WiFi 802.22 Can Cover 12,000 Square Miles

tekgoblin writes "IEEE has just announced a new Wireless standard, 802.22, that can cover up to 12,000 square miles. The standard is actually for Wireless Regional Area Networks (or WRAN), which use the white spaces left in the TV frequency spectrum."

Simple maths:

[gcnaddict]

12000 = pi r^2
3819.7186 ~= r^2
61.8039 ~= r

So, simple maths suggest that we're definitely not going to have reception if we're more than 62 miles away from the tower, and that doesn't take into account the curvature of the earth, the height of the tower, atmospheric distortions, etc.

but it does suggest the standard would allow for decent reception within a 30 mile radius. That ain't too bad.

Re:For scale

[Muad'Dave]

That's suspiciously close to exactly 100km - could that 12,000 square mile figure have been derived from a metric back-of-the-envelope figure of "about 100km"?

Yeah, IEEE!!

[DaMattster]

This news is most welcome! It has the potential to level the ISP playing field again and harkin back to the times when mom and pop ISPs existed. How? Small start-up ISPs can now offer competing broadband to the likes of AT&T and offer the service at an unlimited tier. Thus, AT&T will be forced to remove its service caps. Companies will be able to build their own MAN's without having to pay Verizon/AT&T/CenturyLink leases for the lines. I will be following this with some excitement especially because I would love to run my own small ISP.

Re:Finally

[camperslo]

Actually what they're talking about is ONE base station covering a radius of 62 miles (pi r squared = 12,000 sq miles). The 22 MB/S is based on use of one 6 Mhz tv channel and that's a TOTAL for all user traffic and overhead on the channel. Some channel hopping is possible but it is doubtful that people would want antenna covering the whole tv spectrum (great big UHF/VHF antenna). Antennas made for a portion of the spectrum could provide better gain and in some cases much smaller size. Clients would have an outdoor directional antenna and GPS. Range would usually be best at the lowest frequencies (channel 2 is 54-60 MHz) But the antenna for that would be pretty large. The upper UHF frequencies can do pretty well if line of sight. Coverage at a distance would be spotty otherwise.

Let's hope the signals occasionally getting reflected off of airplanes doesn't cause too much grief for tv reception.

PDF overview of standard
http://www.ieee802.org/22/Technology/22-10-0073-03-0000-802-22-overview-and-core-technologies.pdf [ieee802.org]

But unlicensed use of white space in jeopardy

[Anonymous Coward]

Republicans in Congress are proposing to eliminate unlicensed use of the new white space spectrum. That is, they'll require that the spectrum be sold to a entity willing to pay a market-competitive price - meaning the spectrum will have to produce a profit for one entity rather than producing value for everyone.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/republican-spectrum-bill-reins-in-wireless-free-riders-like-google.ars

Call your Congressional reps and tell them unlicensed wireless can produce much more value for our society, and should be expanded rather than ceding more control to the existing wireless monopolies.