Slashdot Review – Produced by SDR News » 2009

SDRNews : White-Fi, WiFi in the White Spaces

August 27th, 2009 Administrator

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First “White-Fi” Prototypes Arrive
WPA Encryption Broken in Less than A Minute
Yelp’s Augmented Reality App

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White Fi Debuts

by Andrew McCaskey
Closer to Reality

Prototypes are beginning to emerge from the labs at Microsoft – and presumably other partners in the Whitespace Consortium , and the results seem encouraging. Rather than operating in the congested 2.4 and 5.8 Ghz bands common to various WiFi services, whitespace modems operate at a lower frequency (the UHF TV band) that have much superior propagation characteristics. Ranges of a mile or more are possible.

There are numerous technical challenges – the greatest of which has been the legal requirements of combination of spectrum sniffing and a backup database system. If a licensed service like television broadcast or a database problem, the White-Fi device has to take the dive and shift immediately to alternate channels- presumably out of band in the UHF region.

It’s a difficult assignment – but the flexibility of these intelligent modems are going to be critical in extending infrastructure, if WIMAX turns out to be drtangled in the cradle. It’s always good to have a backup plan.

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