Shared Wireless Use

= technical solutions to achieve Open Spectrum

In the 21st century what is appropriate is non-exclusive use. At this stage the radios are smart. They are sensing, which means they are listening and can detect the energy emitted by other radios. The radios come to be quite intelligent and do what they need to do to communicate most effectively. In the coming three to five years we will add users controllable variable for speed and distance. [1]

Description

Gordon Cook (August 2008 Cook Report):

"Wireless adds fresh dimensions of complexity to the wired world. But as radio becomes ever more capable, radio engineers are undertaking what Peter Ecclesine calls an increasingly productive “dance” with regulators around the world. OFCOM’s just published Spectrum Framework Review summarizes the intended direction. “We believe, and many of our advisors agree, that spectrum might become less scarce in the future. There is more than enough spectrum for almost any applications that can be envisaged, the problem at the moment is that this spectrum is not always held by those best placed to make use of it to meet user needs.”

There is a developing dialogue between radio engineers and their standards developers and the regulatory authorities. This dialogue is gradually pushing back the rigid boundaries of 20th century analogue licensing. As Peter says, these new developments are enabling the on going dance between regulators, radios engineers and society to move into a new direction and create capabilities that would have been impossible in the more rigid licensed world of five years ago.

Wireline communications systems may be thought of as rigid – that is not terrible flexible. Radios bring new dimensions into this otherwise static universe. The components of the radio can be controlled in ways that take into account distance, signal strength, location, environment of location, transmission protocol capability, antenna tuning and aiming capability, and a programmed and built in intelligence that fine tunes the radio’s ability to function in specified ways. Such variables enable functioning in accord with location, time of day, and transmit signal strength needed to reach other cognitive radios.

This makes possible shared use of spectrum in the higher frequencies that are viable playgrounds for the first time because of the increases in device’s power and sophistication. Consequently, useful radio functionality can be obtained in territory that does not belong to the companies that have paid for exclusive right for the use of lower parts of the spectrum.

In the overall context of these changes, one of the most interesting standards is 802.11y. The purpose of 11 y will be to give licensed operators of 802.11 radios the ability to command and control the operation of their radios, being able to vary the power frequency, bandwidth and behavior in general. The General 802.11 standard may be found at http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/802.11.html and IEEE 802 standards available for downloading here http://standards.ieee.org/getieee802/drafts.html. What will be extremely useful is the ability of a licensed 802.11 operator to configure his or her radios for the required conditions of operation in more than 170 countries around the world.

Downloading the entire 802.11 2007 standards document et yields a document almost 1300 pages long. Annex j could become the topic of a future interview. It explains how radios built since 2005 are dual bandwidth capable (2.4 and 5 gHz) and location aware. In other words receiving a beacon transmission tells the radio which set of operating functions to use.

The wireless field is a jungle – impenetrable to the outsider – but at the same time one that no strategist can afford to ignore. As Peter says, people are mobile, people are wireless and consequently mobility will be the ground on which the final battles of the old 20th century walled garden worlds will be played out.

In the 1990s with the arrival of new techniques besides frequency division - such techniques involved packets – we gained the capability of Time division or Code division or Space division approaches to transmission. As these approaches became more prevalent and possible and more cost-effective, regulations that were written in terms of an exclusive area license on a frequency became a poor utilization of the ‘resource’ - that is of the spectrum itself.

Consequently regulators themselves began to head down the paths towards innovation and towards non-exclusive licensing.If we look at present day spectrum utilization, for example we can measure from 3 GHz to 6 GHz in downtown Washington DC and conclude quite precisely that it is only 8% used. We can say in effect that here is this huge resource which is not being utilized to any appreciable degree by the present-day allocation system of exclusive use licensing. In 2003 interview people were talking about building mesh radios with which wireless entrepreneurs would cover communities. In 2003 in those devices for mesh that hung on the light pole, they had a single radio. In 2008, the same devices on the same light poles will have four radios. They have an 11n radio for access in the 2.4 GHz band. They also have a 5 GHz radio for access in the 5 GHz band. And they also have 5 GHz radios for uplink and downlink to fixed networks. In 2008, the device on the light pole costs about the same as the one in 2003 except the radios inside are vastly different in their capabilities." [2]