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Cognitive Radios Could Increase Wireless Spectrum
schliz writes to tell us that a new intelligent radio technology, dubbed "cognitive radio," is being developed that adjusts operation based on input from its surroundings. Consumers wont likely see practical implementations of this tech for another five years, but it could have wide reaching applications from wireless networking to public safety devices. "Adaptive, cognitive radios could enable techniques such as dynamic frequency sharing, in which radios automatically locate unused frequencies, or share channels based on a priority system. In public safety, cognitive radios also could be used to provide interoperability between various signals and automatically adjust radio performance."
At least this one didn't make any "The FCC will be obsolete!" claims.
As someone else said, there's not much to prevent rogue radios from abusing the system. Also, wideband receivers are extremely difficult to design. If you design an extremely wideband receiver, you give up one of the following:
Low power
Good interference rejection
Low cost
All the DSP in the world isn't going to help you if your receiver frontend is overloaded.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Although it seems like a neat idea, in general, the article seems to have the stink of "buzz" around it.
It's cognitive radio! It adapts, intelligently! If you go somewhere with a weak signal, your radio would get that signal some other way, intelligently! Wait, we mean broadcast towers would change their output and frequency whenever it gets crowded, and this allows things to be more crowded, but not in a bad way! The whole thing adapts, intelligently!
I would love to see details, instead of vague descriptions about how things might work. Also, who profits, and how?
Fnord.
Wow! One big cloud of spectrum. Damn those oligopolistic senators who are preventing us from reaching that utopia!
Oh, and damn the people who make radio transmitters that can only recieve small slices of signal for a reasonable cost. Don't you want the cloud?!
Oh, and damn the millions of legacy devices which all require fixed spectrum blocks without negotiation. Didn't they realize that the future was coming? Damn those applications where a DSP attached to your radio is impractical.
Damn lazy americans who don't want to price-shop every time they make a phone call by looking for the reciever in their area with the lowest prices (or get trapped in an area where every reciever is gouging). Don't they realize that by checking cell tower rates every few seconds as you drive down the highway you can optimize your cash path?
But yes, damn those Senators! Why don't they just back off from this entire thing and let natural market forces take over... by writing the millions of lines of new regulations this structured market would require, including the conversion of legacy devices (and their recycling), spectrum buyback, establishing interoperative billing communications standards, testing for aeronautical interference, etc. Clearly by not jumping on the "unlimited spectrum" utopia bandwagon based upon early technological progress and conjecture, they simply hate freedom.
Why, why don't they realize that in areas untouched by federal regulation, like Operating Systems, the free market has created such perfect efficiencies? Why can't they enjoy the benefits of a truly competitive market like California's Energy markets?
The ______ Agenda
Maybe adaptive, but cognitive is horribly inaccurate.