Henry Cohen of Production Radio Rentals, This One is For You

I've posted occasionally on the FCC's rules process on white space, space between channels that is currently unused, or more accurately unallocated.

A number of people, including me, feel that if this bandwidth should be made available to unlicensed users, much in the same way that Wi-Fi is, because it promises better bandwidth, greater penetration, and better range.

The complicating factor is that it has been used, largely almost completely illegally by the wireless microphone industry.

As a result, I've attracted the attention of the above mentioned gentleman, who deals in said microphones, and we had a bit of discussion on the matter.

He mentioned that, "There are no handheld military RF communication devices that do what he [Telco Expert Harold Feld, who is a friend] claims." (emphasis mine)

By what he claims, he means using "sense and avoid" to avoid interfering with other devices sharing the spectrum.

I find his argument complete bullsh^%, because I have personal knowledge of vehicle mounted communications systems in various stages of test and deployment, JTRS comes to mind because I had to package components when I worked a military contract, but he was insisting on "hand held."

Well, Mr. Cohen, I have your handheld right here. It's not just a handheld, they've got the system on a chip:

Researchers here are developing new, handheld, wireless radios fitted with a single processor chip that is embedded with algorithms for compressing as many as 5 simultaneous, stealthy conversations into the same time and frequency slot and then, on arrival, untangling them.

Equally importantly, while in transit messages and data packages are seemingly hopelessly mixed – to the point of sounding like static. The chance of intercepting even the digital gibberish is unlikely since foes or potential adversaries don’t have the receiver technology to sort through such high levels of interferences.

....

They also are working to discover what’s necessary and what’s not, allowing them to take computing short cuts and use new techniques to increase performance and efficiency. Such advances in signal processing have allowed researchers to reduce the amount of “overhead” or needless digital instruction in the protocol that is not voice traffic. “Protocol overhead” as part of the total message has decreased to 20% from 50%. That is a key strategy for freeing room for more transmissions. Phase three is to conclude in June with demonstration of up to a 20-radio network. By the end of 2010, researchers expect to have completed design and implementation of a full-waveform protocol and hardware for a brick-size radio.

It's from the minds of DARPA, and it's here, it's real, and it's on a chip, and here is a video: (4:24)