CSIRO to trial wireless over analogue TV spectrum
- 09 July, 2010 16:14
- Comments 6
The CSIRO will begin live field trials of its experimental wireless technology in September to assess whether spectrum formerly used for analogue television can be used to deliver National Broadband Network (NBN) services.
Under the trials, to be held in northern Tasmania, the CSIRO will assess the speed and range of the technology, which it sees as a means of delivering wireless broadband to the up-to 10 per cent of the population which will not receive fibre-to-the-home connections under the NBN.
The technology, announced in April last year and dubbed Broadband to the Bush, is designed to make use of analogue television infrastructure already in place within Australia.
“What we are proposing to do is use the broadcast towers and UHF and VHF frequencies that will be left when analogue television is switched off,” CSIRO group executive information and communication sciences and technology, Dr. Alex Zelinsky, explained at the time.
“The whole idea is that there is no communications gear in that space as it has been used for TV and we can reuse the broadcast infrastructure.”
According to the CSIRO's IICT Centre Director, Dr Ian Oppermann, the field trials would assess the first and second layers – physical layer and Media Access Control (MAC) layer – of the networking stack.
“What we want to do is demonstrate the raw bitrate you can get… while that is great for scientists, its less appealing for people who are looking for [Internet] services,” Oppermann said.
“So, we will take one broadcast tower, which is already there… and one analogue TV channel – 7MHz – and we use that for six simultaneous users at 12 Mbps up and down– it’s a time division multiplexing system.
“We will put six terminals in with farmers and a variety of other people and deliver them high speed communications. The applications will be canned website pages… then we will do some video streaming then some real-time chat.”
On the issue of the range, Oppermann said the technology would be constrained by the power at which the CSIRO was allowed to broadcast.
“Range really is the 64 million dollar question,” he said. “We have a licence for a particular transmit power, and the transmit power sets the range, but we will be looking to demonstrate 10s of kilometres with this technology.”
“Ultimately what could be deployed will depend on what transmit powers are allowed. If we are allowed to transmit at the same powers as analogue TV, which is actually quite high, then give us an analogue channel and we will give you 12 Mbits up and down.”
Oppermann added that the technology, in comparison to rival platforms such as LTE and WiMax, would also be geared to delivering breadth of coverage, rather than capacity, to end users.
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Comments
Jason
Is this another "up to 12mbps" gimics or actual 12mbps up/down?
"Here is a bazillion gazillion mbps connection, but ow it can only go 1mbps due to factors of xzy".
What about latency?
Daniel
Jason,
It does mention that it is indeed a field trial and also, that they will try "real-time chat", thus the latency and speed of the service will be in fact tested in this field trial
Rob
Like with all wireless devices, the more devices using it the slower the speed will be for all.
Thomas de Tank
The important bit is how much the upload speed is. How well can farmers upload high def footage of the health of their latest crop to youtube or potential buyers? Seems that most people keep assuming that everyone just wants to download movies and not upload and share them with other people. What kind of transmitter would be used for the uplink is the question that needs asking. Does each farmer also need a broadcast tower (quite possible - maybe wire them up to the windmills)? Why is the testing on downloading content only? Surely it should be as much about uploading?
Thomas de Tank
I realise that the regional users aren't just going to be farmers - there's miners, and plenty of other people passing though the country and living in regional areas, and their internet-savvy kids!
But one somewhat useful app for the more remote and very distributed farms would be just simple stuff like keeping an eye on water troughs and making sure they're working and not leaking everywhere. Saves a bit of travel time (and expensive fuel) for somewhat routine checks. Can be done currently, but the clarity is somewhat limited by bandwidth available and expense of satellite equipment and hence weather protection for it.
Madelyn
This might be a help.....Thanks for this article
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