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FCC OKs Sweeping Spectrum Frontiers Rules To Open Up Nearly 11 GHz Of Spectrum (fiercewireless.com)
Monica Alleven, reporting for FierceWirelessTech: In one fell swoop, the FCC today put the U.S. in a 5G leadership position, voting 5-0 to approve its Spectrum Frontiers proceeding and make spectrum bands above 24 GHz available for 5G. FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, noting his previous remarks on the proceeding, kept his remarks brief to avoid repeating himself. But he summed it up this way before the final vote: "This is a big day for our nation. This is a big day for this agency," he said. "I do believe this is one of the, if not the most, important decision this agency will make this year. By becoming the first nation to identify high-band spectrum, the United States is ushering in the 5G era of high capacity, high-speed, low-latency wireless networks. By not getting involved in the technologies that will use the spectrum, we're turning loose the incredible innovators of this country," he said. The new rules open up nearly 11 GHz of high-frequency spectrum for mobile and fixed wireless broadband -- 3.85 GHz of licensed spectrum and 7 GHz of unlicensed spectrum. The rules create a new Upper Microwave Flexible Use service in the 28 GHz (27.5-28.35 GHz), 37 GHz (37-38.6 GHz) and 39 GHz (38.6-40 GHz) bands, and a new unlicensed band at 64-71 GHz. The FCC will continue to seek comment on bands above 95 GHz.
Sounds good for outdoor use, but above 10Ghz the signal starts behaving more like infrared than microwave and is going to struggle to get through walls I think.
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Should actually be pretty safe unless the power level is really high because its hardly going to penetrate the skin.
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Although Summary makes it sound like this is entirely a 5G thing, the unlicensed 64-71 GHz band suffers from high attenuation due to rain and oxygen, and aren't useful for distances more than about 1 mile. So this spectrum is clearly aimed at higher speed wifi (multi-gigabit).
Frequency multipliers and other fancy tricks.
You generate a 10mhz signal, then add it to a 20ghz sine wave. Bingo you've got a 10mhz channel at 20ghz.
That's a simplification of what wifi channels do.
So some government regulation is quite appropriate.
if you go way back there was a time when spectrum was unregulated. Gordon West wrote in his GROL book in 1920s (or early 30s) the Supreme Court ruled Dept of Commerce did not have enforcement authority. Radio stations went wild, using whatever freq and power levels they wanted. It became such a mess many listeners turned off their receivers and radio sales plummeted. Later when FCC was created they wrote legislation more carefully.
But it seems FCC has become regulatory captured as they seem more interested in selling spectrum. Interesting to talk with old timers recalling when FCC did enforcement and regulation including Part 15 products (maybe the high tech just got too fast for proper regulation). Many think the free market is more efficient but then there is no and never was a free market (except in the wild west and things were not that great, kind of like Somalia), everything is owned and controlled. If owned and controlled by one or a very few entities, well we get what we got which is what we are all bitching about today.
mfwright@batnet.com
First you have to get it really excited
You generate a 10mhz signal, then add it to a 20ghz sine wave.
Actually you MULTIPLY it, which exercises a trigonometric identity that creates two new "sidebands":
- The 10 mHz signal with the frequency of each component of it shifted up by 20gHz (i.e. a component at 10 mHz would appear at 20gHz + 10 mHz, a component at 5mHz would appear at 20gHz + 5mHz, etc.)
- The 10 mHz signal with the frequency of each component of it interpreted as a NEGATIVE frequency (i.e. frequency-inverted) and shifted up by 20gHz (i.e. a component at 10 mHz would appear at 20gHz - 10 mHz, a component at 5mHz would appear at 20gHz - 5mHz, etc.)
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