Open spectrum

Open spectrum is radio frequency spectrum that is regulated and unlicensed. License holders are not permitted. National governments allocate bands of spectrum (sometimes based on guidelines from the ITU) for use by anyone so long as they respect certain technical limits, most notably, a limit on total transmission power. Open Spectrum is decentralized: there is no license payments or central control for users.

Traditional users of Open Spectrum include cordless telephones, and baby monitors. A collection of new technologies are taking advantage of open spectrum including Wi-Fi, Ultra Wideband, spread spectrum, software defined radio, cognitive radio[?], and mesh networks[?].

External links

http://www.acmqueue.org/issue3/openspec1.cfm?client_no=NEW

http://openict.net/projects/openspectrum/

http://www.newamerica.net/Download_Docs/pdfs/Pub_File_1001_1.PDF