Weightless, the body behind the eponymous M2M communications standard for white space spectrum, has voiced its support for a series of recent Ofcom sentiments: What the industry requires now is a ‘kick start’ of rapid regulatory turnaround for the common good, rapid occupation of the spectrum, and deployment of machine-to-machine white space standards and technology to demonstrate use cases.
Ofcom CEO, Ed Richards outlined his views on white space in an EU Policy debate in Brussels on 7th March entitled ‘Towards an EU policy for dynamic spectrum access’. The conference was marked by unusually senior attendance from a number of players including the FCC in the US and in particular Ofcom.
Launched yesterday, the first commercially available radio networking system for broadband over TV whitespace is aimed at bringing affordable broadband to millions around the world. Developed by Carlson and Neul, RuralConnect is for WISPs (wireless internet service providers) and is the first in a product line following the companies’ partnership announcement last autumn.
Molex has released an internal mobile TV Standard Antenna compliant with China's Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB) standard for AV encoding. The economical, passive plug-and-play Mobile TV Standard Antenna can be integrated internally into any CMMB enabled mobile device.
Nordic Semiconductor’s nRFready 2.4GHz RF Smart Remote reference design is complete hardware and software reference design for advanced browsing control of the latest Internet-enabled and Web 2.0-enabled TVs and set-top boxes (STBs). The reference design includes native support for a multi-gesture TouchPad, QWERTY keyboard, and motion control that all combine to deliver a rich, intuitive, and engaging end-user experience for advanced control and browsing of all types of modern digital content and services including audio, video, gaming, web browsing, social media, and online shopping.
TTP says that TV white spaces – unused bands in the UK TV spectrum – could be used to radically improve emergency services communications and deliver valuable new data-rich applications to help save lives. The company is working on low power communications systems that operate in white space without interfering with TV pictures and is already running trials streaming HD video at speeds of over 7.9Mbps across a 5.6km white space link. Core to the work at TTP is the development of a geolocation database that dynamically allocates free white space channels at a particular time and geographic area.
Carlson and Neul are going to jointly develop a new white space radio networking system that they say will bring affordable broadband to millions of under-served customers around the world. Carlson and Neul will work closely with WISPs (wireless internet service providers), who with the new radios will get access to more than 100MHz of high quality white space radio spectrum in the UHF band.
A reconfigurable receiver for digital video broadcasting standards has been developed at IMEC. The receiver, which can operate DVB-T, ISDB-T and ATSC, uses an algorithm-architecture co-optimisation of IMEC’s reconfigurable processor ADRES.
Ofcom has progressed plans for the introduction of White Space technology in the UK – the first country in Europe to do so. The technology uses unused areas of the TV spectrum (typically between 470 and 790MHz) to transmit signals that can travel large distances and easily through walls. This makes it suitable for a wide range of new consumer applications that could include rural broadband and Wi-Fi with up to twice the range of today’s technology. White Spaces offer significant capacity to help alleviate pressures on other wireless networks. Ofcom expects that White Space technology could be launched in the UK in 2013.
Silicon Labs has introduced a silicon TV tuner solution designed to provide an optimal balance of affordable cost and high performance for TV makers in China and Taiwan. TV makers in China have been rapidly increasing flat-panel TV production over the last three years. According to the analyst firm DisplaySearch, China is expected to become the world’s largest market for LCD TVs this year. DisplaySearch also predicts that flat-panel TV shipments (both LCD and plasma models) in China will nearly double from the 31 million units reported in 2009 to 59 million units in 2014, reaching a compound annual growth rate of 14 percent.
The BBC, BSkyB, BT, Cambridge Consultants, Microsoft, Neul, Nokia, Samsung, Spectrum Bridge and TTP have formed the Cambridge TV white spaces Consortium. The group is undertaking technology trials to explore how the unused TV spectrum could provide an inexpensive solution to satisfy the escalating wireless connectivity requirements of UK consumers and businesses in towns, cities and rural areas.
