FCC Wants Proposals To Manage White Space Database 46
kdawson writes "A year after voting unanimously to open 'white space' frequencies for unlicensed use, the FCC has now issued a public notice seeking database proposals (PDF). Howard Feld explains in his blog posting: 'At last! We can get moving on this again, and hopefully move forward on the most promising "disruptive" technology currently in the hopper. And move we are, in a very peculiar fashion. Rather than resolve the outstanding questions about how the database provider will collect money, operate the database, or whether the database will be exclusive or non-exclusive, the Public Notice asks would-be database managers to submit proposals that would cover these issues. ... I label this approach "good, but weird."'"
Re:i want UHF CB Radio! (Score:5, Informative)
DX/Skip interference like 27MHz does
Ionospheric propagation is a feature, not a bug. In fact it would be interesting to see what could be done below 30Mhz with protocols similar to CDMA, once all the commercial services have moved to the microwave bands.
Re:Summary doesn't make sense (Score:5, Informative)
They know how to do it. They have CORES [fcc.gov] already. You register, you get an ID, you use it to fill out forms and pay bills. In the case of whitespace, you register, you get an ID, you use it to fill out forms, and not pay bills. Easy.
Re:i want UHF CB Radio! (Score:4, Informative)
FRS radios operate in the 400MHz range, which is UHF just like you desire. So there you go. :)
Here's an existing implementation (Score:3, Informative)
these guys [spectrumbridge.com] seem to be on top of it and have their database finished.
Re:Would be nice if they had included a schema (Score:2, Informative)
I've read the proposal twice. They don't describe what they want to store at all. And I don't see a reference to another document either. How can anyone make an informed proposal without knowing anything about the data!!
I dunno. I just read the Public Notice (only once, and quickly). Sounds pretty straightforward to me. They are looking for a database with a real-time API that can be used by devices designed to use the white space bands. These devices are required to have geo-location capabilities (e.g., GPS) so (presumably in real-time) they can give the database their current location (e.g., GPS coordinates). The database replies with an "available channels" report based on the device's location and information it has obtained from "incumbents" who want their channels protected from interference. From the Notice:
"The database will tell a TV band device which TV channels are vacant and can be used at its location." They're not handing you a database definition, but they're surely telling you what type of data you are going to need to store and communicate in real time. In the next sentence,
"The database will also be used to register the locations of fixed TV band devices and protected locations and channels of incumbent services that are not recorded in Commission databases."
That's pretty traditional IT stuff. And that's really it (other than unresolved architecture issues, which they define quite clearly). The rest of the report covers what type of presentation they want to see from a prospective provider and how to go about filing it.
I would seek clarification about how they propose the TV band device communicate in real-time with the database if its not using, well.... some of the TV band. There should be a reserved frequency for that type of thing, but the Notice didn't address that issue.
And, then, there's footnote 5 on page 1 of the Notice: "See 47 C.F.R. %%15.713-15.715 for the rules pertaining to the operation of the TV band database" Sounds like a pretty on-point reference to other documentation to me. Don't have the time to look it up, but it's there and they've given you a pointer to it.
Thirty days should be more than sufficient for a reasonably competent applicant to submit a proposal based on the description of the problem given in the Notice.