Good Day, BWIA (GDBWIA) is a light compendium of news, items of interest, irreverent commentary, and occasional light analysis relating to Broadband Wireless Internet Access (including WiMAX, public access Wi-Fi, etc.).
Things That Get Me Excited About BWIA Today? Ubiquiti Networks NanoStation (pictured at right)! It's a Broadband Wireless Internet Access (outdoor) client radio in a form factor that looks a lot like Motorola Canopy with integral multiple antenna selections, a 2.4 GHz version, and a 5 GHz version. The most amazing thing about these units
is that their MSRP is $79 (for the 2.4 GHz version; price unstated on the 5 GHz version. My impression, overall, is that these units are derived from Ubiquiti's intensive adaptations of Atheros "Wi-Fi" chipsets for outdoor / long-range / BWIA use. Ubiquiti is hardly alone in doing so; I've had reports over the years that major BWIA vendors (in the top 5) have also used adapted Atheros "Wi-Fi" chipsets. I put Wi-Fi in quotes here because the Atheros chipsets can be programmed to operate in ways incompatible with Wi-Fi (but better, for BWIA usage), such as channel sizes as small as 5 MHz compared to Wi-Fi standard 20 and 22 MHz channels. I hope to do an in-depth article of the NanoStation products for WISPNews. My thanks to Ken DiPietro, and Drew Lentz for bringing this to my attention.
Clearwire Modem Weather Report - Hollywood Hill, Woodinville, Washington - Solid 4 Bars. (Another cold, wet, and gloomy day here in the Seattle area. It's days like this, looking out my office window, directly over the Clearwire modem sitting in the window sill facing into the greenbelt between it and its base station, that I marvel just how much difference OFDM technology has made. Before OFDM, 2.4 GHz / 2.5 GHz simply couldn't penetrate foliage. (I write about my experiences as a Clearwire user, and about Clearwire the company and as a bellwether for the overall Broadband Wireless Internet Access / WiMAX industry in the Independent Clearwire Blog.)
Now your light switches want to be Internet-enabled Oops... they already are. I'd forgotten that Zigbee devices (think low-speed, high-reliability, mesh-networking for simple devices like lights, thermostats, etc.) already can communicate through Zigbee mesh networks using TCP/IP, (and we thought there was a shortage of IP addresses for computers...) but apparently the Zigbee Alliance wants to enhance that capability. Imagine the marketing that will ensue for firewalls when your home's light switches and thermostats start getting hacked :-) My measure of market acceptance for something like Zigbee is when it starts showing up at Home Depot or Lowe's, like Category 6 Ethernet cable that's rated for Gigabit networking.
Zigbee was designed for controlling devices, in homes, offices, and factories. Three key attributes were that it had to be low power (how often do you want to change the battery in your light switches), mesh networking for relaying between devices that need to communicate but aren't necessarily within range of each other, and to be very robust.
But technology has a way of evolving in unexpected directions, and maybe it makes more sense for Wi-Fi to do some of the jobs Zigbee was designed for, now that 802.11N / MIMO can provide much better coverage. Of course, there's the battery issue... or maybe that isn't an issue any more. GainSpan claims a ten-year life for a Wi-Fi transmitter from a single AA battery. Think thermostats in every room feeding into your 802.11N / Wi-Fi router and then your furnace controller.
My fantasy Wi-Fi application? All the clocks in the house having Wi-Fi modules, synchronized via NTP. A close second is (reasonably-priced) digital photo frames that can be set to poll a local or Internet directory via Wi-Fi... and then the next step, creating dynamic content that can be "JPG'ed" into a photo that would be downloaded and displayed, or a hang-on-the-wall display-only basic computer that you'd set up to poll, say, Google News and continuously display updated headlines, programmed via web page on the back end.
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Proxim receives its nomination from SEC for inclusion into the BWIA Deadpool.
Andrew Seybold - Report From IWCE Not exactly BWIA, but good reporting overall on some observed trends in the public safety / two-way-radio industry's IWCE conference. I often chide Seybold for not really getting the trend that is Broadband-Internet-made-wireless, but Seybold gets two-way radio technology. From Seybold's report, it sounds like this is the year that a trend I've been expecting for some time finally comes to pass - the marriage of Bluetooth and portable two-way radios. It's been a long time in coming as a clueful manufacturer had to integrate push-to-talk into Bluetooth. I confess I had not expected the innovative video application that Seybold cites. Also... I wouldn't be too quick to say that we won't soon have streaming, or streaming-to-in-car-recording video capability... but then if you can record three hours of video onto a device that's entirely contained in the form factor of a portable radio's push-to-talk microphone, why would you need to stream it back to the vehicle? Next big leap for Bluetooth... point-to-multipoint mode; for example, having a GPS receiver being able to "stream" its data to multiple receiving devices. Maybe next year...
We keep taking bigger steps towards radios becoming software-driven like computers
- NICT's Cognitive Radio Terminal Device Supports Frequencies from 400MHz to 6GHz,
- (a bit breathlessly...) Introducing the world's first, truly cognitive commercial [two-way] radio,
- Cognitive Radio is one of EE Times' 35 People, Places, & Things That Will Shape The Future, and
- apparently the University of Washington offers graduate degrees in cognitive radio:
... The four students have a lot in common: “badminton, watching basketball games, politics, social issues, our major and Chinese culture,” explained Luo, who is working for his doctorate degree in cognitive radio.
In the days before the current paranoia about non-citizen students studying at US colleges and universities, a student like Luo studying a discipline like cognitive radio would likely stay in the US and work for, or build, a company to exploit that cutting-edge knowledge gleaned from graduate research. But not now; likely he can't wait to get back to China and start building cutting-edge systems there.
If you're cool enough to be an Amateur Radio Operator, interested in Digital Communications, and blessed to be living in the Seattle area, you should plan to attend the 2008 MicroHAMS Digital Conference on March 22, 2008. I'll be giving the first presentation - something along the lines of a grand unification theory for all things Amateur Radio Digital Communications :-)
By Steve Stroh
Fine Print / Boilerplate / Acknowledgements / Credits / FAQs
(Last updated 2008-02-25)
This article is Copyright © 2008 by Steve Stroh except for specifically-marked excerpts. Excerpts and links are expressly permitted (and encouraged).
This article was written and posted via Broadband Wireless Internet Access (BWIA); Clearwire service using a NextNet Wireless / Motorola Expedience Residential Service Unit (RSU).
Some of my favorite things about the NanoStation:
--it's a dual-pole box with auto adjusting polarity
--400mW radio
--external SMA connector
--60 degree horizontal coverage
--yeah, $79 MSRP configured as AP or Client
--LEDs for tuning in a signal and an exterior reset button
as far as Seybold, ever since he called guys in broadband wireless "internet interlopers" I think twice about reading his articles... but that's just me.
Posted by: Drew | March 03, 2008 at 20:55