IT'S WI-FI 2.O!

Google can well be taken to be a quidnunc who tries to get its foot into everything and the latest thing from them after the opensource Android is the Wi-Fi they are trying to offer in the newly vacant so called  wireless real estate. With the new space that’s generated by the digital television Google has its own plans of using the vacant TV channels.

The newly created white space in the TV spectrum is what interesting Google in proposing this Wi-Fi 2.0 which is in precise terms “regulated set of broadband services with the potential for gigabit data speeds.” This white space frequencies have much betterpenetration capacity than the cellphone and Wi-Fi signals. So, these frequencies are predicted to rake up much more as these frequencies might find use in long-distance high speed internet services in the rural areas and might be of some interest to Intel who are currently testing their Wi-Fi technology in rural areas of many developing countries like India. This new standard produces network speed in the range of Giga bits per second where as the 802.11g standard produces speeds upto just 54 mega bits per second which is far less than the emerging technology. 

The problem of a channel creeping between two intermittent channels due to the use of the intermittent channel for mobile devices is allayed using a technique called Spectrum Sensing where in the portal devices, the TX and the RX would do a prior scan while using a channel to make sure it is not in use thus not allowing the signal to creep into the adjacent TV channels thus enabling the white-space devices to only operate through their white space.Though this had mixed results.

This is  where the Google’s proposal comes into picture.The first aspect of this protection would create a publicly accessible database listing all licensed TV stations and their geographic location. Any device attempting to use the TV spectrum would first have to establish its own geographic location, by using GPS readings or another means, and then check this database to avoid conflict with a licensed TV station in that area.

A second one would be aimed at protecting the wireless microphones commonly used by news crews, conference speakers, and others, all of which today send signals over parts of the vacant TV spectrum. On popular vote, Google is proposing the creation of a new “Beacon device” that would let microphone users broadcast the fact that a particular channel, in a particular area, is in use. White-space devices would be required to monitor and respect these active beacon signals, and to avoid broadcasting on the same channel.   Lastly, channels 36 through 38 would be set aside as a “safe harbor,” to be used only by wireless microphones.

This according to Google is the breeding ground for the new technology that Google calls the WI-FI 2.0.

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