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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
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.
The requirement that Ham Operators know morse code is perhaps a throwback to the days of WWII, or before, when the government wanted "an installed base, if you will" of radio operators that know code, for military purposes. I had a novice license first, for which I had to know 5 wpm, (1954) and then a General Class, with 20 wpm. Back then, money was tight for teens, so we had to do with 30-50 watt home-built transmitters, and to modulate the carrier (voice) was more complicated. We got into SSB, and DSB, but only if we had $$. So, code was it, and I even had a "bug". So, the FCC has a basic purpose, to regulate the bands, who gets what, and to maximize the bands for existing technology. I remember "winning" a 2-meter converter at a Ham Fest, went home, hooked it up, and no one was there...
I had a 40 meter converted WWII bomber receiver, still wish I had it, 40 meters was big half a century ago. The FCC probably does not want to allocate bands for technology that is expensive, not for the masses, etc. The FCC took 11 meters away from the Hams and gave it to the CBer's, as an example.
...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
To some degree I agree with you, however, the Open Spectrum crowd is lead primarily by computer scientists who as far I can tell have ignored some of the issues that crop up when designing radio real radio systems, especially when it comes to receivers. They wave their hands and say this new paradigm will leave all the old technology behind.
All of the literature I have read has focused on interference as occurring when two narrow band transmitters try using the same channel. This is the obvious case and the reason we have distinct allocations of the electromagnetic spectrum today. However, there are other modes of interference that occur even when two transmitters are transmitting on different channels. What about intermodulation interference (intermod)? Intermod occurs when two signals mix (multiply by one another) in the non-linear portions of a receiver to produce spurious signals that wipe out the real signal of interest. What about desense which occurs when one strong signal kilohertz or megahertz away from the signal of interest swamps the front end and makes the receiver deaf to all other signals? These types of problems have been dealt with by RF engineers for years in an environment where the spectrum was supposedly cafefully managed. (Some would say micromanaged.) If the spectrum turns into a free-for-all, I shudder to think the problems that will arise. Transmitting at a low power will mitigate these problems to a degree, but not all radio applications can be low power. (Think rural areas...)
You want to talk about actual claims? How about the claim that software defined radios (SDRs) are frequency agile and can operate anywhere they want. What you will find if you actually try to build an SDR receiver is that current CPU and A-to-D technology is not fast enough to work directly in the E-M spectrum. Depending on the design, you'll be limited to 0-30 MHz at best. To go higher, you'll need to use one of two methods, downconversion (mixing) or undersampling. Both of these processes require the use of filters and possibly other analog components that bring many of the same problems as they do in traditional radios. There are similar issues on the transmit side. There are still some excellent reasons to do SDR instead of traditional radios, however true frequency agility is still far out on the horizon.
I like many aspects of the Open Spectrum movement. There are some workable concepts there. However, I think it's being overtaken with hype and I worry that hype will hurt the credibility of the truly valid concepts. When I see engineers with real RF experience making the Open Spectrum movement's claims, I will be much less skeptical.
--zawada
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!