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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.
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
We regret to inform you that all jobs pertaining to your skills are being outsourced to India.
Have a nice day!
The higher the frequency, the harder it is for the signal to penetrate through a wall.
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
But since this is only been reserved for internet usage you will not have all of the other crap on this range as you do on the 2.4GHz band. Cell phones, portable handhelds, WiFi, 2-ways... etc. This list goes on, and companies keep building more items for them.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
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?
Not necessarily. Distance scales by the inverse of the atmospheric absorption. Of course there are many, many other factors involved: EM noise from the environment, RF noise from pre-existing transmitters using this frequency range, power of the transmitter, effective area of the transmitter (or receiver), modulation scheme (how data is modulated onto the RF carrier--for example, AM, FM, PM, digitization then FM, etc), and a whole host of other issues.
I'll take you to the ball, Barbara Manitee!!!
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).
"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
50% more distance is 125% more area, though.
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.
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?
Spectrum isn't allocated to protocols, but you can bet that ISPs will use 802.16 in this new band.
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...
Nope. 802.16a is for fixed devices. 802.16e will support low-speed mobility and 802.20 will support high-speed mobility (e.g. moving cars).
And BTW, 802.16a has already been obsoleted by 802.16revD.
"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.
But since this is only been reserved for internet usage you will not have all of the other crap on this range as you do on the 2.4GHz band.
Mmmm.
But the Internet isn't reserved.
Expect VoIP, video phones, X10 over IP alarm systems, http-baby-monitors, (the list goes on) to clog up that there "Internet".
"Provided by the management for your protection."
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
whats the use in going past 88 mph anyways?
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
And 8550% more volume in 11-dimensional space!
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?
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.