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Friday, February 28, 2014

Are Wireless Speakers Dependable In Real-World Situations?

By Mike Heller


I will investigate how present day sound transmission technologies which are utilized in current wireless speakers work in real-world environments with a large amount of interference from other cordless products. The most popular frequency bands which might be used by cordless devices include the 900 MHz, 2.4 Gigahertz and 5.8 GHz frequency band. Usually the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency bands have started to become clogged by the increasing number of products like wireless speakers, cordless telephones etc.

FM type audio transmitters are typically the least reliable in terms of tolerating interference because the transmission doesn't have any procedure to cope with competing transmitters. However, those transmitters possess a relatively constrained bandwidth and switching channels may eliminate interference. Digital audio transmission is normally utilized by more sophisticated sound gadgets. Digital transmitters commonly function at 2.4 GHz or 5.8 Gigahertz. The signal bandwidth is higher than 900 MHz transmitters and thus competition in these frequency bands is high.

FM type audio transmitters are usually the least reliable in terms of tolerating interference because the transmission doesn't have any method to deal with competing transmitters. Nonetheless, these transmitters possess a fairly constrained bandwidth and changing channels may avoid interference. The 2.4 GHz and 5.8 GHz frequency bands are utilized by digital transmitters and also are becoming quite crowded these days since digital signals occupy a lot more bandwidth as compared to analog transmitters. A number of cordless products for example Bluetooth devices as well as wireless phones use frequency hopping. Thus just switching the channel won't prevent these kinds of frequency hoppers. Audio can be viewed as a real-time protocol. Because of this it has stringent demands pertaining to dependability. Additionally, low latency is crucial in many applications. For this reason more sophisticated techniques are required to assure stability.

Simply switching channels, however, is no reliable solution for avoiding certain transmitters that use frequency hopping. Frequency hoppers just like Bluetooth gadgets or quite a few wireless phones are going to hop through the entire frequency spectrum. As a result transmission over channels will be disrupted for short bursts of time. Real-time audio has very strict demands pertaining to dependability and low latency. To be able to offer those, different means are required.

Another method makes use of receivers that transmit data packets to the transmitter. The information which is broadcast has a checksum. From this checksum the receiver may decide if any certain packet was received properly and acknowledge. If a packet was damaged, the receiver is going to notify the transmitter and request retransmission of the packet. Therefore, the transmitter has to store a certain amount of packets in a buffer. Equally, the receiver must have a data buffer. This kind of buffer brings about an audio delay that is dependent upon the buffer size with a larger buffer improving the robustness of the transmission. Video applications, however, need the audio to be synchronized with the video. In such cases a big latency is problematic. Devices that integrate this kind of procedure, nevertheless, are restricted to transmitting to a small number of receivers and the receivers consume more energy.

To be able to better handle interference, some wireless speakers will monitor the accessible frequency band as a way to decide which channels are clear at any point in time. If any certain channel becomes crowded by a competing transmitter, these products may switch transmission to a clean channel without interruption of the audio. The clear channel is picked from a list of channels which has been determined to be clear. One technology which makes use of this kind of transmission protocol is known as adaptive frequency hopping spread spectrum or AFHSS




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