Engineers from Motorola and Philips, lugged their laptops, antennas and other equipment to parks, homes and high-rises around the Washington area, testing their “white space” gear, reports the Washington Post.
They’re hoping to prove to prove that the unlicensed airwaves between television stations, (”white spaces”), can work without interference to television stations.
Using white spaces “will provide a way to provide broadband across long distances at much faster speeds than cellphone networks and WiFi,” said Jake Ward, spokesman for the Wireless Innovation Alliance, which includes Google, Microsoft, HP and Dell. The group is trying to convince regulators that using the airwaves will provide broadband to rural schools, beam high-definition online video to low-income households and let consumers stream music while sitting in highway traffic.
White-space backers say their devices will be able to detect and avoid frequencies being used by broadcasters and wireless mics. Critics say the devices are not reliable enough.
The FCC is now testing other prototypes built by Philips and Motorola as well as Silicon Valley start-up Adaptrum and Singapore-based Institute for Infocomm Research. The Motorola device connects to a database of TV stations operating within 200 kilometers and scans the airwaves nearly every second for other signals that may pop up unexpectedly, such as a wireless microphone.
The company’s CEO, Dr. Haiyun Tang, is the co-author of a March 2007 paper by the New America Foundation in support of white space technology.
It will use the IEEE 802.22 standard for Wireless Regional Area Networks (WRAN). The FCC’s decision is expected by summer’s end.
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