WASHINGTON-The coming of the new millennium may bring with it new products using spread-spectrum technology.
The Federal Communications Commission has proposed rules that would increase the width of channels used in spectrum hopping, which would allow ground-breaking applications and increased data rates, according to people who support the FCC proposal.
“We have always been in the forefront of the spread spectrum rules … this is another step in the process,” said Julius P. Knapp, director of the policy division of the FCC’s Office of Engineering and Technology.
The proposed rules would allow spread-spectrum hopping technologies to hop through 75 or more frequencies in the same band. Today FCC rules only allow hopping using channels that are one megahertz wide.
The new rules would allow channels with widths up to three to five megahertz to be used. Spread spectrum technologies use frequencies in the 2400-2483 MHz band.
Knapp says he expects the FCC to issue new rules sometime during the first quarter of 2000.
Lucent Technologies Inc. is opposed to the proposal because it believes spread-spectrum hopping using the greater megahertz channel will cause interference to current technologies that use both one megahertz channel hopping and direct sequence. Lucent’s Wavelan wireless private branch exchange uses direct sequence spread-spectrum technology.
Direct sequence breaks signals up into digital bits and mixes it with code that spreads the spectrum over a wider band than with voice transmissions. With voice transmissions, there is an obvious spike that does not occur with direct sequence spread spectrum.
In its reply comments, Lucent filed technical information backing up its claims of increased interference. Entities supporting the proposed rules did not file technical information in the comment round, said Diane Law Hsu, Lucent corporate counsel.
Now that the comment cycle has been completed on the proposed rules and positions have been staked out, companies are beginning to set up meetings with FCC staff to press their views.
One of these companies, Eastman Kodak Co., met with FCC staffers last month. Kodak is urging the FCC to adopt rules compatible with European and Japanese standards so it can develop and market products globally. One of its proposed products would allow digital cameras to talk to one another and to other devices, such as computers. Kodak envisions transferring digital pictures using radio waves rather than disks.
“Kodak proposes that the only FCC rule change needed is a rule change to harmonize [FCC regulations] in the United States with the European standard … and the new modified Japanese standard to form a single worldwide regulation for unlicensed low power wireless wideband data transmission systems operating in the international [2.4 GHz] band.
“Harmonization to a single global standard would enable new generations of inexpensive multimedia consumer-type products that would be small and portable and work in the home and seamlessly across international borders,” said Kodak.
