Alongside self-congratulatory presentations on how telecommunications is improving life on Earth, ITU Telecom World also hosts detailed technical discussions about making use of new techniques, including the developing field of cognitive radio. Cognitive radios are supposed to be able to make use of spectrum that is fallow …

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Friday 28th October 2011 14:22 GMT cpf

Some good stuff there people are smoking...

...to think that live event techs will accept their shows being run on shared frequencies, especially when the additional unreliability comes in a package with a huge increase in price and complexity, not to mention a mandatory network with Internet access.

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Friday 28th October 2011 20:43 GMT FaultyWarrior

This article doesn't really make any sense from a technical perspective. If someone would bother to write the software, the USRP would easily be able to jump between bands - even entire frequency segments. I use a USRP1 for running an OpenBTS tower, and when it's not doing that, it's running as a high-power FM radio transmitter. Simply close one program, switch the aerial outputs, open the other, and it's all good. That's the whole point of an SDR - it's meant to be able to run on any band, and that band is SOFTWARE defined. <_<

Although in the context of this article, good luck using a USRP for something like wireless mics. The mics are what, $200 USD? The USRP is around $1200 USD.

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Monday 31st October 2011 09:12 GMT Anonymous Coward

Wireless mics

No latency is acceptable in most circumstances. And are these people expecting me to shell out a several grand on new frequency hopping mics when the good old fashioned analogue ones were working fine? Even low end broadcast mics start at about 500 sovs for a transmitter and receiver pair. Go up market and you can be spending far far more.

They're all barking mad!

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Monday 31st October 2011 09:18 GMT John Smith 19

@FaultyWarrior

"Although in the context of this article, good luck using a USRP for something like wireless mics. The mics are what, $200 USD? The USRP is around $1200 USD"

That's sort of the problem.

With enough volume in a product hard wired *always* wins in terms of complexity (fewer metaphorical knobs to twiddle), simplicity (works or does not work) and cost (high volume).

It's also likely to be *vastly* more power efficient.

Now if you want *flexibility* that's a different game.

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