconsider the current spectrum policy.
Lemme tell you something: As long as companies like Clear Channel rules the airwaves, radio will NEVER be intelligent.
and easier to make highspeed internet free could be with WI-FI. at least in urban areas. they could just start constructing buildings with this on there. this really wouldnt work in rural areas though.
You don't use someone with a background at MIT and Lockheed Martin to give you a stack of paper with words on it.
"God, root, what is difference?" - Pitr, userfriendly
Of course, the 'last mile' of this plan is quite a difficult hurdle too - an area of the radio spectrum isn't free until the relevant authorities in an area say so. I am willing to bet that they won't say so until there is negligible use of the band by the 'old' use, either.
This is a sign of a step towards greater availability, but still a long way off. Good show though, and I hope it makes its way there sooner or later. Unfortunately widespread adoption of new radio technology (such as DAB) always seems to be slow. I'm not old enough to remember the introduction of FM, but was that slow too?
You can obtain a restricted Technician Class license without knowing Morse -
FCC Amateur Operator Classes
If you want to use HF, you're probably going to need it because the channel allocations are so small.
People keep talking about how we need more and more: 'more connectivity', 'more bandwidth'.... But there's a reason why broadband is not happening as quickly as some would like: people don't need it.
First of all, there is a difference between 'needing' and 'finding it useful once you have it'. I don't think anyone really needs the Internet, or only very few. Just look at what is actually flowing around there: adverts, lame entertainment etc etc. High quality information is not what takes up the capacity out there, that much is certain. We only need more in the same sense as we need a bowl of popcorn or a fancy dress.
As for the usefulness, if we had the huge capacity etc: many people would probably find that it was quite nice on occasion, but would they really use it?
Shopping - I have only ever bought 2 kinds of things on the internet: books, if I know the title in advance, and flight tickets (again I know where I want to go).
Entertainment: No way. I hardly watch more than two or three channels, and certainly not every day - I have better things to do, as I suspect many people do.
Information: This is the one thing that the internet is seriously good for. But I normally don't mind waiting for a little while when I download things - to me information is something I want to spend time on learning, so the download time is not a huge issue.
Mail: I receive 2 or 3 useful emails per day. But I receive maybe 50 - 100 mails about eternal youth, penis enlargement and illegal medicine.
So I'd say we need less internet capacity and more expensive access. That way it would probably only be used by those that actually need it.
The open spectrum concept raises its ugly head again. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised; it combines the sexiest of terms (Moore's Law! Metcalfe's Law! SDR! UWB! Spread Spectrum! Mesh Networks! Open Source!) in one neat package, tied with a bow. If only they could work in the magnetic bracelet that cures arthritis, it would be a marketer's dream.
There are other reasons for spectrum allocation besides the "technology limitations" cited in the ACM article. Two of the most significant are:
1. The spectrum is used for many different services, with differing Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Some of these, like the Instrument Landing Systems at airports, emergency services, GPS, etc. I'd like to have dedicated spectrum available solely to them 24x7; the idea that a trapped fireman's call on his handheld 2-way radio is not heard because of interference from a nearby mesh network providing video packets of a football game (or, if you like, the trapped fireman's call on his limited-range Open Spectrum radio is not heard because the burning building's network is already down) is not very appealing.
Other services, like industrial heating (and even microwave ovens) do not even use the RF spectrum for communication at all; if not limited in spectrum these large transmitted power services can render people incommunicado over large physical areas. Open Spectrum advocates will claim that this last problem will be overcome by the processing gain of the Open Spectrum radio itself; I merely note that increasing processing gain is increasingly expensive, and getting 60 dB of processing gain is a severe pain at wideband bit rates, while it is a trivial exercise for a tuned circuit if the spectrum is allocated properly.
2. The spectrum has different physical properties that make certain frequencies (and frequency bands) more suitable for certain services. Services that require ionospheric refraction need to operate below 30 MHz; systems using satellite-earth links must operate above 30 MHz. Systems requiring a lot of antenna gain, such as space probes and terrestrial point-to-point links, need to be a high frequency (multiple GHz), where high gain can be achieved in a small physical size by the use of parabolic antennas. Systems requiring worldwide underwater coverage must be below 100 Hz. There are atmospheric attenuation peaks at 24 and 60 GHz (and others higher) caused by oxygen absorption that make these frequencies useless for any trans-atmospheric links, but ideal for short-range unlicensed systems (that's why there are ISM unlicensed bands there). Rain (a.k.a. hydrometeors) becomes a significant attenuator above 5-20 GHz, depending on the rate at which it falls; this affects systems in tropical regions more than those in more temperate areas (see a graph of atmospheric attenuation). The hydrogen line (1420.40575 MHz), used by astronomers, is a fixed frequency. Etc.--this is just a partial list. All frequencies are not created equal.
However, if you'd like to stick to technical problems, consider the multiple access problem for these systems.
The success of 802.11b is often cited as an example for the Open Spectrum initiative--an unlicensed band being used productively. However, 11b has now become the 800-lb. gorilla in the 2.4 GHz ISM band; other services attempting to use that band must coexist with it, but it doesn't have to coexist with them. Any interference it causes to these new services must be borne by them; as a result, we have created a de facto allocated band.
...that I have found is tabbed browsing. I'm one of those on a slow staticy rural dialup, just too far away from the nearest telco switch, and even then, the cost would be prohibitive for what they offer for *dsl. Well, to me anyway. 56k modems just slap don't work, I have three of them, they lose connectivity so quickly that they are useless. Next down I use a 33k modem, and only when the weather is perfect. That's my main modem, fairly robust and reliable, but again, the minute the lines get more static and noise, poof, they dropconnection. Right now, the only way I can even stay online is by using a 14.4 modem, as it is storming out. This might last all summer, just depends on the weather. The workaround is social,there is no actual hardware solution that I think I can do (satellite is out, that's one thousand bucks or something) I just load various tabs with content, then go do something else. It takes minutes sometimes to load pages, even with images turned off,etc. I will say that xmms playing radio mp3 streams is very nice no matter what,it gives me one more cool *thing* to do with the net, I only listen to lower bitrate talk stations, beats the pants off any other streaming tech out there, real, quicktime, windows media, winamp, etc. The old mac classic soundjam does the next best job on slow connections with mp3s. Of course I have a lot of other "real" radios as well,I just like the ability to get exactly what I want off the net, I mean this thing is sitting here turned on anyway, one less hardware device to power up.
I would really like broadband, I'll pay x-amount to me reasonable money for it WHEN it becomes avaialable, but yes, I won't trade my other real life interests and advantages I enjoy about living rural "just" for broadband. I lived heavy urban for years, nothanks, I'll pass now, did my time in crime city, constant loud, stinky (cities literally stink, you don't notice it until you've been away for awhile and go back into one), expensive this or that, etc. There are a lot of advantages, but a lot of disadvantages to urban life. And vice versa, neither is "perfect".
OK, back to connectivity. Whichever company that comes up with an easy to use, reliable and cheap universal wireless "solution" for that last mile WILL get my business, and there's millions of people out there who will buy it as well. Perhaps it's a niche market, but what ain't once you get down to it? Look at what happened with small dish cheap satellite TV when cable wouldn't go there to that last mile and when some mastermind noted that large dishes and hardware were too expensive for a lot of people, there was a niche market for something besides 1.5 fuzzy channels of over the air tv option, rural people jumped on it in droves. They weren't willing to move to the city for a lot of clear TV, that still didn't mean they didn't like to have some TV, a market that went begging for a long time.
It's like cheap downloadable music tracks, a market that went begging for years, literally went begging, people-potential customers- going "here, take our money we want this product". They got told to go &*&&^k themselves by the music monopoly. It was that insulting, hence the popularity of napster and etc and yada yada yada. Half of it was to just insult those bungers right back. Now how many songs has apple sold so far, because all they did was respond to a market going begging??
I will guarantee ANY of you companies or developers out there, you offer a wireless last mile that WORKS, that doesn't cost outrageous money, and that provides even a slightly more reliable and faster connection than most-alleged "56Kbps" rural dialup, you'll get rich, you'll get obscenely stinking rich, you have millions and millions of potential customers out there.
Sometimes the bean counters are wrong. A lot of times they are, really, they over estimate one potential profit maker while completely ignoring another one, and usually because the new potential is just that, new, or they aren't aware of it. I sincerely doub
No, the FCC requires you to know code to legally operate on HF because an international treaty requires them to. I believe there is a proposal on the table at WRC-03 to remove that requirement.
--zawada
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
No matter how you cut it, there is a relationship between system throughput and signal-to-noise ratio. There's a minimum energy per bit that's related to the noise level. Not enough energy, the BER increases beyond the limits of any possible ECC, and throughput craters. The more nearly ideal you make the ECC, the more abrupt will be the transition from "no problem" to "no data".
The nasty thing about the wild, wild west model of spectrum (non)management is that there is no safe haven. There is no allocation of spectrum from the highest priority uses (air traffic safety) through the mundane (broadcast) to the "standby passengers" (WiFi). A low priority use is allowed to collide with a life-safety system. The results may be locally efficient, but are poor policy globally--a classic application of macroeconomic theory in action.
Yes, but still highly informative