Non Line of Sight Broadband

gfilion writes "IEEE Spectrum has an article about nifty wireless adapters that don't require LOS. At first, NLOS wireless may not sound like a big deal. After all, ordinary radios and cellphones are non-line-of-sight devices. But they don't carry broadband data. What makes the latest generation of NLOS wireless technology worth talking about and having is that it delivers data at high rates over substantial distances."

Re:Noone wants broadband?

[fruey]

When offering staff here a better webmail client, more than 50% said they would rather stick with what they have than to change. With training included, and additional features explained, I might add.

Saving $5 a month but having to learn a new interface, change email, or any other impediment, will stop a large number of users who read maybe 2 sites a week and read email on a non-daily basis. Broadband as a business model is shaky to say the least. Those consumers who want it happen to be those that are least wanted as consumers by the ISPs. Their cuddly minimal use people will be tying up modem pools for decades to come.

TV

[wowbagger]

Excuse me, but TV is non-line of sight, and moves a lot of data (precious little INFORMATION, but that's another rant).

Re:ordinary radios ...are non line of sight

[mlyle]

Let me clear things up some more.

First, FM is a modulation mechanism; many frequencies only propagate through the ionosphere under rare conditions. This includes the VHF (30MHz-300MHz) used by FM radio and much of TV.

However, VHF is substantially propagated by diffraction and refractive modes. I receive a VHF TV station regularly which is on the other side of a mountain from me.

High bandwidth technologies often require line of sight because other propagation modes create "multipath"-- there are multiple paths that provide nearly equivalent signal strengths. This smears bits together. The bandwidth of what you're expressing limits multipath from being such a concern for FM radio-- to express an audio signal that is mostly under 10KHz, as long as the paths don't differ by more than .00001 seconds, multipath is irrelevent. And the speed of light is pretty darn fast.