[CAP] community radio net

[Rex Buddenberg]

Art,

Check out IEEE 802.16 and 802.20 work.  If you hit the WIMAX industry
association while looking, you're in the right territory.

Typical IEEE approach -- two highly overlapping and probably competitive
standards approach.  But rather than try to play Solomon, IEEE simply
approves the PAR for both committees and leaves it to the marketplace to
sort things out.

Both are being called wireless metro area networks.  Contrast to 802.11
is that they're designed to work over wider geography (outdoor vice
indoor) and they both show scheduling algorithms in the MAC layer.  

In military terms, we're into the technology that can build
'battlefield' or 'intra-battle group' networks.  In EMS terms, this
looks like the technology to reach from a community's backbone (wired)
network to mobile platforms such as police cars, fire engines,
ambulances and even pedestrian EMS folks.  You can paint this in
disaster recovery terms just as easily.

I recently discovered this stuff and am still coming up to speed but
have joined both e-mail lists to stay current ... I now get IEEE spam to
go alongside the penis enlargement spam.  Also starting some side
conversations with some vendors to see what they've actually got
built.... and whether I can get something into my lab.


-- 
b