Super Wi-Fi

Saw an interesting article on Slate about the FCC's proposed release of new Wi-Fi bands to the general public. These bands were former frequencies used by analog television before everything went digital. These new proposed bands offer increased power and distance over current Wi-Fi bands. Some drawbacks noted were interference with live broadcast mics such as concerts or sporting events. Anyhoo, sounds exciting and it was interesting learning what the industry did with what was considered "garbage bands" in the 80's (your wireless uses these bands as we speak).

Using the lower frequencies will certainly help make setup more user friendly. Lower frequencies aren't filtered by walls as easily so there will be fewer dead spots in people's homes.

good news, hope to see some good products in teh future, maybe some day I'll be able to get wireless into the garage.

Nick

When is this supposed to start? Rural areas will benefit this the most!

DaveHCYJ said:

Using the lower frequencies will certainly help make setup more user friendly. Lower frequencies aren't filtered by walls as easily so there will be fewer dead spots in people's homes.

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Definitely, Dave. Lower freq's = larger signal wavelength which ultimately means larger range. That will be cool to see how the technology is formed around this. Since the range will inherently be greater, I'd assume that less emphasis would be used on stepping up signal strength.

Hey Dave: what do you mean the lower the freq the easier the setup? Just that there will be less interfering freq bands?

Thanks for the thread!

Kisses,
Brian

I'm not an EE guy by any means, but I thought range was a function of power. In an open environment signal falls off by the cube or square (or somewhere in between depending on the type of antenna) root as distance increases. Is that true?

Lower frequency = Longer wave length. And longer waves penetrate objects more easily. So what I meant by easier setup for the user is just that an unknowledgable user could just stick their router anywhere and it would still work. For example its not uncommon for someone to just stick their wireless router behind their tv/tvstand along with the cable modem and other junk, which leads to the tv/tvstand blocking alot of the signal and the user gets frustrated when they have signal dead zones. Or a user in an older house with thick sturdy walls can't get signal two rooms away because the walls absorb it all. With the lower frequency that won't happen as often.

But you're also right, at least in the beginning the airwaves won't be saturated by other devices which will help too. That will certainly change after a while though.

Air is an object, as is the dust in the air and such. I think that's why longer wavelength has more range.

Downside is that a longer wavelength has a lower bandwidth potential.

Bobnova said:

Downside is that a longer wavelength has a lower bandwidth potential.

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Unfortunately you are correct :/. A couple of weeks ago I was investigating the possibilities of WiFi for submarines if a surface combatant was an access point. The only problem is that for it to be effective the wavelength would have to be longer, and inevitably a smaller freq, which would cause bandwidth restrictions that would render the entire idea worthless :/. There goes my doctorate thesis! .

Lets also not forget: plant life greatly reduces WiFi signal within a building as well. The more plants = the less signal strength overall.

Kisses,
Brian

Bobnova said:

Air is an object, as is the dust in the air and such. I think that's why longer wavelength has more range.

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That makes sense. I was thinking more along the lines of a linksys router in a residential home. In that setting and at typical 100ft type of ranges wouldn't the air/dust be insignificant compared to walls, furniture, pets, etc?

While air and dust indeed act as "barriers" to electromagnetic radiation, both are essentially transparent at the wavelengths used by WiFi. As DaveHCYJ conjectured, building materials are far more opaque to radio waves and absorb a greater fraction of the power.

Regarding the lower bandwidth potential, the nice thing about opening up (portions) of the television bands is that there's quite a bit of bandwidth to be had. Ultra-high-datarate applications will probably take of too much room, but you could still fit a lot of 802.11g channels into the spectrum that's to be opened (more than 20 in just the 470-608 MHz band). Of course, the down side is that devices operating in the television band must be very careful to not interfere with existing local broadcast stations (i.e. WiFi channels overlapping in-use broadcast channels will probably be unavailable for use).

JigPu

And of course it won't be called 802.11g anymore... .

Data rate will be MUCH lower at such low frequency, though, than at 2.4ghz. It's a trade-off. I wouldn't be surprised if it's capped at 1Mb/s or so. Maybe lower.