Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor
Pat Hindle, MWJ Editor RSS FeedRSS

Hindle
Pat Hindle is responsible for editorial content, article review and special industry reporting for Microwave Journal magazine and its web site in addition to social media and special digital projects. Prior to joining the Journal, Mr. Hindle held various technical and marketing positions throughout New England, including Marketing Communications Manager at M/A-COM (Tyco Electronics), Product/QA Manager at Alpha Industries (Skyworks), Program Manager at Raytheon and Project Manager/Quality Engineer at MIT. Mr. Hindle graduated from Northeastern University - Graduate School of Business Administration and holds a BS degree from Cornell University in Materials Science Engineering.

Google Starts "White Spaces" Group

February 12, 2009
It was recently announced that Google is teaming up with several technology companies, including Comsearch, Dell, HP, Microsoft, Motorola and Neustar, to form a new coalition called the White Spaces Database Group, which will provide and compile into a database technical specifications for devices that will use white space spectrum.

White spaces are unused slivers of spectrum in the 700 MHz band that sit between broadcast TV channels. Google and others successfully lobbied the FCC last year to open up that spectrum for unlicensed use so that new wireless devices could access that spectrum. In its ruling in November, the FCC said that devices using a combination of geolocation technology and spectrum-sensing technology could be approved for unlicensed white space use. Before sending or receiving data, devices will be required to access this database to determine available channels. And the device will not transmit in channels that are already known to be in use.

TV broadcasters and wireless microphone companies have long opposed the use of this spectrum fearing it will interfere with their services but Google believes that using geolocation technology used along with spectrum sensing technologies will offer complete protection to licensed signals from harmful interference. Do you think the TV broadcasters and wireless microphone companies have a legitimate complaint?
You must login or register in order to post a comment.