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World Radiocommunications Group OKs New WLAN Spectrum
BenFranske writes "The World Radiocommunications Conference will allow a portion of spectrum in the 5GHz band to be used for WLANs, a decision hailed as a 'defining moment' for the WLAN industry. Although this doesn't impact the US much as this spectrum is already being used for wireless networking here, this will help standardize the frequencies worldwide."
Won't this probably only be line of sight only?
802.11a uses this already, does it not? Was it not allowed internationally already or something?
The final WRC decision on 5-GHz WLAN spectrum said countries should take "appropriate measures" to restrict use of the 5250-to-5350-MHz bands to indoor use.
Now, how are you going to do that? Around my house I detect 3 wireless networks running and none of them are mine. Don't tell me that I need to wrap my house with aluminum foil either!
--- I'm Green Hornet's sidekick not Inspector Clouseau's!
The 100mW EIRP regulations across most of Europe severely limit the usefulness of the current 2.4GHz systems.
I haven't looked at the regulations for the 5Ghz band but if it's as limited as 2.4GHz it won't be much use.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Could you, or someone familiar with the characteristics of high frequency waves, detail any downsides of using the 5Ghz band?
As I understand it, it'll have shorter range and/or less forgiving of objects in the way (less able to difract around corners as well). Fairly key in home networking!
Yes, there are many technical advantages of 5Ghz compared to 2.4Ghz.
The problem is the health risk associated with these frequencies. When you reach these kind of frequencies, the wavelength is so low that organic tissue will be affected.
Here is a report from Motorola outlining the problems.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
So in your opinion all freq' should be unregulated? So in otherwords, you'd be fine with every device conflicting with every other device becuase they all try to use the same bandwidth?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
Intelligence can be pulled from extremely noisy signals; in some cases the noise isn't even relevant because "digital" can slice through time as easily as spectrum. Digital signal processing changes the field considerably.
Well, with cancer, or road accidents, it's easy. It's a binary risk. You either get it or you don't, and a lot of people are willing to take some extra risk there.
However, with pulsed radio waves that are absorbed by tissue, this may not be the thing to consider. What if the brain is susceptible? I'm not thinking about a tin foil hat because someone may read my thoughts or beam bad vibes into it, but if we really start flooding the world in microwaves, it a tin foil hat may become necessary to keep your ability to concentrate.
There is no way such effects can be scientitically proven. If a certain part of the population looses 10 % of their concentration strenght over a few years, who's to know, except that the next generation will again be a little more stupid and a little less likely to bring an Einstein? Over so many years, it can be thousands of factors. We'll simply never know.
There are a few experiments that show that 2.4Ghz pulse modulated with a low frequency (< 100 Hz, say your telnet packet rate) has a strong effect on calcium metabolism in (dead) brain cells.
Before we all run away with 2.4Ghz, 5Ghz, digital television, Tetra/C2000 (that's a real sweet tech that gives the cops using it headaches, litterally) as the best thing since sliced bread, we may wish to consider sticking with analog modulations on lower frequencies (lambda >> body size) and strongly directed digital links for a while, and perhaps UWB later.
But even with UWB, that looks absolutely terrific at first because to organic tissue, it resembles continuous white noise, who is to say that raising the EM noise level considerably, doesn't harm the brain in the longer run?
We hardly know how the most complex device in the known universe works, except that it's delicate and sensitive to chemical and electrical stimuli. I'd like RF committees to consider this a little more and waste less of their time on the harmless absorption rates of non-modulated waves. That's utterly uninteresting; no wonder you're allowed to send a few watts if heating by continuous waves is all the FCC looks at.
All generalizations are false, including this one. (Mark Twain)