The tutorial will address a number of autonomous and intelligent techniques which can be applied to emerging high bandwidth systems to realize spectrum and network efficiency. It will address smart and effective design, including embedding intelligence and adaptivity features in radios, while maintaining a friendly user interface.

In order to achieve real 4G targets, further concentration will be on multi-antenna techniques, cognitive radios, advanced spectrum management, and cognitive radio techniques will be discussed.

The tutorial will be presented by Dr. Nicola Marchetti and Dr. Muhammad Imadur Rahman. The program includes several hours of instruction in three presentations. The tutorial may be accessed at http://ww2.comsoc.org/form/tutorial-registration-FutureGigabitSystems

LBA provides a range of services for wireless carriers. These include RF hazard compliance, intermodulation & interference resolution, AM detuning, and AM colocation. LBA also provides advanced RF test equipment.

The antenna is installed at a prestige home in the pricey Mount Soledad section of the neighborhood of La Jolla.  The residence is essentially sitting at the bottom of a small, natural valley, surrounded by low hills on three sides (the three that lie in the general direction of North America and Europe)!  It is not an optimum geographical location from which to operate a contest-grade ham station.

In the photograph the antenna is depicted in its “storage” position.  The motorized winch on that mast will crank the aluminum rods up to a level of about 85 feet above grade.  Not surprisingly, that takes the Yagi right up to eye level for people looking west out the windows of the row of houses above and behind his!  And that leaves those home-owners quite understandably howling that their multi-million dollar hill-top view of La Jolla beaches and the Pacific has been greatly compromised by an installation over which they have no control and from which they get no benefit.  If the Curmudgeon lived up there on “Got-Rocks Heights,” he too would be right in the middle of the howling mob as well!

If the ham in question transmits to the east with any (competitive) amount of RF power and the antenna is at its full extended height, the people in the homes above will be irradiated with his station’s reactive near-field emissions.  The Curmudgeon has done RFE exposure evaluations and he understands that the FCC-mandated non-occupational emissions limits for the homeowners will still not be exceeded even with this setup.  Thus the health of the neighbors will probably not be at put at risk by the operations of the station.  But why should they have any exposure at all from the elevated, proximate antenna?

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This “VOA-wannabe” Amateur station should have been built out in the back-country and then operated via Internet remote control.  That would have been rational, and the ham technology for doing this kind of thing is well established.  Instead, a seemingly willful Amateur licensee installed this monstrosity at his home.  And, perhaps $250,000 in legal fees and court costs later, all the 3,700 City of San Diego Amateurs will find out whether he gets to keep it.  And also whether they get to keep their own, generally far more modest Amateur Yagis.

It’s enough to gag a maggot!

“Let’s keep SAN DIEGO safe for RF!”

The Old RF Curmudgeon

We’re back for the moment in the world of Amateur radio (disclaimer: the Curmudgeon is a licensee in the Amateur Radio Service).  And we are located in the City of San Diego, California, which is home to about 3,700 ARS licensees.  Its enlightened city government has, essentially on its own initiative, written a draft zoning ordinance that would forbid the construction of all new ARS (only) antennas taller than a height of 30 feet AGL.  Period!  Well — almost period.  An enterprising ham would still have the right to file an application for a property development permit for a proposed new, 30+ foot, non-conforming antenna structure; it’s the same permit issued for construction of shopping malls and golf courses.  And it requires an $8,000 application fee, etc., etc.

Hams, of course, are the traditional telecommunications “first responders,” on the air with ad-hoc equipment lash-ups and with both prior-established and spontaneous nets operating during and after natural or man-made disasters.  This is just when everyone else is trying to assess the damage to communications systems, to make repairs, and to re-start service.  The hams were there after Katrina, and they are on duty today after the Haitian earthquake.  No one doubts their sincerity or their usefulness.  Local governments in the San Diego area have even included established Amateur communications systems into their disaster planning.  And well they should: the region lies in an earthquake zone, is prone to spectacular back country brush fires, and is even open to large storms and the subsequent flooding and mudslides during recurrent El Nino weather events.

Note also that this proposed ordinance applies specifically and solely to ARS licensees.  It does not mention commercial two-way radio, cellular base stations, broadcasters, short-wave radio listeners, over-the-air TV viewers, CBers, or even owners of home weather stations.  These other folks can build as tall as they want, contingent only on filing for and receiving structural building permits.  No, San Diego is vindictively punishing just its hams.

So what has caused San Diego city government to declare war on its own citizens?  Most likely it was something that, in the Curmudgeon’s opinion, was a tremendously stupid mistake.  A local ham, fueled with far more money and ambition than common sense, proposed, somehow was issued building permits for, and built a huge antenna installation at his home.  Unfortunately, that home is located in about the most “exclusive” (read: expensive) neighborhood in the city, and the installation is grossly oversized for the lot on which it resides and for the neighborhood in which it is located.  It does damage to the aesthetics of the neighborhood.  A structure that size should have been built in a rural area, not in the city.

While hams do need tall antenna structures, prudence and common sense would dictate some voluntary limits as to sizes and heights for those in primarily residential areas.  (For non-ham readers, the taller the tower is, the more radiation-efficient are high-frequency [“short wave”] antennas mounted atop it, and also the greater the line-of-sight to the horizon for VHF/UHF antennas.)  Very tall towers, in the Curmudgeon’s opinion, do not belong in city residential neighborhoods.  But ARS towers of lesser height, properly constructed, do.  And so also says the FCC, both houses of the U.S. Congress, and the State of California.  San Diego, obviously, thinks otherwise.

Meanwhile, “back in the hood” the ham steadfastly refused to admit that he had created a problem, and his neighbors launched into orbit when “the monster” began climbing toward the stars.  Unfortunately the neighbors, being members of the higher economic classes, had little difficulty gaining the ears of city governmental officials or of obtaining skilled legal counsel to press their points.  And city government responded to their outcry by drafting the proposed ordinance.

The local hams, of course, have no intention of just standing on the sidelines and watching this travesty unfold. They have organized, have brought experienced professional help into the battle, and have been joined by the American Radio Relay League (ARRL, Amateur radio’s national organization) and its legal counsel.  Together they are lobbying the city government and the various departments that have their hands in the drafting of the ordinance.  It would not be prudent to disclose the hams’ plans in print, however, but the effort is well underway.

The typical outcome from such a clash of interests should be some sort of compromise on the part of the contending parties, i.e., “You can legally build your tower up to XX feet above ground with just a building permit, but if you want to go any higher you will need to file more detailed environmental plans and to obtain a special permit.”  Most of the ham population believes that XX ought to be somewhere between 65 and 80 feet, not the city-proposed and essentially stifling 30 feet.  Those Amateur-proposed figures are not randomly drawn from a hat; there are good and sufficient engineering reasons underlying them.

But there are no signs of a compromise developing.  Sources have told the Curmudgeon that the city is interested only in passing the ordinance as currently written.  They will not consider engineering arguments, and they seem not particularly interested in the views of even their own and other local agencies’ disaster preparedness staffs.  So it appears that the homeowners could win the day, but any new ordinance will certainly be headed immediately into litigation.

Thus a city government which has huge current deficits in its own operating and its employees’ pension budgets, which oversees crumbling roads, water and sewer lines, and which has ever-shrinking Public Safety department staffs, will squander its limited funds in litigating against a group of volunteers who provide actual, cash-valued services and equipment to the city.  These contributions are estimated as annual city staff labor savings of $2.5 million and “in-lieu” one-time communications equipment savings of $6 million.

This thing is an outrage! And it could set a horrible precedent for other myopic cities and towns to follow as well.  But it certainly will unleash some local politician, running for re-election, to boast: “Our city libraries may be open only half the number of hours they once were, and if you have an emergency our fire department will get to your house whenever they can fit it in, but, by George, there aren’t going to be any 35 foot-high ham antennas in your neighborhood!”

And, by the way, whatever did happen to the people’s right to use the spectrum that they collectively own?

What do you think?

“Let’s keep SAN DIEGO safe for RF!”

The Old RF Curmudgeon

*** Special Notice Regarding LORAN Closure: *** In accordance with the DHS Appropriations Act, the U.S. Coast Guard will terminate the transmission of all U.S. LORAN-C signals effective 2000Z 08 Feb 2010. At that time, the U.S. LORAN-C signal will be unusable and permanently discontinued. This termination does not affect U.S. participation in the Russian American or Canadian LORAN-C chains. U.S. participation in these chains will continue temporarily in accordance with international agreements. You may read more and download pertinent documents via our LORAN-C page.

The Loran C closures do not affect other navigation, positioning, and information systems such as NAVTEX and DGPS. LBA provides shore transmitting antennas and systems for these services.

For more information, contact Jerry Brown, jbrown@lbagroup.com or 252-757-0279

In the last blog post we identified the looming potential problem of total consumption of the radio frequency spectrum.   If we want to head this off, we need to begin with some guidance about how we should rationally allocate and use the spectrum  — for what sorts of things should it be used, for what other sorts of activities should it not be used?  What should we be doing with it today and what should we not be doing?  And the emphasis is on….

We will start with a living chap who, although not particularly well known as such, may be one of the most significant telecommunications visionaries that this country has produced.  The curious thing is that he is not an engineer or a scientist; he was trained as an architect.   His name is Nicholas Negroponte.  (Yes, you have heard that family name previously: older brother John Negroponte was a US ambassador to the United Nations).  Today, Nicholas is one of the guiding forces behind the “One Laptop per Child” movement which seeks to provide a $100 (maximum cost) functioning laptop computer to each school child in Third World nations.

Nicholas has held a number of significant assignments, but the one that will interest us here is his serving as a founder and the first Director of MIT’s Media Laboratory, back in the 1980s and 1990s.  The Media Lab was (and still is) a place where many new and revolutionary ideas about the mass media and telecommunications were/are proposed, debated, and in some cases reduced to practice.  A book by Stuart Brand with the name “The Media Lab” documents much of the early history of the place, and although now dated it is still worth a reading.  You may find surprising the percentage of the Lab’s predictions from those early days of communications and computing that have now come into commonplace use.

Among many other novel ideas flowing from Negroponte and the Media Lab, he proposed a fundamental communications concept which, to the Curmudgeon’s way of thinking, is simply brilliant in its simplicity and universality.  In just a few words it lays out the basic guidance for the rational uses to which the radio frequency spectrum ought to be put.  By rights it should be known as Negroponte’s Law, although the Curmudgeon is not certain that this identification has been designated.  But it has been called the Negroponte Switch (switch as in “change-over,” not switch as in “make and break circuit element”).

At the fundamental, bedrock level, as paraphrased here, Negroponte teaches:

Telecommunications services which are FIXED in nature (i.e., where the receiver is at a stationary location) should preferentially be transmitted by wired circuits; telecommunications services which are MOBILE in nature need to be transmitted by wireless circuits (i.e., by radio).

What an elegant idea!  It’s one of those simple little concepts for which it might be said, “anyone could have thought of it!”  And nobody except Negroponte actually did.

It says that, in a world of limited spectral resources, let’s use the radio spectrum for transmission only where and when we need it, and avoid using it where other choices are available.  That principle is, truly, the Ursprung of spectrum conservation!

So, as Negroponte did, let’s apply it toward rationalizing today’s telecommunications world and, noting some caveats along the way (for there are some valid practical exceptions that need to be made), let’s see how well we’ve done at meeting the target.

Let’s begin with broadcasting, but we’ll have to be a bit more specific: we’ll treat aural and video broadcasting separately, and leave text broadcasting for a later time.  Video broadcasting — it is a fixed or a mobile service?  Viewers generally sit in rooms in front of stationary receivers.  And the Negroponte Law choice for television?  To a huge extent, it’s a fixed service, so it goes to the wires for transmission!  We don’t need to tie up huge chunks of radio spectrum with basic television distribution; there’s enough wire line capacity in most places to handle that chore.  In fact, the only reason that television broadcasting has spectrum allocations is an historical one: after World War II, when television broadcasting was first authorized, the use of the radio spectrum was the ONLY way in which it could be easily and cheaply mass-distributed!  That’s no longer the case.

Now for the exceptions.  There are some rural, sparsely-populated areas of the country where it is economically infeasible to “hang cable.”  These may still need RF distribution, either from local translators or by limited satellite service.  And there is some developing interest in broadcasting to cellular telephones, although the acceptance of this by the public is not yet really known.  But this is a special, bandwidth-limited television signal.  Consequently some bandwidth-limited frequency allocations may be needed for “cellular television.”  Overall, though, the traditional over-the-air broadcast television distribution system needs to be “sunsetted” and eventually removed from the radio frequency spectrum!  To what purposes the liberated spectral resources might be allocated is quite a different matter, one which will be considered later.

Aural broadcasting: Most people listen to broadcast radio primarily while driving automobiles or using public transit services, or on small portable receivers while doing other things such as jogging, gardening, or working around their homes.  Radio certainly is a mobile service and it should keep its access to the radio frequency spectrum.  But there is also some true fixed broadcast usage:  “Internet radio” is expanding.  It consists of both live and previously-broadcast program streams from on-air broadcasters and also the independent audio streams from Internet-only program distributors.  As is the bulk of all Internet traffic, Internet radio is primarily distributed by wire transmission.  Since, in a general sense, wire line transmission is not capacity constrained as is the RF spectrum, the Internet can host a very large number of “radio” stations without jeopardizing a national resource.  Thus it is a “good” place for the expansion of aural broadcasting, although there will always be a need for radio frequency transmission as well.

One additional caveat: per the discussion in an earlier blog posting, the United States has parallel broadcast radio services, on “AM” and “FM” bands.  There is no longer a need for both services, and one of them should relinquish its spectral allocation (a mandate which is easy for a telecommunications theorist to deliver, but there are practical accommodations that will need to be implemented as well.)  VHF FM radio, especially as it gradually transitions into full digital broadcasting, has the clear technological lead.  It also has the majority of the listeners, and it has the capacity of absorbing much of the current content of AM radio as well.  Thus, AM radio should be “sunsetted,” and its spectrum refarmed.

Print space is short, and we will continue the Negroponte’s Law examination of other radio spectrum users in subsequent posts.  For now, though, once you see how the game is played, you might want to try it by yourself.

What do you think?

“Let’s keep the universe safe for RF!”

The Old RF Curmudgeon

Lawrence Behr

Lawrence Behr, founder of LBA Group, was interviewed in the November / December 2009 issue of NC Magazine.  LBA Group earned position number 2,780 on the 2009 Inc. 5000, Inc’s annual ranking of the fastest-growing private companies in America.

In the interview, Behr said, “We were founded in 1963, and we have been quite adaptable over that period of time.  As a small business, we have to drive toward the opportunities.  We live in niches, and ours is a flexible one.”

He noted that his company has shifted from specialties in radio and TV to cellular technologies and even to mapping projects, following the opportunities that emerged as technologies changed.  Today, the company has shifted to more of a service and marketing company than a manufacturing company.

“The industry is a mixed bag,” he said.  “There’s capital investment, but the negative side is that the economy has been such that competitors are making deals that offer low or no profit margins, and we’ve had to lower our prices to compete.”

Here’s a nice little nightmare to contemplate: The time is twenty years in the future from today. A fortuitous combination of developing technologies — ASICs (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), ultrahigh capacity batteries, highly advanced data compression transmission methods, and a new generation of MEMS (Micro ElectroMechanical Systems) — have all matured to the point where an unprecedented and much-needed medical monitoring system is now both technologically and economically feasible. The development effort is complete and the monitor is ready for service in humans.

The system is a real-time, continuous, wireless, medical “vital function” monitor and controller, surgically implanted directly into the body. It is intended for use on patients with previously-identified, potentially life-threatening medical problems that could strike at any time. Until this point such patients might have remained hospitalized or might have been transferred to convalescent institutions. Now, with remote, wireless 7/24 monitoring by computers at a central medical facility, they are again free to go about their daily lives in their own communities. The computer monitors will detect, even before the patient does, that a physiological problem is developing. Under tight physician control, they can also remotely initiate a limited range of emergency in vivo therapeutic actions in the patient. Having patients’ instantaneous GPS position reports always available, the medical facility can rapidly dispatch a mobile medical team to transport the patient back to the hospital if and when major problems are detected.

The cost savings, in terms of avoided patient-days in hospital, are impressive. The decrease in patient mortality is significant. The medical profession is very enthusiastic. Medicare, which provides the medical insurance coverage for the majority of candidate patients, is delighted! And the patients are happy — they are living a full life at home with family and friends, not stuck in an institution for endless boring days.

But there’s still one seemingly insurmountable problem facing the new system. At this future time there is no available dedicated radio spectrum on which it can be operated! Obviously such a critical radio system cannot tolerate interference, and thus it cannot share already-occupied radio channels. But no unused radio spectrum remains in this future world, save in a few remote, rural areas of the country; the spectrum has been completely consumed! Thus there is a strong possibility that the new system can never go into service. And neither can some other new and beneficial technology developments then just coming out of the labs, which applications also depend critically on unhindered wireless data transmission for their effectiveness. But where have the radio channels that we then *really* need gone?

That’s easy to answer. Remember back to the heady days of the last decade of the 20th and first decade of the 21st centuries, the days when telecommunications and computer technology was exploding? One after another, new wireless communications systems came on line that promised the business community as minority users and the retail public as the majority adopters ever more convenience, ever increasing “freedom,” and ever more connectivity? Then-current wireless applications remained in place, holding their spectrum allocations. The newly developed wireless applications, many of which in their earlier forms had used land line-based communications circuits, flooded onto the air behind the existing ones. And the country reveled in a radio frequency spectrum “bubble!”

Consumers were delighted with the new wireless developments, for they had just discovered a new “need” that they hadn’t previously recognized, and they saw that the new “need” could now be filled. “We need to be in ‘forever’ contact with our world, we need permanent personal connectivity, we NEED continuous, anywhere-anytime ‘broadband-to-the-belly-button service.’ And we demand it! Millions of us demand it!”

Industry was delighted. “Here are giant new markets to be filled! We can make huge ROIs right now, make our ‘bottom line’ in the next quarterly shareholders’ report look great, and all that we need to accomplish this is to grab some chunks of spectrum for our new products to use. Sure there are some capital costs for doing this, but these will be swept away in the ocean of revenue that will be flowing into us!”

The FCC was delighted too. “We can make some hefty chunks of change by auctioning off big blocks of spectrum, grab some press attention by posturing as a government agency that is turning a profit without having to tax, and make our Congressional sponsors look good to the public too! But — best of all — once we unload the spectrum we’ll no longer have to provide costly enforcement for it! We’ll be finished with that messy, distasteful business of sending our engineers into the field to keep the law in Dodge City. It will no longer be the people’s spectrum, so we won’t need to worry about it!”

Back in those halcyon days, the only group that wasn’t happy were the few remaining “spectrum conservationists” (including the Curmudgeon). They instinctively knew that once Yellowstone National Park was sold off to the giant housing-project developers, come what may it wouldn’t be Yellowstone any longer. It would be, for at least many decades to follow, “Levittstone Park.”

Similarly, once the spectrum is auctioned off, it no longer belongs to the public. Residing in private hands and with significant capital investments having been made to obtain it, this spectrum can never be “refarmed” and re-used for new technologies. If it has been purchased exclusively for data transmission by “wireless widgets” companies, it will forever be used for that purpose or for some linear commercial successor to “widget technology.” That spectrum is just not coming back into the reserve bank. The industry that bought it can’t afford to “return” it, and the public anyway won’t relinquish their smothering wireless telecommunications “cocoon” that is so ferociously addictive.

Thus it’s not going to be available for emerging wireless Services based on future new technology. And especially the small, vital, non-commercial spectrum users will be bid right out of the market; only the well-capitalized corporations will hold access to the radio frequency spectrum.

Only at that future time, as the hypothetical new medical monitoring system struggles to come on-line, will we as a nation have discovered that “we have squandered our birthright for a mess of pottage!” Of course, then we will cry “we could have….. should have….. would have…..” But, back in the early decades, we didn’t! And thus, as Stan Laurel would say ….”Here’s another foine mess you’ve gotten us into, Ollie!”

Personally, the Curmudgeon is really going to regret our collective failure. Twenty years from now, he’s going to be at just the age where he could have really benefitted from that new medical monitoring system!

So in a series of future blog postings, the Curmudgeon will explore what can and should be done to preserve our precious natural resource, the radio frequency spectrum. For the present, however, “this nightmare is concluded. You may now awaken and move about the cabin!”

What do you think?

“Let’s keep the universe safe for RF!”

Although this was a totally amateur radio event in 2009, we are looking at commercial operators who maybe willing to work with us to do commercial tweets via the moon this year. We are even looking at bouncing a TV signal off the moon.

Please get back to me. Feel free to circulate this message to other boards.

Here are a couple of videos from the 2009 event to get you appetite going:

University of Tasmania 26m dish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHGXp4Afr4g

Swiss TV report: http://www.youtube.com/v/BUVoiEJd86s

Did you know that the Uni or Tasmania (Australia) and Dwingeloo (Neterlands) dishes did EME on 3mWatts of power during the event

Regards, Robert Brand
Global Events Manager for Echoes of Apollo

robert.brand@echoesofapollo.com
Many of our blog readers are amateur radio operators. This post was repeated from the Linked In Satellite Group for your information and feedback to the author. For the latest Satellite TV test equipment, check out http://www.lbagroup.com/technology/testcablesat.php  – LB, K4JRZ

LBA Technology now offer fully authorized factory calibration for the Tomco TE-1000 RF Impedance Analyzer in Greenville, NC (USA). For more information, please contact Marcian Bouchard at mbouchard@lbagroup.com