Next Wave Wireless – Bandwidth
We live in a world of invisible signals cellphones, Wifi, radio and television to name a few. The thing is, we’re running out of room for these signals to be transmitted. I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.
Reed: One of the key challenges that we’re facing in wireless technology is being able to support the greater information bandwidth.
Jeff Reed is a Professor in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech. If you think of all our broadcast and communication signals as flowing though an imaginary pipeline, bandwidth is the size of the pipe. And there’s a limited number of available frequencies, like the AM and FM radio bands, for example, in the pipeline.
Ambience; radio scan
Reed: We used to have analog TV in the United States. Then, analog TV went away, and one of the reasons for that is that we needed to use that spectrum for cellular communication systems. So, we’re looking at intelligent means to be able to support multiple applications in a band.
We will be seeing new services operated in spectrum that was previously reserved only for radar operations.
One of the reasons why we’re facing this limitation of bandwidth is interference. There’s more signals out there than there used to be. They’re closer together, and these signals that reside close to each other will interfere with each other. So, we are looking at ways to cancel this interference, so that we can be able to accommodate more applications and more users in a given limited natural resource.
I’m Jim Metzner and this is the Pulse of the Planet.