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FCC Opens Wireless 3.6GHZ Band
mdeb writes "Broadband Reports has a story on the FCC opening up a portion of the 3.6 GHz spectrum. "This initiative would reserve 50 megahertz in the 3.6 GHz band for unlicensed wireless Internet operations. Setting aside this spectrum would make it easier for vendors to build devices that would work across all Wi-Fi frequencies and create new wireless Internet opportunities in rural America. The new proposal would allow transmissions at power levels higher than currently permitted for Part 15 unlicensed devices.""
Now I can Internet-up my cow herd. Sweet.
"I'm just here to regulate funkiness."
Does this mean if I lived out in the 'country', and my neighbours had nodes, or a corporate sponsership program was setup, internet would be readily available?
(honest question, seriously)
I'd hate to see a repeat of the 2.4GHz problems I see with other unlicensed operations interfering with data services.
Does this mean if I lived out in the 'country', and my neighbours had nodes
They can always go to the city and go to a hospital and get those things removed.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
(for me, when I get my masters). This is great news, as it'll allow me to use my skills with HFSS and ADS to more easily get a job engineering microwave and millimeterwave monolithic and integrated circuitry! Yay!
I'll take you to the ball, Barbara Manitee!!!
On one hand, widespread proliferation of broadband without having to hang out near a hotspot will change everything, but on the other hand.... I really hope they dont do something like WEP again.
With so many different rf ranges available for potential IP traffic, how do we cover all bands? I'm psyched that there are so many options available to us, b, g, a. It's nice to see so many unintended uses. Welcome to the future!
Zhrodague.net - I do projects and stuff too.
"...and it is also noted that no longer will food have to be put IN microwaves to heat it." -obligatory fake quote from article
If so, this will get only 50% more range than 802.11. I don't see that as a big deal. I'll stick with my 2.4 gear.
The higher the frequency, the harder it is for the signal to penetrate through a wall.
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
So soon I will be able to have a 2.4 Ghz wireless network, and a 3.6 Ghz wireless phone and they shouldn't interfere with each other right?
Luckily, no-one has proved that high-frequency constant radiation is bad for your health. Yet.
Does everything include nothing?
Let's hope this kills BPL. After all why do you need wires when you can just send it through the air.
I think this new band is intended for outdoor last-mile Internet access, so penetration of buildings is not a concern. If you use 3.6GHz 802.16, 5GHz 802.11a, and a 2.4GHz cordless phone, they won't overlap (although your brain may explode from the alphabet soup).
Is IEEE now going to make a new standard based on this frequency? And of course, once they do the rest of the world will have to play with their frequencies to accomidate it, but maybe that isn't all bad.
"The new proposal would allow transmissions at power levels higher than currently permitted for Part 15 unlicensed devices."
So? It's a "higher energy" portion of the spectrum. If they didn't do this, it would stunt the range of the devices. Sorry, I'm crabby today and I feel like being negative.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
Instead of "Broadband Reports reports that RCR Wireless News reports that the FCC said..." let's just see what the FCC said: news release, Powell statement.
Now there'll be even MORE bandwidth/protocols poorly thought-through to expose my data! 8P
Diplomacy is the art of saying, "Nice doggie!" until you can find a rock.
Why do I keep on thinking that the 802.16a extension to WiMax wireless networking will allocated that 50 MHz allocation in the 3.6 GHz range?
(For those who don't know, 802.16a is the standard that allows wireless broadband Internet even if you're in a moving vehicle up to 250 km/h or 155 mph; that means you can have wireless broadband Internet even in a moving car or a fast-moving train if you're in the range of the antenna.)
"Approximately 100 satellite earth stations, primarily located on the East and West Coasts, are licensed in the 3650 MHz band. The FCC stated that wireless Internet service providers could use cognitive technology to safeguard against harmful interference to fixed satellite links."
this to me seems like internet starting to infringe on satellite radio...I'm all for it but I can't help but be reminded of the similarities in decreased performance that came about when cordless phones went from 900mhz to 2.4 Ghz. Yeah everything is clearer but you had the possibility of confussion as microwaves are turned on, two different wireless networks are running in your house...etc. Why aren't we moving towards a standard communication protocal that is scalable, instead of licensing of bands willy nilly (eg use of the satellite protocal for these wireless internet companies). Open to suggestions here.
If I could get the entertaining channels and ditch useless music channels like MTV, everything would be so much more bearable since housemates would never be able to put on the music channels. And if the bill was lower as a result, hallelujah.
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
The article mentioned Satellite base stations using this same frequency, but that the new internet services would have to be considerate (or some such wording). So, is this a minor irritation or a gift with a price attached? I'm not up on the implications myself....
AB HOC POSSUM VIDERE DOMUM TUUM
Plus there are lower frequency bands that are unlicensed, including the ones used for RC Cars
I was wondering how much power can I put out? .1 watts? 10 watts? 100 watts?
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
A high-powered 50 Mhz wide slot in the 3.6g band?
That's right BANG in the middle of channel 1 of the OFDM PHY proposal for IEEE 802.15 broadband wireless Personal Area Networks. (The proposed initial deployment was to use systems that cycle through bands 1 through 3 with each transmission.)
WUSB was also to be based on the OFDM proposal.
This should throw an extra monkeywrench into both of 'em. (Possibly more into the OFDM than the DS-CDMA version, though I'm not sure of that.)
= = = = = =
The OFDM and DS-CDMA factions couldn't agree on a standard. They DID agree on a "common signaling method" that both systems could talk with only tiny tweaks to the radios, and a protocol for time-dividing the slot, so if they both ended up depolyed they could take turns rather than stepping on each other (with lots of extra system numbers available for future systems to play, too).
Then they split up.
The DS-CDMA faction was ready with silicon, needing only any tiny tweaks resulting from the standardization process. IMHO The more populous OFDM faction is now trying to delay their deployment in various ways, most involving announcements of new products to delay adoption of the DS silicon.
One of those announcements was an "improvement" to the MAC layer (requiring the DS folk to delay deployment until they can get working OFDM silicon to test against or risk incompatibility). Another is the wireless USB announcement, based on the OFDM proposal, which might get system makers to hold off on adoption in the hope of getting something that plugs into the existing USB stack.
I wonder if this is the FCC saying "Use it or lose it!"?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
The higher the frequency, the worse the performance for going through walls and other barriers for a given transmission power...
That makes me wonder why we don't go with the low frequency stuff...10Khz down to 10Hz. Gotta be something there we can use.
What?
This is cool news and all, but does anybody here know if this frequency range will also be made public (or has already been public for that matter) anywhere outside the US?
Not much use making this a universal standard if it can only be exploited in one county.
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
The endometrial cavity is opened to reveal lush fronds of hyperplastic endometrium. Endometrial hyperplasia usually results with conditions of prolonged estrogen excess and can lead to metrorrhagia (uterine bleeding at irregular intervals), menorrhagia (excessive bleeding with menstrual periods), or menometrorrhagia.
who writes this stuff?
edgar allan poe would be proud...
The raven sat perched upon the irregular mass in the upper fundus that proved to be endometrial adenocarcinoma on biopsy. Quote the raven "Thus, any postmenopausal bleeding should make you suspect that this lesion may be present."
Someone invent a WiFi that can reach from my frickin' basement bedroom to my car parked outside 8 feet away.
Better yet, invest a WiFi that will allow a local ISP to broadcast over a 10-mile radius so I can read Slashdot in the goddamn taxi in heavy traffic.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Hmmm... Screwing Humanity Since 1948...
:D
They got that right!
"Oooh, does that mean we get to kick some puffy white mad zionist butt?"
Because an effective antenna array is anywhere from 4 miles to 4400 miles? (quarter-wave antenna length for those frequencies.) Shortwave installations are huge to start with, the ELF installations are AFAIK only used for military COMMs (very low BW sub comms, forex.) The military ELF antennas are not quarter wave, but still huge (56 miles total in Michigan, 28 miles in Wisconsin.)
: //hypertextbook.com/facts/2001/LisaWu.shtml: //www.haarp.alaska.edu/haarp/elf.html
They are also very slow.. the 76 hz ELF system delivers about 3 characters every 10 minutes, and still only good to about 350-400 ft depth. There've been tests with even lower frequencies.
http://www.vlf.it/submarine/sbmarine.html
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"'Tis great confidence in a friend to tell him your faults, greater to tell him his." --Poor Richard's Almanac
Canada just recently auctioned off similar sized channels in the 3.5 GHz band. Unlike the wisp's out there running WIFI, there is no mass-market gear available to feasibly use the space.
Wi-lan's ofdm stuff is fantastic but not suited to anything other than premium business wireless subscribers - certainly not something you would use for rural residential offerings.
Anyone have any manufacturer recommendations?
I almost want to say YHBT, but I'm still not sure. Don't forget that the amount of data you can put on a carrier (generally) scales linearly with the frequency of that carrier. So yes we want to go through walls, but we also want fast connections.
This thread discusses a common misconception about loss vs. frequency. It is not true, in general, that path loss increases with frequency, as the grandparent poster suggests, nor is it true that the path loss decreases with frequency, as the parent poster posits.
Path loss is independent of frequency. Think about it--if path loss were proportional to frequency, no light would reach the Earth from the sun, due to the incredible path loss at that high frequency.
However, "apparent" path loss depends on the type of antenna used. "Constant gain" antennas, like the resonant dipoles and loops commonly used for WLANs, get smaller with increasing frequency, since their size is proportional to a wavelength. They therefore intercept proportionally less of the radiated signal at higher frequencies, and a "loss" is apparent. Parabolic dishes, on the other hand, are of the "constant aperture" antenna type; as the parent poster correctly points out, the gain of these antennas increases with frequency. Users of these antennas see a "path loss" increase at lower frequencies.
Interestingly, if one were to transmit with a dipole and receive that signal with a parabolic dish (so that one side of the link had a constant gain antenna and the other side had a constant aperture antenna), the apparent "path loss" of this system would be independent of frequency.