Newly opened up white-space spectrum to enable a plethora of new wireless application
The beauty of the spectrum between existing TV bands around 50MHz to 700MHz is indoor penetration possibility. The FCC in allowing the use of this spectrum for unlicensed devices also allocated two channels nationwide for wireless microphones who were major contenders against opening this up due to potential interference for them. They also removed a requirement to have in-build geolocation sensors in the devices which would have significantly added to equipment cost and hindered the ubiquity anticipated.
Some potential applications include telemedicine applications, machine-to-machine (M2M), smart grid devices and wireless data systems including an enhanced WiFi – 802.22 Wireless Regional Area Network which is aimed at using cognitive radios to exploit white space spectrum.
With the overcoming of the regulatory hurdle major technical work still remains particularly in ensuring incumbent protection on their licensed bands as well as assuring efficient use of TVBD bandwidth. One solution could involve integrated sensors that works with a cloud-based geolocation database(s) that gives the mobile device awareness on location-specific available spectrum.
But with all other unlicensed spectrum the fear is that this, just like 900MHz or 2.4GHz ISM bands, could become too crowded even with careful power control. This is exacerbated by the longer range possible at this frequency band which means interference power will travel much further than it would for 2.4GHz or 900MHz.
All the same it will be quite interesting to see novel uses of this spectrum that will unfold in the coming few years.
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