White Spaces Spec Aims to Spur Device, Application Innovations
GENEVA -- Preliminary work on a high-speed wireless- networking standard for TV white spaces has moved to a wider group of IT companies. It’s an effort to increase interoperability and spur innovation in new products, applications and devices, said officials involved in the work.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
The standard will be used for applications such as in- home HD multimedia networking and distribution, and Internet access for communities, said Ecma International, where the work is being done. The Cognitive Networking Alliance wrote the preliminary draft spec, said Kyutae Lim, associate director of technology at the Georgia Electronic Design Center and the convener of the Ecma group. “The physical layer, interference-avoidance and cognitive radio technologies, will be specified,” so other wireless networking standards can operate in the TV white spaces, an Ecma statement said.
But adopting an international technical standard before resolving the legal dispute over white spaces use is premature, said Dennis Wharton, NAB executive vice president. The technical standard will avoid interference with licensed services and incumbent users by following FCC rules for TV white space operation, executives said. But the rules allowing white spaces operation “were strongly opposed by U.S. television broadcasters, and NAB has taken the FCC to court to try and stop their implementation,” Wharton said
Two conditions must be met before white spaces equipment can be sold, said Michael Marcus of Marcus Spectrum Solutions. A database has to be set up and approved by the FCC, said Marcus, formerly associate chief for technology in the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology. The Ecma spec will use information from a white spaces database, said one executive. “Defining what’s in the database doesn’t fall in the scope of Ecma’s work,” the executive said. Participants in the White Spaces Database Group didn’t return phone and e- mail inquiries.
If no objection is raised to the FCC’s transmitter ID rule, the Ecma group “is going to have to address that,” said an IEEE participant. Nothing has been set in preliminary discussions on the transmitting equipment ID signal, Lim said. “Device registration information that may be used to identify transmitters is more for fixed access devices,” an executive said. The Ecma activities concentrate on personal portable equipment, executives said.
Foreign broadcasters may oppose the Ecma effort, Wharton said. “Introduction of new, unlicensed services in the white spaces should not limit the potential for evolution of broadcasting technology in the future,” a European Broadcasting Union official said. Broadcasters “have their own game plan” for the white spaces, said an IEEE participant who supports white space use. Ecma doesn’t have broadcasters on its membership rolls, executives said.
“Ecma has a reputation … for being a place where vendors can get a specification approved quickly and with little change,” said lawyer Andrew Updegrove, who represents various standards development organizations. Much of Ecma’s previous work was in private integrated service networks, according to its Web site. New Ecma participants and a quick start are expected at the first substantive meeting, an executive said. The group’s forecast of publishing the first draft of the standard this year may be too hopeful by about six months, he said.
In December, the Cognitive Networking Alliance said it had defined marketing and technical requirements documents for community Internet access and in-home high definition multimedia networking and distribution. The group “intends to open a draft standard to public comment in the first half of 2009,” its Web site says. The draft was circulated to Ecma participants, an executive said. No copy of the draft was available for this story.