EoW January 2014

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January 2014 41
services – the issue was attracting renewed interest. A wireless
industry source o ered a succinct explanation: the more devices,
the more opportunities there are for those devices to both
generate and su er from interference. (“Industry Wrestles with
the Growing Problem of Spectrum Pollution,” 18th November)
Gordon Reichard Jr, CEO of Isco International (Elk Grove Village,
Illinois), told Ms Parker that his company, which provides
network products designed to reduce spectrum interference,
sees incidental interference from such seemingly innocuous
devices as uorescent bulbs “every day, all the time, every place
in the United States.” Mr Reichard said that interference can be
caused by such varied “unintentional radiators” as ticket readers
at airports, electronic cash registers and FM radio stations.
Big problems can also be caused by intentional radiators,
such as bidirectional ampli ers (BDAs), which are commonly
used on river barge ships, cruise ships, and trucks serving oil
and gas elds. According to the Silicon Flatirons Center, an
interdisciplinary research centre at the University of Colorado
School of Law, “Evidence is emerging that the radio noise oor is
rising in higher-frequency bands that are especially important to
both commercial and public safety applications.”
Julius Knapp, chief of the O ce of Engineering and Technology
of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) – pointed
out that, not only is spectrum being used for voice and data
communications, it is also key to entirely new technologies, such
as electric vehicle charging and radio frequency (RF) lighting.
Even so, said Mr Knapp, who delivered the keynote address at
a recent Silicon Flatirons radio spectrum pollution event, “Radio
noise has been rising since the rst radio was turned on. This is
not really a new phenomenon.”
† For now, at least, the preferred approach to the new-old
problem of radio spectrum pollution seems to be a
combination of heightened awareness and watchful waiting.
The FCC’s Mr Knapp cautioned against snap judgments as
to the need for interference prevention. Acknowledging
the di culty of creating reasonable targets for noise levels,
he told FierceWirelessTech that there must be an appropriate
balance between control of radio noise and the impact on
services and devices. “We’d all like to see the radio noise be
zero, as long as [the standard is] applied to somebody else’s
products,” Mr Knapp said. “Your desired signal may be noise
to someone else.”
Spectrum of another kind –
‘TV white space’ – enables wireless
broadband connectivity in rural
higher-education communities
AIR.U (Advanced Internet Regions/University) is a consortium
of education associations, public interest groups and high-tech
companies organised to establish vacant TV broadcast spectrum
(“white space networks”) on American college and university
campuses with few high-speed broadband options, and in
surrounding rural areas.
Declaration Networks Group manages the rst such network at
West Virginia University, in the only US state wholly within the
largely rural Appalachian area. Established to plan, deploy and
operate super wi- technologies, the AIR.U co-founder aims to
manage more such networks.