Meeting Topic: White Spaces and Wireless Licensing Rules
Moderator Name: David v.R. Bowles
Speaker Name: David Josephson (Josephson Engineering; also AES, IEEE and ASA member)
Other business or activities at the meeting: Annual meeting with announcement of section officer election results; we also urged everyone to register for the technical programme of the 129th convention.
Meeting Location: Dolby Laboratories, San Francisco, CA, USA
According to Mr. Josephson, "...nearly all professional UHF wireless devices were approved for use [by the FCC] without a license...but have no assurance that they won't be sharing the channel with other services. This is particularly troublesome as many big communications players have high impact plans for the 'core TV spectrum' vacated by analogue TV, which could make wireless mics unusable in much of the US."
He than demonstrated the allocated frequencies in the neighbourhood in San Francisco where the meeting was held. As it happened, there were only two usable frequency bands in that area, as the AT&T Stadium is nearby. Needless to say, the Emergency Services bands need to be kept free! This is typical for the downtown area of a large North American city, and only serves to illustrate why registering wireless devices with the FCC is essential.
The discussion and questions were informative to established engineers as well as students who had never considered how wireless devices function at present (and possibly in the future).
Written By: David v.R. Bowles
